our love and we are so free in the love of finite good that we even feel the secret reproaches of our reason when we fix our selves on it Because he that made us for himself speaks to us that we may turn to him and give no bounds to the motion of love which he incessantly produces in us All the motion that the soul hath towards good comes from God and God only acting for himself all the motion of the soul hath no other end nor bound than God in the Institution of Nature God presenting to spirits no other Idea but himself since he hath made spirits for himself All the motion of our wills is towards him since wills move themselves towards those things only which the spirit perceives But men thinking that they see creatures in themselves the consent they give to the motion that God imprints in them ends in the creatures and it may be said with a great deal of truth that the free will of men or their consent to the motion they receive from God tends to the creatures though the natural motion of their love can tend only to God By this you see Aristarchus that God preserves spirits for himself only that the faculties they enjoy to know and love know and love none but him that sinners do not overturn the laws of nature that they are inviolable and that this general principle of Religion and Morality viz. That God hath made us for himself is undeniable Arist But if the order of nature is that we know and love God and if we cannot resist that order since the motion of our love for the creatures tends of necessity towards the Creator how can it be said that we really offend God Theod. It may be said for many reasons God incessantly moves spirits towards good either general or particular for all good is to be beloved He invincibly moves them towards general good but 't is otherwise with the impression he gives them towards particular good God doth not limit towards that good the act which he produces in them For if we observe it duely we sufficiently perceive that in the very time when we fix on some finite good we have some motion to go further if we will So we offend God by stopping his act and not letting him act in us according to the full extent of his act The reason why God moves us towards good is because it moves us towards him and he moves us towards himself because he loves himself 'T is then the love of God to himself that produces our love in us Therefore our love ought to be like to that which God bears to himself But it is not like it when it concenters in a particular good it is then unworthy of the cause that hath produced it and it may be said to be displeasing to him Order is certainly the essential and necessary Will of God according to which and by which he wills whatever he wills for God loves order he wills nothing but order his will always follows order But a creature who loves more those things that are less lovely thwarts order withdraws himself from it and even overthrows it as much as he is capable of it He resists then to the will of God and so deserves to come into the order of his justice since he leaves that of his goodness which is the first and most natural God alone can act in the soul and cause in her some pleasure And by his decree or general will that makes the order of nature 't was his desire that pleasure should attend certain motions in the body So those that produce in their body these motions without reason even against the secret reproaches of their reason oblige God in consequence of his general will to renumerate them by pleasing sentiments even in the very time when they ought to be punished They therefore use violence against his justice and offend him But they only use this violence by the love they have for particular good So this love offends God For all those who love their pleasure without minding the true cause that produces it offend that cause since God never causes pleasure with an intent that we should fix on it but rather that we may love the cause that produces the pleasure and that we may unite with the thing that determines that cause to produce it You see therefore Aristarchus that God is offended when we fix the motion of love he causes in us on particular good But though you might not see it you cannot doubt but it is so for when we confine our love to some particular good we feel an inward check in the secret of our reason and a just check is a mark of infidelity against him that causes it those checks or reproaches can proceed but from a general cause since they are generally to be found in all mankind and must therefore be just since they are caused by a just God and this just God is offended when we confine our love to particular good This single Argument is sufficient for 't is unnecessary to seek metaphysical proofs of a thing whereof we are convined by inward sentiments that is by a light which strikes through the blindest and by a punishment that stings the most hardened sinners Arist I believe all this and I pray you to go on Theod. If you believe all this Aristarchus you may see your friend ask him at first if he desires to be happy Show him that none but God can act and cause in him that pleasure he loves so much and that renders him the more happy the greater it is Let him know that God is just that he will be obey'd that it cannot be conceived he should make truely happy those who do not follow his orders nor unhappy those that follow them that so we ought to use all our endeavours to know the Will of God and ought to obey it with all the fidelity imaginable You are sensible that men must be either stupid or out of their senses not to see those things and that those that see them and are not affected with them must either be mad or desperate but do not tell him so take heed above all things you do not awaken his passions and principally his pride for he would conceive nothing of what you might tell him make him understand as much as you can that God acts only for himself That he hath made our spirit only for himself That he hath given some motion to our heart only to incline it towards him That therefore we ought not to make an ill use of the motion of love which God causes in us by loving any thing besides him or without relation to him Make him understand that God is his true good not only by being alone capable to make him happy but also because none but God can make him more perfect not only as he is the cause of pleasure but also as he is
but also the desire And sometimes the Imagination does so augment all things that the pleasure it produces excites the Concupiscence after a more strong and lively manner than that we enjoy even in the use of Bodies Persons who have too quick and delicate an Imagination may sometimes cure the hurt they have received in a contagious discourse by tasting the pleasures which are represented to them or of which they form'd themselves too great an Idea And there are certain bashful lazy and judicious persons and of a certain disposition of mind hard to describe to whom it is convenient sometimes to shew the world to give 'em a dislike of it But Erastus this is rare and 't is extremely dangerous to be familiariz'd with sensible things You have an horror for Tobacco you are pleas'd not to be subject to the necessity of always having some with you yet if you were to be with Men who frequently use it their discourse and manner would engage you by degrees to use it your self and Use would subject you to it as well as others for I know some who can't be without it that could not endure it heretofore Erast. It is true Theodorus that the great Secret to resist Concupiscence is to have continually an eye to the purity of our Imagination and to take heed that it leave not footsteps in the Brain which may carry us to the love of sensible things thus to remedy the beginning of our Irregularities The Councels of JESVS CHRIST which only tend to deprive us of the use of sensible things are admirable but they are very uneasie methinks Philosophy furnishes us with a Remedy more commodious than that of the Gospel 't is this Philosophy teaches me that all Bodies which are about me can't act in me and that 't is God only that causes in me the pleasure and grief which I feel in their use this being granted I can enjoy Bodies without loving them for as I only ought to love that which is truly capable of making me happy to excite in me the love of God I have only to remember in the use of sensible things that 't is God who makes me happy by their means Thus I ought not to shun Bodies on the contrary I ought to seek them that so by exciting pleasure in me they may continually make me to think of God who is the cause of it Whence comes it that the Blessed love God constantly and that they can't leave off loving him if it is not that they see him and that they are ty'd to him by a preingaging pleasure Well then I see God by Philosophy I perceive him in every thing if I eat I think of God because 't is God that makes me eat with pleasure I 'm not careful to love good entertainment as there 's nothing but God which acts in me I only love him Theod. You Erastus are free from sin and confirm'd in grace for who shall disunite you from God the most violent pleasures tie you more strongly to him and pains can only produce in you a fear and respect for him but do you your self often make use of your own Remedy and have you never acted contrary to the remorse of your Conscience Erast. I am very sensible Theodorus that this Remedy of my Philosophy is not soveraign but pray explain to us the defects of it Theod. I will When you taste of Fruit with pleasure your Reason tells you that there is a God whom you see not who causes in you this pleasure your Senses tell you on the contrary that this Fruit which you see which you hold in your hands 〈◊〉 which you eat is that which causes in you this pleasure which of these two speaks higher your Reason or your Senses As for me I find that the noise of my Senses is so great that I even think no of God in that moment but perhaps Erastus is such a Philosopher that his Senses are silent as soon as he pleases and that they never speak to him without first obtaining his Licence If so your Remedy is good for you for the privation of Bodies is not absolutely necessary to those who have no Concupiscence Adam could taste of pleasures without becoming their Slave tho he had done better to have let them alone Then let those who feel no Concupiscence in them and whose Body is intirely subject to the Spirit make use of your Remedy 't is good for them they are just by themselves they descend in a right Line from the Pre-Adamites Neither did Christ come for them he came not to save the Just but Sinners He came for us who are Sinners Children of a sinful Parent sold and subject to Sin and who always feel in our Bodies the Rebellion of our Senses and Passions When the obligation we have to preserve our health and life constrains us to enjoy some pleasure then we must make a necessity of Virtue and make use of your Remedy if we can remembring that these are not the Objects which cause in us this pleasure but God only we must thank him for them and pray to him that he would defend us from the malignity of sensible Objects we must use them with fear and with a kind of horror for without the grace of JESVS CHRIST that which gives life to the Body gives death to the Soul you know the Reasons of it Erast. But why Pleasure in itself is not ill I receive it then it does me no harm I thank God for it and love him the more it unites me to God who is the Author of it then it does me good Theod. The love of God which the enjoyment of Pleasure causes in you is much interested I 'm much afraid Erastus that in loving God as the Author of your Pleasure you love your self instead of loving God But I wish that this love be not ill I also wish that you have the power of raising your self up to God in the time that you enjoy some Pleasure but this Pleasure makes traces in the Brain these traces continually agitate the Soul and in the time of Prayer or some other necessary business they disturb the Action blind the Mind and stir up the Passions Thus when you would even make a good use of Pleasure at the moment that you should taste it the trouble that it disperses thro' the Imagination has so dangerous Consequences that you had better have been depriv'd of it Think you Erastus that there has been a Race of Mankind so very stupid as to get drunk for the honor of God and to bring him into one's mind for the pleasure of drunkenness and do you observe that the pleasure which is found in the excessive use of sensible things is such as can't be pray'd for to God without remorse Hence it is that this pleasure was not ordain'd by Nature to carry us directly to God but for the use of Bodies so far as they shall be necessary for the preservation
in my soul a knowledge of instinct nor any other I cannot tell if you are satisfied Arist But little truly Theod. Shall I tell you why you are not well satisfied 'T is because Erastus hath made a clear and evident answer to an Objection that was not so If you clearly understood what you object Erastus would answer you both clearly and quickly If hereafter you desire to receive from him more satisfaction than you have had hitherto consider well what you intend to ask him He cannot answer you speedily and clearly when he doth not understand you and you do not even understand your self He uses all his endeavours not to answer but when he hath consulted inward truth and had its answer but it never answers him when he doth not know what he asks Yet you would have him give you an answer and that speedy too If he made you any he would deceive you for it would be his answer and not Truths you should receive I will still put some questions to him that you may observe the method I think is proper to go about it and that his answers may instruct you of the Truth we seek I have obliged my self Erastus to prove the existence of God by the effects which fire seems to produce in us but to do it 't is of the greatest consequence to know that 't is not the soul that causes in her self her own sensations See if you have not still some other proof I do not say more solid but more able to convince Aristarchus Think on it Why do you sometimes suffer a pain Do you delight in it Erast I understand you Theodorus I am not to my self the cause of my happiness nor of my misery If I was the cause of the pleasure I feel seeing I love it I should always produce some in me And on the contrary if I was the cause of the pain I suffer seeing I hate it I would never produce it in my self I perceive that there is a superiour cause that acts on me and may make me happy or unhappy Since I cannot act on my self and that bodies produce not in me the sensations which I feel as we said just now Arist You have it not right Erastus you love your Body you either know or feel that there happens some good or ill to it you either rejoyce or are afflicted at it The one is your pleasure and the other your pain Erast What ever Aristarchus says to me puzzles me and throws me into darkness I beg of you Theodorus to disperse it Theod. I do not wonder at it Erastus Whatever he tells you is false or full of obscurity yet seems probable enough Will you never retire within your self Aristarchus How can you conceive I pray you that Erastus loves his body Whatever is within Erastus that is able to love is better than the body of Erastus Erastus knows it His Body cannot act on his Soul he knows it his Body cannot be his Good he knows that too it cannot be properly said then that he loves it But here lies the riddle Erastus loves pleasure more than his body and he resents pleasure when his body is well dispos'd 'T is that obliges him to mind his body and to defend it when any thing offends it Do you think the Drunkards love their body when they gorge it with Wine Do you think the Libertines love their body when they ruine their health Is it not rather because they love the present pleasure Do those who mortifie their body love it when they tear it or do you believe they hate it What is it then they love but the pleasures they hope one day to enjoy What do they hate on the contrary but the everlasting torments they fear to suffer Thus you may see that Erastus doth not cause in himself his pleasure because he finds or is sensible that the body he loves is well dispos'd For he doth not even know that his body is in a good state by any other thing than by the pleasure he hath by it It is true that when we feel by pleasure or by pain that our body is well or ill dispos'd we are affected with joy or grief but if you think on it seriously you will easily perceive that this grief and joy that are the effects of our knowledge differ mightily from those antecedent pains and pleasures of which we speak Therefore they must have some other cause than our selves Do you grant it Arist I am now convinced of it Theod. Now this cause must be superior and always present to us since it acts within us This cause can punish or reward us make us happy or unhappy since pleasure delights us and pain displeases and makes us uneasie If then this Cause were God we should know that God doth not only rule the motions of the heavens But that he hath a hand in our concerns rules whatsoever passes in us and that in order to our happiness we ought to fear him love him and follow his orders For since he makes continual applications to us he requires something from us and if we do not perform what he requires from us 't is not likely that he should reward us and make us happy Arist I own it But how would you prove that it is not some Angel or Demon that hath the Government of us and acts on us How would you prove that there is a Being infinitely powerful and who includes in his being all the perfections imaginable This seems to me very difficult Theod. It is difficult by the method I have taken but when we acknowledge a superior power that acts in us we have not much difficulty to consider him as Soveraign and to allow him all the perfections of which we have some idea Nevertheless I must endeavour to convince you fully Mind me also Enastus As soon as we are prick'd with a Thorn we feel pain This pain doth not proceed from the Thorn nor from the Soul you grant all this it proceeds then from a superior power This power ought to know the moment when the Thorn pricks our body that he may in the same moment produce the pain in our soul But how shall he know it Think on it He cannot know it from us for we know nothing of it yet Nor from the Thorn for the Thorn cannot act on the spirit of that power nor represent it self to him for the Thorn is neither visible nor intelligible by it self there being no relation between bodies and intelligent beings Whence then shall this superior power learn the moment when the Thorn pricks us If you tell me that he shall know it from some other intelligent being I will ask you the same questions of the second intelligent being and if you fly to a third you will get no more by it Yet in the very instant when we are pricked we feel pain The superior cause must then have learnt that the Thorn pricks us without the help
is convincing and taste alone hath made all mankind agree in that If the mind saw in bodies but what is in them without having a sentiment of what is not in them their use would be very painful and inconvenient to us for who would take the pains to examine with care the nature of all things that are about us to cleave to or leave them What should tell us when we ought to sit down to dinner and when rise from it What should place us at a reasonable distance from the fire And should we not often doubt whether we burnt or warm'd our selves In short would it not happen sometimes that we should be the cause of our own death by Inadvertency by Grief or even out of desire of making near discoveries in Anatomies Therefore it is most reasonable that God incline us to seek the good of the body and shun its contrary by the foregoing sensations of Pleasure and Pain For after all if men were oblig'd to examine the Configuration of a Fruit those of all the parts of their bodies and the different relations which result from the one to the other to be able to judge if in the present heat of their blood and a thousand other dispositions of their body this Fruit were good to nourish them 't is obvious that such things as are altogether unworthy of the application of their minds would wholly fill its capacity and that also unprofitably enough since they would not be able to preserve themselves any considerable time by that only way Arist I must confess this conduct is very wise and most worthy its Author But yet we feel some pleasure in the use of sensible things why then must we not love them Theod. Because they are not lovely you are a rational creature and your reason doth not represent to you bodies as your good If sensible objects did contain in themselves what you feel when you use them if they were the true cause of your Pleasure and Grief you might love and fear them but your reason doth not tell you so as I yesterday prov'd it to you You may use them but not love them you may eat of a fruit but not settle your Love upon it Likewise you ought to avoid Fire or a Sword but ought not to fear them * See the 8th Chapter of the 6th Book of the Inquiry after Truth We must love and fear what is able to cause pleasure and pain that 's a common notion which I do not contradict But we must take heed not to confound the true efficient cause with the occasional I say it once more we must love and fear the efficient cause of pleasure and of pain and we may seek or avoid their occasional causes provided we do not do it against the positive orders of that efficient cause and do not force it in consequence of its natural Laws to work in us what is against its precepts And we must not imitate the voluptuous who make God an instument of their sensuality and oblige him in consequence of his first will to reward them with a sentiment of pleasure in the very moment when they offend him for that 's the greatest Injustice can be committed Believe me Aristarchus the good of the body cannot be belov'd but by Instinct but the good of the mind can and ought to be belov'd by reason The good of the body can be belov'd but by Instinct and with a blind Love because the mind cannot even perceive so clearly that the good of the body is a real good for the mind cannot see what is not It cannot clearly perceive that Bodies are above the Spirit that they can act in it punish or reward it and render it more happy and more perfect but the good of the mind ought to be lov'd by reason God will be lov'd with a Love of choice with a reasonable Love a meritorious Love a Love worthy of him and worthy of us we see clearly that God is our good that he is above us that he can act in us that he can reward us and render us not only more happy but also more perfect than we are is it not this sufficient to make a Spirit love God And thus we see that God was not to make man love him by the instinct of Pleasure when he created him he was not to make use of this kind of art nor implore any force against the Liberty of a reasonable creature to lessen the merit of his Love For the first man ought to have adhered to God and could do it without the help of a preingaging pleasure though now Pleasure is commonly necessary to remedy the blindness which sin has brought upon us and to withstand the continual attacks of Concupiscence against our Reason I 'le say it again Aristarchus that you may remember it It was necessary that the antecedent pleasure and not the light of reason should incline us to the good of the body since reason cannot even represent to its self the bodies that are about us as a good But there was no need that God should make use of preingaging pleasure as of a kind of art to cause himself to be beloved by the first man since it was sufficient that he should enlighten his reason he being the sole and only good of Spirits Arist I grant all these things are very well imagin'd but there is still in your System a difficulty that puzzles me For methinks you confound Concupiscence with the institution of Nature and making God the Author of the pleasure we feel in the use of sensible things you also make him Author of Concupiscence since it is nothing else but that pleasure considered as striving against our reason Theod. This institution of Nature is thus Aristarchus God hath made the Soul and the Body of man and 't was his pleasure for the preservation of his work that as often as there should be in the body some certain motions there should result in the Soul some certain sentiments provided those motions did communicate themselves as far as a certain part of the Brain which I shall not specifie but because the will of God is efficacious there never hapned any motions in that part of the Brain but there followed some sensations and because the will of God is unchangeable this was not changed by the sin of the first man Yet as before man had sinned and whilst all things were in perfect good order it was not just that the body should hinder the Spirit from thinking on what is desired It follows that man had necessarily such a power over his body that he did as it were separate the principal part of his brain from the rest of his body and did hinder its usual communication with the sensitive Nerves as often as he desired to apply himself to truth or to some other thing than the good of the body And by those means it was in Adam's power first to make use
the original of light Endeavour to persuade him that God alone is the life and nourishment of the soul That all bodies are invisible by themselves and altogether uncapable of producing any sentiment in our souls That all good is included in God in an intelligible manner in a manner fit to act into the mind to shew it self and cause it self to be felt by it In short that God alone is the true good of the mind all manner of ways and that we ought to love and adore none but him Raise in him a desire to hear you by things on which perhaps he never thought and such as may by their novelty stir up in him a salutary curiosity But above all things endeavour to make him very sensible of his unjustice towards God whilst he follows his passions And that being a sinner and consequently unworthy of being rewarded by the delightful sentiments of pleasure he obliges God in consequence of his immutable orders to affect him with delight in the very moment he offends him Death shall corrupt his body and then God remaining unchangeable in his decrees will avenge during a whole eternity the wrongs he shall have done him by compelling him in a manner not only to be subservient to his disorders but even to reward him for his disobedience In short make him sensible of the necessity there is to repent and strive to inspire in him a saultary horror of all those criminal pleasures that bewitch the senses and corrupt the heart and reason That retiring within himself the confused noise of his passions may not hinder him from hearkning to the secret checks of inward truth and thus he may understand what you shall tell him afterwards DIALOGUE IV. Of the Disorder of Nature caused by Original Sin Theod. WELL what satisfaction have you had of your last visit to your Friend Arist None at all My Friend becomes ill-humoured when ever I speak to him nay sometimes he grows angry and flies out in a passion This troubles me very much Theod. But doth he laugh no more at what you say Arist No. Theod. Be of good heart then your Friend mends and I hope will recover He begins now to feel his wounds since he laughs no more when they are drest Should you wonder to see a man grow ill-humoured and angry if another filled him with wounds confusion and shame why then would you have your Friend insensible You have told him perhaps some truths that oblige him to leave his pleasure to shake off the Old Man to be in a disposition to repent and appear full of confusion and shame in the sense of his unfortunate Friends who will laugh at his change He hath had a prospect of all those things within himself and they have scar'd him If he be vext 't is because you have wounded him and I believe that you have offended him by Convincing him Can any thing grieve and mortifie a worldly man more than the thoughts of being obliged to change altogether his way of living and approve by his own example a manner of life which his Friends ridicule and he himself hath laught at with them all his life-time Perhaps your Friend finds himself obliged to this He is willing to breakhis bonds but he tears himself to pieces his heartis divided and you wonder at his pain and impatience Know my dear Aristarchus that if your Friend heard you without being moved it would show that he is not affected with your words that they do not reach his heart that he is not convinced by that conviction which stirs us to action begins our conversion and makes us suffer because it strips us of the Old Man So I would have you be joyful not because you have filled your Friend with sadness but because his sadness is in all likelihood the sadness that inclines us to repentance Arist You revive me extreamly Let us go on I pray you in our conferences that I may strengthen my self in the knowledge of the proofs of Religion and Morality to convince my Friend fully You prov'd me t'other day that God hath made us to know and love him Pray what consequence do you draw from that principle For I grant that God will not have us to fix on particular good the motion of Love that he incessantly causes in us that we may love him incessantly not with respect to his works which being below us are unworthy of our Love but in himself and according to the idea we have of him as a Being infinitely perfect Theod. All the Precepts of Christian Morals depend upon that Principle You believe it already but you shall see it clearly when I shall make use of it to justifie the counsels which the Eternal Wisdom hath given us in the Gospel I will show you now that this principle is the ground of the Christian Religion that owns the need of a Restorer and Law-giver able to illuminate the Spirit and give a new strength to the Soul of a Mediator between God and Men who may offer a Sacrifice and establish a Worship worthy of God and able to satisfie his justice You own that God will be loved with all our strength that is to say that all the motion of love he creates in us end towards him and that we love creatures only for him and not him with respect to creatures But do you love him always after that manner do you find no difficulty in the practice of his Love do you feel no pain to follow this motion to its utmost or no pleasure to stop it In short do you not find often that the ways of vertue are hard and painful and those of vice smooth and pleasing Arist I am not more perfect than St. Paul I sometimes delight in the love of God according to the inward man but I feel in my body another law that fights against the law of my spirit I suffer when I practice vertue I receive some pleasure in the enjoyment of sensible things in spight of all my opposition and am so much a slave to my body that I cannot even apply my self without pain and reluctancy to things that have no relation to the body Theod. But whence proceeds this pain you resent in doing well and this pleasure you have in doing ill You are not the cause of your own pleasure nor pain for if you were seeing you love your self you would never produce pain in your self and would still be injoying some pleasure Neither is it your body not those that are about you for all bodys are below you and it cannot be conceived that they may act in you or make you happy or unhappy None but God can act in the Soul But do you think that God afflicts you when you do well or that he rewards you when you do ill Do you think that God who desireth that you may love him with all your strength throws you back when you run after him But when you cease to
because he made us he will not have us such as we have made our selves far from this as such he cannot suffer us near him and always removes us from him Yet Aristarchus it is true that God is too just and loves himself too much not to desire to be beloved and to remove positively from him creatures whom he only made for himself for sensible pleasure or pain removes from God but indirectly and by our own fault First because being able to find out by reason that bodies are incapable of creating in us either pleasure or pain we ought neither to fear nor love them but God alone who hath power to cause these sensations in us When something wounds us we ought to fear God and when our senses are any ways pleased we ought to think on him and fear and love him in all things For it is a common notion that the true cause of pleasure and of pain ought to be loved and feared But our ignorance of the actual presence and continual operation of this true cause of our sensations makes us love and fear bodies imagining them to be capable to act in us Now this ignorance is not something positive caused in us by God it is nothing It is true that not to love or fear bodys it is absolutely necessary we should have a very clear and lively knowledge of the presence and continual operation of God upon us for the knowledge which Philosophy gives us of him doth not strongly enough dispose us to cleave incessantly to him But what can be concluded from God's not causing himself to be known enough without his grace to be Loved and feared in all things but that men have offended and displeased him God doth not therefore remove us positively from him when he causes some pleasure or pain in us by the means of bodys since we ought and may then think on him rather than on those bodys Now I come to the second reason Seeing we have a body it is necessary we should have notice of what passes in it It is necessary that at the appearance of objects we have sentiments moving us to cleave to or shun them It is also necessary that these sentiments be preingaging for some reasons that I have mentioned elsewhere So God doth not positively remove us from him when he causes in us our sentiments since on the contrary it is the shortest means to warn us of the things that are necessary for the preservation of life without turning us away from him But those preingaging Sentiments ought not to disturb us nor oppose our Reason and seeing they do it is evident as I have already said it 2d Dial. That Man doth not deserve God should interrupt the Law of the communication of motions for his sake but this doth not imply that God really pushes us back from him In short men see all things in God their immediate object is the intelligible world and the very substance of God but they not thinking on him at the appearance of sensible objects imagine that some outward being altogether like the Idea they have of it acts in them Thus God moves them only towards himself since he only moves them towards what they see and not towards those things which they imagine to be external and it is only indirectly and through a mistake that they love the creatures which are neither so lovely nor such as they imagin them to be Erast You are much in the right Theodorus when you believe that the first cause of our disorders is our not having God always present to our minds and not seeing or rather not feeling him in all things For did we plainly and sensibly see that none but God really acts in us when bodies are present to our sences methinks we would fear and love none but him since we love or fear nothing but what acts in us How then could Adam estrange himself from God for he could see God in all things and had all the knowledge that was necessary to remain united to him If you do not explain how he could fall into sin perhaps Aristarchus will believe that the first man was made such as we are and that concupiscence is not so much a punishment for sin as the first institution of Nature Theod. You need not fear it Erastus he knows now that we ought not to leave a demonstrated Truth because we cannot solve some difficult Points he now sticks to what he sees But I understand what you mean and answer you thus The first man did clearly see God in all things he evidently knew that bodies could not be his true good nor properly make him in the least happy or unhappy he was fully convinc'd of God's continual operation on him but his was no sensible conviction he knew this but did not feel it on the contrary he could feel that bodies acted on him tho he could not know that they did it It is true that being endowed with reason he ought to have followed his light and not his sentiment and that he could easily have done it seeing he could stop his sentiments when he pleased being free from concupiscence However deferring too much to his sences and suffering himself by degrees to hearken to them more willingly than to God himself by reason that the sences always move pleasingly and God did not move him to hear him by preingaging pleasures which must have lessened his Freedom you easily conceive how he came to remove himself so far from God as to lose sight of him to adjoyn in will to a creature by whose means he received some satisfaction and which he might then confusedly imagin to be capable of making him as happy as the Serpent assured Eve it would For tho Adam was not attackt nor seduced by the Serpent as Eve was And Adam was not deceived 1 Tim. 2.14 Yet what God said after Adam's fall Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil Gen. 3.22 Sufficiently shows that he had some hopes of becoming happy by the means of the forbidden Fruit. Now to determine us to do a thing there is no absolute necessity that we be fully persuaded that our Motive is just and reasonable The hopes of a great benefit tho never so small are capable of making us do much So we may suppose that Adam was so strongly applied to sensible Objects and consequently so far removed out of God's presence that the least hope the slightest doubt and the most confused sentiment of so great an advantage as that of being like God hath been capable of moving him to do a thing which he did not perhaps think very sinful at the time of his Fall All finite Spirits must be subject to Error and Sin principally if they resent preingaging pleasures which incline them to seek things that they ought not to love and to shun what they ought not to fear For no finite Spirit can actually resent pleasure without
I don't know that Theodorus for being merciful he can pardon when he pleaseth Theod. But can he be willing to do it Arist What a Question that is Men themselves can do that Theod. Men can forgive when they are offended they ought not to revenge themselves nor have they power to do it As they love themselves to excess they would be sure to exceed being Sinners they would condemn themselves and whatsoever offends them being ordained by God they would be guilty of Rebellion For the only thing wherein God hath no hand to wit the inward malice of their Enemies doth them no harm they have no right to oblige others to love them neither can they take any revenge for want of that love that doth not belong to them But if Men had received the sovereign wisdom and power to judge and punish if their essential Will was the Order if they could not act against that Order might they not punish such Crimes as would be committed against God or pardon Sin and Disorder and yet not offend the Law and Order But supposing they could do you think they might also secure to Sinners the means of attaining Felicity They would certainly make an ill use of their power and by overthrowing the order of Justice prove themselves Sinners and thereby be altogether destitute of either love to God or zeal for his glory Do you think God can reverse the essential order of things or fight against himself Do you imagin it is possible he should not love himself or forbear his own satisfaction by neglecting his Justice and that mercy which you conceive to be a virtue in us to be a perfection in God No Aristarchus God is not merciful in the same manner as we are that Clemency would be contrary to his Justice That Sinners be happy implies contradiction if not on the part of Sinners at least on that of him that is omnipotent and cannot act against the essential order of things on the part I say of him that is essentially just God must punish Sin and if he hath a mind to spare those that commit it for the end that he proposed to himself in the construction of his work it is necessary that a Sacrifice more worthy of his greatness and justice than they are should receive the blow that was to make them eternally miserable Thus God may be merciful Things being thus you easily see what need we stand in of Christ's satisfaction That the Mediator of the Arians and Socinians is a Mediator who can never atone for them nor reconcile them to God And that none but those who believe that Jesus Christ is really God because none but a God can justifie and save us in a word that none but those who call upon Christ by that name which the Scripture gives him that expresses so well his qualities Jehovah Justitia nostra God our Righteousness can have a full assurance in his Sacrifice Observe Aristarchus that God doth whatever he ought to do Arist But God lieth under no obligation to any one Theod. I own it But God doth whatever he is obliged to for his own sake Men offend and oppose him and overturn the order of things ought not he then to revenge himself satisfy his Justice and punish those that offend him For I grant that as for our sakes God is obliged to do no more than he pleaseth But he is obliged to do something for himself and that being granted it is just to believe that he will not omit to do it for he loveth himself and is willing to do whatever he ought to do for himself I own that there is no Law that constrains him but that he is to himself his own Law However he is to himself inviolably a Law and must of necessity love himself tho' nothing forces him to love himself but himself Arist But Theodorus will you dive into God's Councels and give Bounds to his Wisdom and Power Do you think that God could not satisfie his Justice otherwise than by the death of his Son If it be so Theod. I understand you Aristarchus God's Justice could have been satisfied by a thousand other means The least Suffering the least Action of God-Man could fully satisfy God's Justice for all our Crimes for the merit of it is infinite by the dignity of the Person But God could not be fully satisfied by any other Satisfaction than that of a Divine Person Nothing is worthy of God but God himself All manner of offence against God is infinitely criminal and there is nothing Infinite but God He cannot therefore be satisfied without having a hand in it such is the Immensity of his greatness Tho' God had sacrificed all the Creation to his wrath and annihilated all his Works that Sacrifice would still have been unworthy of him But God had not made the world to annihilate it he had made it for him that hath restored it for his Son was predestinated before all Ages to be the Chief of it He is the First-born of all Creatures the Beginning of the Lord's Ways the Beginning End and Perfection of all the Works of God for whatever God hath made is only perfectly worthy of God through Christ I don't know Aristarchus whether your thoughts follow mine perhaps I run too fast But pray what is it you would say to me Arist I 'le tell you God being infinitely wise and powerful why could he not form a Creature sufficiently noble and raised above Sinners to atone for them Theod. How Aristarchus Shall a Creature undertake to reconcile Sinners Plead for them Shew any love for them That is for the damned For if we are not ranked with the damned it is because we are made free in Christ But supposing with you that a Creature could do all this satisfie for us and free us by his satisfaction it follows that we are indebted to that Creature and his Slaves that our obligations to him ought to divide our love between God and him and that our Restoration being perhaps a greater good to us than our Creation we ought to love him better than God himself if we ought to love most the things that do us most good Yet God requires that we should love him in all things and that all the motion of love which he causes in us tend towards him and he will not only be esteemed by us as the first Cause and Being but also beloved in all things as the only true cause of whatever the Creatures seem to produce in us This is the order of things Now it would be reversed and even its overturning justified should your Notion of God's design to give us another Restorer than himself subsist For that design would in some manner justify a Love not solely tending towards God since that design proposes to us another than God for an Object of our Love when it proposes to us a Creature endowed with an excellency sufficient to oblige us really and by himself
of life We must love God because Reason informs us that every thing is center'd in him that deserves our love God will be lov'd with a clear love with a love which flows from pure light and not with a confus'd Sentiment such as Pleasure is God is so lovely that those who see him as he is would love him in the midst of the most cruel Torments and we do not love him as he deserves when we love him because 't is he only who can create agreeable Sentiments in us A Friend reproves us because he should do it we offend our selves when we punish our selves for our Irregularities do we therefore cease to love our selves or our Friend No doubtless we endeavor perhaps to shun the Reproof which our Friend thinks himself oblig'd to give us but if we see that he only does what he ought to do we are unreasonable if we cease to have an intrinsic respect and love for him If then a person could conceive that God ows that to his Justice which he inflicts upon him to make him sensible of the highest pains he always would suffer patiently without ceasing to love God He should not love these pains in themselves but he should love the Author of them who if he did not inflict them would be less lovely because he would be less just and less perfect A Criminal who hath brib'd his Judge loves and esteems him much less than if he had punisht him provided that this Criminal who is not just enough to hate the Crime in himself would be reasonable enough to hate it in another Accordingly the blessed might suffer the pains of the damned without hating God for altho' the pleasure they enjoy keeps them united to God inseparably yet they love not God for the sake of the pleasure which they receive from him they would even love him in their Torments For after all pleasure is not so much instituted to make us love the Author of it as to unite us to him since as reasonable Creatures Reason alone ought to stir up our love Pleasure should carry us to the cause of it and true Good should be capable of producing it because true Good should recompence all those who truly love But pleasure which is the recompence and attraction of the love of the Iust is not their end for the Just would then love themselves instead of their good God deserves love in himself and the pleasure which is found in the use of Bodies instead of inviting is to love him as we ought to do and even the sweetness which is tasted in love sets us at a distance from him if resting upon this sweetness we love him not for himself for then we love our selves instead of him Erast. I observe that there 's nothing more dangerous than to make use of sensible pleasures and I am am now convinc'd that they increase Concupiscence by the impressions which they make in the Brains and carry the mind not to God who is their Author but to Bodies which seem to produce them and that tho' absolutely speaking they may induce us to think of God who is their Author yet they excite in us nothing but an interested love a love which is more like Self-love than true Charity Arist. But Theodorus the Law of Nature does not only oblige us to love God but also Men and if we have not some Correspondence with them by means of the Body what other Reason will induce us to love them 'T is Interest which forms Societies 'T is Pleasure which unites different Sexes and there are whole Nations that can't maintain Peace and Commerce but by the means of Wine To drink together is sufficient to put away Enmity amongst some Men. A glass of Wine must be drunk to drive on a Bargain Thus you see it is profitable for Men to enjoy Pleasure together to preserve that Union and Charity amongst them which is commanded them Theod. I believe you have a mind to make your self merry Aristarchus What! do you believe that there 's any thing besides Truth and Justice which can strictly unite us together do you believe that a Peace concluded in drink betwixt Drunkards would be so solid as that which reasonable Men make in the sight of Justice and by a Motive of Charity Certainly all the Bonds which are made by Interest are unserviceable towards the fulfilling of the Precept of loving our Neighbor The Appearances are sav'd and Men are treated with Civility but cordial Love is wanting when Interest lies at the stake We must love other Men for God for as it is he that should terminate all the motions of our heart he can only reunite all minds in himself But the Commerce which we may have with Men by means of the Body are only proper to create a division amongst us for sensible Goods are not like those of the mind one can't possess them without sharing them It 's enough for a Man to desire an enjoyment of his Friend's Estate to make him unhappy and become his Enemy It 's the Love of temporal advantage which begets Wars and breeds Division in Families Persons would enjoy these Goods but can't without depriving those of them that possess them Thus 't is evident that a contempt of sensible Goods and a privation of Pleasures are as useful for the preservation of Peace amongst them as to continue a strict Union with God Arist. 'T is true Theodorus that to avoid a quarrel with any Body there 's no better means than to yield our Possessions to those that desire them of us but the Command of Jesus Christ in this matter is very inconvenient and I do not see that even the most perfect follow it Theod. I confess it Aristarchus there are many occasions on which we should not too rigidly pursue this Command but we must always be disposed to it if there be necessity 'T is not the difficulty that we find in this Command and in the rest which ought to hinder us from practising them on the contrary they are so much the more useful as they tend more to satisfy the * Pontificius loquitur Justice of God and to merit the Favor of our perfect re-union with him We are all Sinners and deserve to suffer and these instructions of Privation being painful they have this advantage that they cleanse us from our Sins in making us partakers in the Sufferings of CHRIST In our misery we have all of us need of the assistance of Heaven but CHRIST teaches us to merit them when our Sufferings being join'd to his our Sufferings are meritorious with his Thus the Inconveniency you find in the Precepts of CHRIST bring their Recommendation along with them If the trouble which attends the privation of sensible Objects were not necessary to satisfy God nor merit his Assistance of which we have the greatest need I confess there would be a fault in the Evangelic Councils nevertheless there would be none better for
Injustice My Being is in a manner the Being of God and my Time is properly God's Time for I am more God's than my own or rather I am not at all my own nor do I subsist by my self and yet I neither live nor employ God's Time but for my self Alas how do I deceive my self O my God all that Time which I do not employ for thee I cannot be said to employ it for my self and I can neither seek nor find my self but by seeking and finding thee The Second Consideration MAN in himself is nothing but Weakness and Infirmity He cannot desire Good in general but by vertue of a continual Impression from God who does incessantly turn and force him towards himself for God is that indefinite and universal Good which comprehends all other good things Man is also not able by himself to desire any Particular Good but only so far as he is capable of determining the Impression which he receives from God Man is utterly unable to do Good but through a new supply of Grace which illuminates him by its Light and attracts him by its Sweetness for by himself he is only able to Sin He could not so much as move his Hand if God did not communicate to his Blood and to the Aliment by which he is nourished a part of that Motion which he has spread through the whole Mass of Matter and afterwards determine the Motion of the Spirits according to the different Acts of the impotent Will of Man by guiding them towards the Pipes of the Nerves which the Man himself does not so much as know A Man indeed may desire to move his Hand but 't is God alone that can and knows how to move it For if Man did not eat and if that which he eats were not digested and agitated in his Entrails and Heart to be afterwards turn'd to Blood and Spirits without expecting the Orders of his Will or if these Spirits were not guided by a knowing Hand through a Million of different Tubes it would be in vain for Man who is ignorant of his own Body to desire to put it into Motion The Elevation of the Soul to GOD. O GOD let me never forget that without thee I can neither desire nor do any thing not even so much as move the smallest Member of my Body Thou O God art all my Strength in thee do I place all my Hope and Confidence Do thou cover me with shame and confusion and fill me with inward remorse if ever I shall be guilty of so much Ingratitude and Presumption as to lift up that Arm against thee which owes even that Motion which I seem to give it rather to the invincible Power of thy Will than to the feeble Efforts of mine The Third Consideration MAN in himself is nothing but Darkness He does not produce in himself those Ideas by which he perceives all things for he is not his own Light and since Philosophy teaches me that the Objects cannot form in the Mind those Ideas by which they are represented it must be acknowledg'd that 't is God alone who enlightens us He is that great Sun which penetrates all things and fills them with his Light and that Great Master who instructs every Man that comes into the World All that we see we see in him and in him we may see all that we are capable of seeing For since God includes the Ideas or likenesses of all Beings and we also are in him for in him we live move and have our Being 't is certain that we see or may successively see all Beings in him He is that intelligible World in which all Spirits are and in which they perceive the Material World which is neither visible nor intelligible by it self The Elevation of the Soul to GOD. O GOD to whom I owe all my Thoughts thou Light of my Soul and of my Eyes without whom the Sun himself in all his Glory would be invisible to me make me ever sensible of thy Power and my Weakness thy Greatness and my Meanness thy Light and my Obscurity and in a word what thou art and what I am The Fourth Consideration MAN by himself is insensible and in a manner Dead The Body cannot act upon its own Soul A Sword indeed may pierce me and cause some alteration in the Fibres of my Flesh but I perceive clearly that it cannot make me suffer Pain A harmonious sound may first shake the Air and then the Fibres of my Brain but my Soul cannot be shaken by it My Soul is far above my Body neither is there any necessary Relation between those two Parts of my self On the other hand I find that Pleasure Pain and all my other Sensations are produced in me without any dependency upon me and oftentimes even in spight of all my endeavours to the contrary And therefore I cannot doubt but that there is a Being different from my Soul which inspires it with Life and Sensation and I know no other Power but that of God which is able to act thus upon his Creatures 'T is he then who is the Soveraign of the Soul and can only punish or reward it The Elevation of the Soul to GOD. O GOD since I live but by thee make me also to live only for thee and may I be insensible of all things but the love of thee O God make me sensible that none of all the Creatures can either hurt me or do me good That there is not one among them all that can make me feel either Pleasure or Pain That I ought neither to scar nor love them That thou alone O my God deservest both my love and fear because thou art only able to reward me with the Joys of thy Elect or punish me with the Torments of the Reprobate O my chaste Delight thou Author of Nature and cause of all the Pleasures that I feel thou knowest that these very Pleasures instead of uniting me to thee who alone canst make me sensible of them chain me like a wretched Slave to the Earth Grant I beseech thee that I may never more be so violently assaulted by them in the use of those things which thou hast forbidden Scatter a holy dread and a wholesome bitterness on the Objects of my Senses that I may be able to disengage my self from them and let me feel in thy love those unutterable delights of thy Grace which may unite me closer to thee Grant that the sweetness which I taste in loving thee may augment my love and that my love may renew the sense that I have of thy sweetness May I grow thus in Charity till at last being full of thee and empty of my self and every thing else I may re-enter and lose my self in thee O my All as in the Fountain of all Beings May that Word God shall be All in All be entirely accomplished on me and may I find my self and all things else in thee Of MAN Considered as the Son of a
well hereafter But when we judge rashly of things without consulting any other master than our imagination or the doctrine of certain false-learned 't is impossible for us to come near God Arist I can't express to you the pleasure I find in this new way of Philosophising I rejoyce to see that Children and ignorant men are the most capable of true wisdom and I am charm'd to learn from Erastus things on which I had not so much as thought before His answers instruct me more than the high reasonings of our Philosophers and methinks every word he speaks spreads in my mind a pure Light that doth not dazzle by its lustre and yet disperses all my Darkness Theod. I will go on then with my questions to Erastus since you are so well pleased with hearing him Hear me my dear Erastus you told me just now that Fire can move variously the particles of your hand because bodies can act on bodies You believe then that bodies have a power to move those they meet Erast My Eyes tell me so but my mind doth not tell me so yet for I have not yet examined that question Theod. Well then answer me Hath a body power to move it self Erast I do not believe it Theod. Is then the power that moves bodies distinguish'd from these bodies Erast I don't know Theod. Take notice Erastus that I do not speak of motion The local motion of a body is a kind of being of that body with respect to those that are about it I do not speak of that but of the power which causes it I ask you if this power is something that is corporeal and if it is in the power of bodies to communicate it Erast I do not believe it for if it were any thing corporeal it would not be able to move it self No Theodorus I do not believe that bodies can communicate to those they meet a power which they have not themselves a power they could not communicate though they had it In short a power whose diffusion and communication they could not be able to direct in a manner as regular as is that which we see since bodies do not even know either the bigness or motion of those they meet It seems to me that an intelligent being and one and the same intelligent being must produce and regulate all the motions of matter since the communication of the motion is always the same in the same accidents For all bodies or many intelligent beings would not easily agree together to act always after the same manner in the communication of motions Arist Methinks Erastus runs too fast and loses himself For it seems to me that those things which are always done the same way are not done by an intelligent being but by a blind action caeco impetu naturae Theod. You mistake your self Erastus is not out and you ought not to attribute to a blind impetuosity that which comes from the immutability of the author of nature I see you do not know that 't is the mark of an excellent workman to produce admirable effects by acting always after the same manner and by the most simple means I will not undertake to lead you to God that way it is too difficult and does not afford us a notion of God so useful to morality I would discover him to you as the Sole Author of the felicity of the Just and of the misery of the Wicked and in a word as being alone able to act in us For I ought not only to demonstrate to you that he is which certainly is but seldom doubted of but I ought also to demonstrate to you that he is our good in all respects for that 's a thing which is not sufficiently known I return to Erastus You are perswaded my dear Erastus that neither Fire nor the Sun nor any one of those bodies that surround you are the true causes of what you feel at their presence and in this you are wiser than all those who have worshipped Fire or the Sun You do not even believe that bodies have any natural power to move those they meet and in that too you see more clearly than those who worship the Heavens the Elements and all those bodies which Aristotle call'd divine because he believed they had in them a power to move themselves and to produce by this motion all the good or evils whereof men are capable But it is not sufficient to know that bodies do not act on you you must also discover the true cause of all that is produced in you You feel warmth and pain at the presence of Fire Now Fire doth not produce this warmth and this pain in you What must it be then Erastus Erast I must confess to you that I know nothing of it Theod. Is it not your soul who acts on her self who afflicts her self when Fire separates the particles of the body she loves or who rejoyces when the same fire produces in her body a motion proper to keep you alive and help the circulation of the blood Erast I do not believe it Theod. Why Pray Erast Because the soul doth not know that the fire moves or separates the fibres of the body I felt heat and pain before I had learnt by the reflections I made what fire is able to produce on my body And do not believe that Clowns who know nothing of what fire doth operate in them are free from pain when they are burnt Besides I do not know what is the motion that is proper to keep me alive and help the circulation of the blood And if I were to feel no heat till I knew it perhaps I should never feel any In short when I happen to burn my self by inadvertency I feel pain before all things I might perhaps conclude by the pain I feel that there is in my body some motion at work which offends it but ' its evident that the knowledge of those motions neither precede nor cause any pain Theod. Your Reasons Erastus are altogether sound But what think you of them Aristarchus Arist They seem to me probable enough However Erastus how can you tell but that your soul hath a certain knowledge of instinct which discovers to her in a moment all that happens in her body Answer me Erastus Answer me quickly then 'T is a strange thing you never answer me readily Erast I do not understand your meaning but all that I can say to you is that when I know actually something I am sure that I do know it for I am not distinguish'd from my self If my soul had actually some knowledge of instinct or whatsoever other you please for I don't understand that word very well I should know it Yet now that I come near the fire I do not know that I have the knowledge of the motions that are actually produced in my hand tho I feel in it sometimes a pain and sometimes a kind of pleasure or titillation There is not then actually
of other intelligent beings ad infinitum For as you see he would not have so soon an answer seeing 't is no easie matter to find an ultimate in an infinite There must be then an intelligent being that learns in himself and by its self in what moment the thorn pricks us And this intelligent being can be no other than God that is to say a being whose power is infinite and whose will alone is the cause of things For after all there is none but him whose will is efficacious that can see in himself and by himself the existence and the motion of Bodies For it being impossible he should be ignorant of his own will he only can discover within himself the number figure and scituation of bodies and generally whatever happens to them It follows then that all other intelligent beings are enlightned by the Creator And as you see or as you will clearly see if you think on it seriously you should not know that you have a body and that there are others about you if you had not learnt it of him who knows it by himself Do you understand these things Erastus Erast I do plainly Theodorus This is your argument What causes pain is neither the Soul that feels nor the Thorn that pricks but a superior power This power ought at least to know the moment when the thorn pricks he cannot know it from the thorn seeing bodies cannot give any light to spirits they being neither visible nor intelligible by themselves and no relation being to be found between a body and a spirit He can know it then but by himself that is to say by the knowledge of his own will which creates and moves the thorn and whose power is infinite since it is able to create There is then a God and if there was no God I should not be pricked I should feel nothing see nothing and know nothing Theod. Very well But what think you of these reasons Aristarchus Arist Think I think that both you and your echo Erastus talk in the clouds The ground of your proof is that that there is no relation between bodies and spirits From whence you conclude that an Angel cannot see a body immediately and by himself To which I answer that that spirits may know bodies it is sufficient that they penetrate them Theod. What do you mean by penetrating them Certainly Erastus doth not understand you But without asking you explications that perhaps would puzzle and displease you doth your soul penetrate your body your heart or your brain the principal part where she resides Arist I believe it doth Theod. Pray tell me then how your brain is composed or that principal part wherein your soul resides Arist I do not understand Anatomy Theod. How You don't understand Anatomy Must you search in Books or in the head of other men which you do not penetrate to know how the brain which your soul penetrates is compos'd What signifies it then to a spirit to penetrate a body Arist I must confess I have nothing to answer Yet methinks if a spirit penetrates a body he ought to know that body But perhaps there is something that hinders it which I do not understand Theod. If it were so Aristarchus this something would be the God whom we seek I will lose no time to prove it to you For I will not prove the existence of God by imaginary effects You may think on it at your leisure But I rather advise you to make a serious reflection on the things I have told you now and then I hope you will visibly find that there is a God I mean a Being whose Will is Power and Power Infinite since it is able to create You will find that this God doth not walk about the Heavens as the Libertines will have it but that his providence extends it self to all things and that he acts incessantly in us That it is he that gives us the pleasing and painful sentiments we have of sensible objects and that consequently he may make us happy or miserable In short you will know God in the most useful manner for morality You will even confess that God hath made nothing but may serve to demonstrate his existence though 't is more conducing to morality to demonstrate it by something that passes within us One of the reasons why you are not easily brought to be of my mind is that you have perhaps never seriously thought on the things of which we have been speaking For I do not perceive that my proofs are remote or hard to be understood I will be judg'd of it by Erastus And I believe we ought to agree on that point that hereafter you may be prepared on the subjects on which we shall treat Arist It belongs to you Theodorus to set rules for every thing For you know that my resolution is to seek none but such truths as are essential and may make us wiser and more happy I need say no more to you Theod. To this effect Aristarchus I will tell you the course I intend to keep in our Conferences Observe it well that you may think on it at leisure and prepare your self to make me all the Objections you can I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated that there is a God who acts incessantly in us and who may make us happy or unhappy by pleasure and by pain of which he alone is the true cause and therefore I will bring no other proofs of it and will content my self with resolving your difficulties But I will prove to you that the design of God in creating man hath been that man might know and love him that God hath preserved man but to that end In short that that design is so unalterable that sinners and the damned themselves execute it in one sense and that they shall sooner cease to be than they shall wholly cease to know and to love God When I have establisht as a principle that since God acts always for himself we cannot be happy if we resist his will nor unhappy if we obey it I will demonstrate how God will be known and be loved how we can resist his orders and what is yet more â—trange how we are capable to offend him I will show that our nature is corrupted that sin dwells in us that the spirit is a slave to the flesh In short I will explain the cause and the effects of the corruption of nature how our disorders strange us from God and make us his enemies as also our want of a Mediator and Redeemer I will explain the qualities our Redeemer and Mediator ought to have to reconcile us to God and to satifie his justice that Jesus Christ possesses them all and none but him What may cure the blindness of the mind and the malice of our heart That those remedies are to be found in the precepts of the Gospel and the grace of Jesus Christ In fine I will show that none but a God
tell freely what you think of it Erastus Is there any danger or folly in saying that God alone is our light That he alone is the perfection and nourishment of the mind and that we depend from him all manner of ways not only that we may become more happy but also more understanding and perfect Erast I am afraid that Aristarchus will say I am full of fantastick notions if I say that I see all things in God as if I affirmed that one may see God even in this life because whatever is in God is God Theod. There is a difference between seeing the essence of God and seeing the essence of things in God For though we see nothing but God when we see the essence of things in God we see God but by relation to Creatures we see the perfections of God but as they represent another thing than God So that though we see God and can see nothing but him since he preserves spirits for himself only it may in one sense be said that we see nothing but the Creatures For tho God sees nothing but himself 't is certain that he sees the Creatures when he sees what is in himself that represents them Thus though we see God but by an immediate and direct sight we see in God that which represents them for the Creatures are invisible in themselves There is no corporeâ—… nor spiritual Creature can act immediately in the soul and cause it self to be seen by it God shows us whatever we see but 't is in his substance that he shows it us for the Divine Substance alone can give us life enlighten and make us happy We are made to be nourished with that substance and to live by it and if the spirit hath some life I mean if it hath some knowledge for the knowledge of truth is the life of the soul it receives it from and in that substance Whatever God hath done Erastus he hath done it after his Image or according to his Image he hath made the Animals Plants and even the Insects according to the Image or living Idea he hath of them For he hath made all things by his Son by his Word according to the uncreated Wisdom in which all things live But he hath not only made man according to his Image or Wisdom but also for his Wisdom and to contemplate the Eternal Wisdom that includes the Ideas of all things An Impertinent Philosopher Averrois found this fault in the Religion of Christians that they Eat him whom they adore condemning our Communion with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ whom we receive after we have Worshipped him * Pontificius Loquitur He did not know that the Wisdom of the Father the Word that enlightens and nourishes our Spirit desired to teach us in a sensible manner and by the real Manducation of his Body that he is really our Life and Nourishment and that he hath made our Spirit to know and to love him For our Spirit ought to love but what gives it Life nourishes makes it more perfect and is above it since only this can be his true good If it is certain that our thinking faculty comes from God 't is certain that it is made for God since God Acts only for himself as Aristarchus owns But if we do not see things in God how can it be said that God hath only made and doth only preserve us for himself for after all if Bodies are the immediate object of our Knowledge our Spirit is partly made to see them In what sense can it also be said that God preserves the spirits of Devils and the Damned but for himself if the spirit of those wretches doth not see God in some manner You will tell me they are Dead and that is true in some sense but they perhaps know some truth and if the knowledge of truth is the life of the Soul they are not intirely dead nor annihilated they have yet some union with the eternal Wisdom whose light penetrates into the very abyss They nourish themselves with the word if they have some life left because he alone is life but they are not the happier for it for they wish themselves dead They nourish themselves with a truth they do not rellish they seek darkness and annihilation and wish that this remainder of union with God that enlightens and preserves them maybreak and dissolve it self for ever Arist What do you tell us here Theodore Doth the spirit see nothing but God What! Do we see Errour in God Do the Philosophers see all their Chymera's in God And doth the Father of lies receive from God Theod. Errour cannot be seen Aristarchus 'T is neither visible nor intelligible Truth is a relation that is And what is may be seen There is a relation of equality between two times two and four and this relation may be seen because it is There is a relation of inequality between two times two and five and this relation of inequality may be seen because it is So truth is visible or intelligible but errour is not One cannot see that two times two is five or a relation of equality between two times two and five for there is no such relation of equality One cannot see that two times two is not four nor a relation of inequality between two times two and four for there is no such relation of inequality And thus when men mistake themselves they do not see the relations which they suppose they see When a man mistakes himself he may well see things in God though after an imperfect manner but he doth not see the relations that are between things for those things are and those relations are not I will not here explain the cause of our errour and our different ways of falling into it It hath been done already Erast I own Theodorus that we see in God the eternal truths and immutable laws of Morality A finite and changeable spirit cannot see in himself the eternity of those truths nor the immutability of those laws 't is in God he sees them But he cannot see in God transitory truths and corruptible things since there is nothing in God but what is Immutable and Incorruptible Theod. Yet Erastus God sees all the changes that happen in the world and 't is in himself only he sees them It follows then that he sees in himself whatever is subject to change or corruption though there is nothing in him but is perfectly Immutable and Incorruptible But all this may be explained thus God hath in himself the Idea for example of Extent since he sees it and hath made it and this Idea in Incorruptible 'T was his will there should be extended beings and those beings were produced 'T was also his will that those extended parts should be incessantly moved and communicate naturally their motions to one another Now this communication of motions which cannot be unknown to God it being impossible he should not
know his will that causes it is the principle of the mutability corruption and generation of all different bodies Thus God sees in himself the corruption of all things though he is incorruptible for whilst he sees in his wisdom the incorruptible Ideas he sees in his will all corruptible things since nothing happens but is done by him Now I will tell you how we see all those things in God All ideas and immutable truths we see in him As for transitory truths we do not know them in the will of God as God himself doth for his will is unknown to us But we know them by the sentiment God causes in us at their presence Thus when I see the Sun I see the Idea of a circle in God and have in my self the sentiment of light which denotes to me that this Idea represents something that is created and actually extent But I have this sentiment from none but God who certainly can cause it in me since he is Almighty and sees in the Idea he hath of my Soul that I am capable of sentiment Thus in all our sensible knowledge of corruptible things there is pure Idea and sentiment the Idea is in God the Sentiment in us but God alone is the true Cause of both The Idea represents the Essence of the thing and the sentiment only makes us believe that it exists since it disposes us to believe that the thing causes it in us because it is then present to our mind and not the will of God which alone causes that sentiment in us Arist I own that God can enlighten us and show us in himself all the Ideas we have of things But why should you have your recourse to this last refuge At least explode the sentiments of Philosophers upon that subject that I may the better convince my friend for without doubt I shall find him prepossessed with some opinion or other differing from yours Theod. It hath been done already by the Author of the Inquiry after Truth * Lib. 3. But if your friend finds fault with me for having a recourse to God and the first cause to explain some certain things you may tell him that there are two kinds of natural effects The Particular and the General it is ridiculous to have recourse to the general cause to explain particular effects but 't is as much amiss to seek some particular cause to explain the general For example if I am asked why Linnen becomes dry when 't is exposed to fire I will not answer like a Philosopher if I say that God will have it so for 't is sufficiently known that whatever happens is by his will 'T is not the general cause is demanded but the particular cause of a particular effect I ought then to say that the small particles of the fire or the agitated wood striking against the linnen impart their motion to the particles of water that are in it and loosen them from the linnen and I shall have given the particular cause of the particular effect But if one ask'd me why the particles of the wood agitate those of the water or why bodies communicate their motion to those they meet I should not be a Philosopher did I seek some particular cause of that general effect I ought to have recourse to the general cause that is to the Will of God and not to some particular faculties or qualities Now 't is acknowledged that the effect is general and that consequently we must have recourse to the general cause when thesame effect hath no necessary connexion with what seems to be its cause as it happens in the communication of motion for the mind sees no necessity why a body that presses upon another should push it forwards rather then recoil it self If then your friend pretends to explain to you the nature and original of Ideas by the scientific terms of innate or visible species of external or internal senses of the common apprehensions of the active or passible intellect you may let him know that when a body changes its situation or figure there is no necessity that there be a new thought in a spirit And that therefore we must go to the general cause which alone can reconcile things that have no necessary relation with one another I will lose no time in solving all the difficulties you or your friend may find concerning what I have told you now You will perhaps find them solv'd in the third book of the Inquiry after Truth Let us come to the will of man I will explain it to you God only making and preserving us for himself incessantly moves us towards him that is to say towards good in general or towards what we conceive to include all good He even moves us towards particular good without removing us from himself because he includes that good in the infinity of his being For as spirits see none but him in the sense that I have explained he may incline us towards whatever we see though he hath made us for himself alone But we ought to observe that he inclines us invincibly and necessarily towards good in general because as the love of good in general can never be bad it was not to be free But as the love of particular good though good in it self may be bad it was to be in our power to consent to or withstand its motion Arist But how can the love of particular good be bad Theodorus We only love what we see we see nothing but God therefore we love nothing but God when it seems we love the Creatures how then can our love be bad Theod. We love nothing but God Aristarchus for God preserves us only to love him But our love is bad when it is not regulated Or rather our love is always good absolutely and in it self but it is not relatively good Our love is always good in it self for we can never love what seems bad to us We can love but what we believe to be good and lovely since 't is God that makes us love and that we love none but him because we love nothing but what we see in him But our love is bad relatively because we love too much those things that are least lovely in short because instead of loving God in himself we love him with relation to his Works for loving only what we see we love God but only as he represents a vile creature and not according to what he is in himself God allows us to love what is in him that represents a creature for that is good but he will not have us to fix there the motion of our love He would have us to love whatever he includes He would be belov'd according to the Idea of Being in general of Being infinitely perfect and soveraignly lovely which Idea hath no relation but to himself and represents nothing that is out of him Nothing but the Idea of the infinite good ought to stop the motion of
actually dividing the capacity he hath to think and lessning the knowledge of his duty without being removed by it out of God's presence in short without weakning by little and little his love and his fear insomuch that actual pleasure seems a Reason or sufficient Motive to love what is not worthy of our love Adam ought to have remained fixt and unmoveable in the presence of God and not have suffered the capacity of his spirit to be divided by all those pleasures that were in perfect subjection to his Will and used only to warn him of what he was to do for the preservation of his life and as he should so he could have done it And had he made a good use of his Free-will during the time prescrib'd for a Reward he should have been confirm'd in his Righteousness not only by a more clear knowledge of God's continual operation on him but by a sensible knowledge which invincibly fixes on God all Spirits naturally desiring to be happy For the Saints do not only see by a Far-fetch'd and Metaphysical Sight that God alone is capable of acting in them and making them happy But they also feel it by an â—nspeakable comfort which God diffuses in them which â—enetrates them and unites them with him so strongly â—hat they cannot forsake him to love any thing else I speak of those things according to the present â—nowledge of human understanding and do not preâ—end always to certifie the truth or existence of things when I answer to what may be objected to me my â—tmost Design is to prove their Possibility Arist This is sufficient Theodore But how would â—ou explain the Transmission of Original Sin and the â—eneral Disorder of human Nature For it is our Soul â—hat hath sinn'd and is corrupt How comes it to â—e possible that coming from the hands of God they â—row corrupt as soon as they are united to Bodies Theod. Our Soul is made to love God She keeps â—n the Order of her Creation when she loves him that â—s to say when the motion which God gives her carries â—er towards him in the Sense that I explain'd it to you yesterday On the contrary she strays from the Order when having a motion sufficient to reach to God she stops at some particular good and thus hinders God's Act in her I do not believe it can be conceiv'd that she can be orderly or disorderly another way If then I demonstrate that by reason of the Union which Children have with their Mother the Soul of Children is by necessity turn'd towards Bodies that their Soul loves only Bodies and all her motion confines it self to some sensible thing from the moment she is form'd I shall have demonstrated the cause of the general disorder of Nature and how we are all born in Sin I prove it thus There is no Woman but hath in her Brain some Impression that represents to her sensible things either because she actually sees Bodies or receives her nourishment from them You do not doubt of this for after all we must at least eat to live and we cannot eat but our Brain receives some Impression of it since we remember it There happens also no Impression in the Brain without being follow'd by some Emotion in the Spirits which doth incline the Soul to the love of the thing that is present to the mind at the time of that Impression that is to say to the love of this or that Body for Bodies only can act on the Brain See the 7th Chapter of the 2d Book of the Inquiry after Truth In short there is no Woman but hath in her Brain some steps and vestiges or some motion of Spirits which makes her think and carries her to sensible things Now when the Child is in his Mother's Womb he feels the same Impression and Emotion of Spirits with his Mother therefore in that state he knows and loves Bodies The daily Instances we have of Children that fear or abhor those things that frighted their Mother whilst they were with Child sufficiently shews that they have had the same Impression and consequently the same Idea's and Passions as their Mothers since they sometimes never saw since they were born those things which they so much abhor And those Instances even shew us that the Impressions and Agitations are greater and consequently the Idea's and Passions more lively in Children than in their Mothers since they remain affected with them and oftentimes their Mothers no more remember it I perceive Erastus that you wonder to hear me say that Children see imagin and desire the same things with their Mothers Erast I must own that this amazes me but it seems to me demonstrated however there being holy Women and full of the love of God how come their Children to be Sinners Theod. It is because the love of God doth not communicate itself like the love of Bodies the reason whereof is that God is not sensible and that there are no steps in the Brain that by the institution of Nature do represent God nor any of those things that are purely intelligible A Woman may well represent to herself God in the Form of a Reverend old Man but whilst she thinks on God her Child shall think on an old Man when she loves God her Child will love old Men and this love of old Men doth not a justify All the Vestiges in the Brains of Mothers communicate themselves to Children But the Idea's that are join'd to those Vestiges by the Will of Man or by the Identity of Time and not by Nature do not communicate themselves to them for Children in the Womb are not as knowing and holy as their Mothers Erast But Theodore Children are not free I own they love Bodies but they cannot hinder themselves from loving them How then are they Sinners How are they corrupt Theod. Their Sin is not of their own chusing nor free and voluntary yet they are corrupt For all Spirits that are averse from God and inclin'd towards corporeal Beings do not follow God's Orders if it be true that God will be loved more than Bodies Concupiscence is not a Sin in virtuous persons because there is in them a love of choice that opposes it Concupiscence doth not reign in them but it reigns in Children their natural love is bad and they have no other When two sorts of loves are to be found in a heart God regards only that love which is free so Dreams are not sinful in pious Men because the love of choice that went before leaves in the Soul a disposition that carries and turns her towards God But in a Child who was never turned towards God nothing but his Nature and what God has fixt in him by the Decree of his first Will can be good he is a Child of wrath and must of necessity be damned For it cannot be conceived that God will ever reward the disposition of his heart except you also conceive that God
your Friends condemn If I thought it fitter to convince you by Authority than by Reason I would let you see them but you ought to convince your self by such Proofs as may be acceptable to the Person whom you design to convert The most honest men are not infallible even all those who seem so are not such But however it be it is better to be sensible to light than to the most pious and most sanctified Air because God always enlightens and oftentimes the Way and Air imposes and seduces Arist This is true Theodorus but I fear that your Sentiment is not conformable to that of the holy Fathers Theod. But what occasion have you to fear it Have you ever read any thing contrary to it in the Fathers I see you have been told so gravely and you have believed it in the simplicity of your heart Hath not St. Austin who best understood the corruption of Nature explained the propagation of Original Sin by the example of hereditary Diseases By that of gouty Parents who beget Children subject to the Gout And of the sick Trees which yield a corrupted Seed that produces nothing but bad Trees For he knew that Original Sin can only communicate itself by the body because its principle is in the body and that in some sense it dwells in the body as St. Paul saith As for the other Fathers that lived before St. Austin they never undertook to make a particular discussion of the manner in which the transmission of that Sin could be explained Their Age was neither so incredulous nor malicious as ours and it was not then necessary to give probable explications of our mysteries to make those who called themselves Christians believe them No Aristarchus I could never find that the Fathers were against what I have told you now But I wonder to see that you who formerly used to treat the Churches Authority with so much indifference are now so full of Veneration for the Fathers as to be afraid without cause of dissenting from them by admitting some explications wherein we are not always obliged to follow them provided we keep with them to the Faith and Doctrin of the Church You are too credulous and your apprehensions are not just you do not meditate enough you are like those Children who walk by night without a light that are afraid of all things because they see nothing Whilst you did lead a careless sort of life the air of the Libertines used to persuade you and now you suffer your self to be convinced by the air of piety and gravity of certain persons who have not always as much light and charity as opinion and false zeal You are less in danger of being mistaken but yet you are not in the way of truth You ought to believe what must be believed but you ought to see what may and consequently what must be seen I hope that if you make serious Reflections on the things I have told you without troubling your self with what your Friends think of it your Uncertainties will be cleared and you will no more suffer your self to be scared by a sort of Men who assume an unjust power over the mind of others instead of bringing them to Reason by light and evidence I leave you with Erastus to confer together upon those things I have said to you meditate with him and endeavour either to convince your self or to offer to me that is in a clear and evident manner the Reasons that hinder you from doing it DIALOGUE V. Of the Reparation of Nature by Jesus Christ Arist WE have made many Reflections Erastus and I upon Original Sin and the Contagion that spreads itself in Spirits And have even found that Original Sin is transmitted into Children in some manner as the Sentiments and Passions of passionate men communicate themselves to those that are in their presence For as the union that is between men for the benefit of Society is the cause why a man by the air of his Face stamps on the brain of such as are touched by it the same impressions which the Passion that moves him forms within him See the 7th Chapter of the 2d Book of the Inquiry after Truth so the union of the Mother with her Child being very strict and the Childs wants very great the Child's imagination must needs be sullied by all the impressions and emotions of mind that incline the Mother to sensible things Theod. Thus Aristarchus those that live in the hurry of the world that are held by too many things that never consult their reason but suffer themselves to be convinced moved and run down by every one that hath some strength of imagination and whose air being lively is consequently insectious those civil men of the Town born for Company who are always so ready to receive their Friends Sentiments in a word Aristarchus those Persons that are such as you have been till now for you are the civilest and most complaisant Gentleman I ever knew those Persons I say that are like you have a double portion of Original Sin that which they received from their Mother when they were in her womb and that which they have suckt in by the commerce of the world You are happy Aristarchus in being able to withstand the impression of those two Sins How indebted are you not to inward truth for calling you back so loudly as to be heard by you in spight of the confused noise of your senses and passions You retire sometimes within your self as if your Reason was not corrupted and the concupiscence of original Sin had not been strengthned nor encreased by a concupiscence of thirty years standing You are so much altered to day from what you were yesterday that I believe you will no longer find any considerable difficulty in our following Conferences For all that hindered you from apprehending my sentiments proceeded from the obscurity and disorder wherein the converse of the world had thrown you so that being delivered from that disorder and resolved to retire incessantly within your self you will hearken to the decisions of that truth that presides to all spirits Arist Yes Theodorus I renounce all the impressions that used to prejudice me I plainly see that all manner of union to sensible things estrangeth and removeth us from truth that the union which I had in my Mother's womb made me a Sinner that the union which I have had with my Relations hath only given me a knowledge of the world useful indeed to unite me with it and make my self considerable in it but altogether unprofitable to the inquiry after truth In short that the union which I have had with my Friends and other Men hath filled me with a very great number of most dangerous prejudices which you know better than I. I have hitherto lived by Opinion I desire now to live by Reason I will believe nothing but what Faith and Charity oblige me to believe in all other things I
not hinder us from discovering Truth Theod. You begin perhaps Aristarchus to discover by what we have said and by this last Answer of Erastus that what Christ hath preached about the mortification of our Senses is the best method that can be to reunite us to God by the knowledg of Truth Arist It is true But I am afraid that you attribute to the Doctrin of the Gospel some perfection that Christ never designed to give it For in all likelihood Christ never intended to give us any Precepts to direct our minds in the inquiry of certain Truths which are not absolutely necessary to us in the World Theod. I own Aristarchus that Christ's principal design was not to instruct us in certain speculative Truths which do not by themselves conduce to the knowledg and love of sovereign Truth But the Precepts of the Gospel are so useful that they extend to all the things that may in some manner add to the perfection of the mind for they are directly opposed to the cause of our disorders and remedy our diseases in their beginning And thus they tend to give us all the perfection whereof we are capable since to deprive our selves of sensible things is not only a necessary thing to help the conversion of our hearts but also for the perfecting our understandings as you will see it better hereafter Do you think Erastus that nothing besides actual Sentiments can hinder the mind from applying itself to Truth and that a Man who hath for some years enjoyed the pleasures of the World is able when he leaves them to unite himself to intellectual things with as much force and light as those who have during all their Lives been careful to purifie their Imaginations Erast No certainly none can enjoy worldly pleasure with impunity When the Imagination hath been touch'd by some sensible thing the impression of it remains and the enjoyment of worldly pleasures makes it easily Slaves to them There remains in our Brain some impressions that always represent to the mind the pleasures that it hath enjoy'd and that often hinder it from applying itself to such things as have no sensible attraction Therefore when the Imagination is sully'd the Mind is fill'd with darkness because Concupiscence which of itself takes off the Mind from the sight of Truth is strengthned and encreas'd by this new Concupiscence that is acquir'd by the use of sensible things Theod. What must we do then Erastus to become capable of attaining that perfection of understanding which consists in the knowledg of Truth Erast It appears plainly that we must with all imaginable care avoid whatever is able to make any deep impression in our Brain we must give me leave to use your expression strictly take care to purify our Imaginations Arist But then Theodorus we ought not to do Penance for painful Sensations as much divide our thinking Faculty as those that are pleasing Theod. A Man ought not to mortify himself with an intent to find the Solution of a Problem such an Action doth not enlighten the Mind None can actually seel Pain and see Truth actually at the same time But Sufferings how unuseful soever for the knowledg of certain Truths are very useful to take us off from sensible things * Pontificius loquitur to satisfy God's Justice being join'd to those of our Saviour to merit us the sight of that sovereign Truth which dissipates all our darkness and even to teach us some certain moral Truths on which we do not think when we feel nothing But Aristarchus do you not see that the impressions of Sufferings that remain in the Memory do not darken it like the impressions of Pleasures Do you not see that they never provoke Lust never disturb the Mind never divide its Attention and that things being thus they do not hinder it from discovering Truth We easily cease to think on Pain as soon as we cease to suffer it and have no cause to fear it because Pain hath nothing that is pleasing in itself But the same doth not happen when ever we have tasted of any Pleasures their vestiges or impressions remain strongly printed in our Brains and do each moment excite some troublesom desires that disturb the peace of the mind and those desires renewing those impressions Concupiscence which is the Spring of all our Ills and consequently of the want of application of the mind to Truth as well as the corruption of the heart incessantly receives new strength Arist You are in the right But yet we see that many learned Men have spent their whole Lives in Debauchery abandoning themselves continually to all sorts of Pleasures Theod. Not so many as you may think Aristarchus for the number of the false learned is very great A Man must see Truth clearly and distinctly to be truly learned It is not enough to have read much for the Mind knows nothing if it sees nothing Pleasure unless it be excessive doth not hinder a Man from reading none but violent Pleasures darken the memory and imagination but the least thing in the World can darken the sight of the Mind The Learned of whom you were speaking make more use of their memory and of their imagination than they do of their understanding and I every day perceive that those whom you esteem most for their Learning are a sort of Men whose understanding is so small so dark so dissipated that they are not capable of having the least apprehension of many Truths which Erastus very easily comprehends There is much difference between that Learning which depends upon the largeness of the Memory and the force of the Imagination and that Learning which consists in a sight purely intellectual wherein the Imagination hath no share unless it be indirectly All pure Idea's vanish and dissipate themselves at the appearance of sensible Idea's We do not hear the voice of Truth when our Senses and our Imagination speak to us for we had much rather confusedly know the relations that things have with us than clearly to know what relations they have between themselves We are in so great a dependance under Bodies and so little united to God that the least thing separates us from him But sensible knowledg and the sight of the imagination being strengthned by the vestiges or impressions of the Brain may withstand contrary Sentiments the Idea's of that knowledg have if I may use that expression a Body and cannot be so easily dissipated Thus Retirement and a privation from all Pleasure is not absolutely necessary to gain all the knowledg wherein we make a greater use of the Senses and Imagination than of Reason If Mr. Des Cartes came to be so learned in Geometry Physics and other parts of Philosophy it is because he pass'd 25 years in a Retirement it is because he hath perfectly discover'd the errors of our Senses that he hath with care avoided their impression and oftner meditated than read In a word it is because being held
to make you think of it But pray tell me do you love the Game of Piquet or Omber Erast Very much Theod. Do you love Hunting Erast I have not yet been at it but I imagine that there 's no great pleasure to course a Hare for three of four hours together in the Wind Rain or Sun Arist You know not what you say Erastus there 's no greater pleasure in the World Theod. Take heed Erastus Aristarchus judges not of Hunting as you do he loves it and you love it not But would you love it Does your Reason represent it as if it were worthy of your love Erast No Theodorus neither my Reason nor my Senses for what pleasure can it be to pursue a miserable Beast a whole day together I pity the Passion of Aristarchus Theod. I advise you then never to go to it for if you did you perhaps would come back more passionate than Aristarchus he was once as you are without any desire to hunt before he had tasted the pleasure it may be he had even an aversion for it but by little and little he was so accustomed to it that he could not refrain from it Erast I believe it and will never go for I would not be ruined in Horses and Dogs Theod. But Erastus why play you Why do you lose your time unprofitably Will you ruine your 〈◊〉 by play rather than Hunting Erast I can't help it Theod. Then 't is with you as with Aristarchus you condemn one another and have compassion for one another Arist 'T is true Erastus and I are not over wise thus to follow the Motions of our Passions altho I see well that he runs the Risque of losing at Cards and I of falling off my Horse Theod. What should have been done then to reclaim Erastus from gaming and Aristarchus from hunting For as things now are there only remains in human apprehension a violent Remedy Erast When Aristarchus perceived himself agitated by the pleasure of the Chace he should have forthwith left it He should resemble me his Imanation should not be filled with these Vestiges which continually renew the object of his Passion 't is the Pleasure that is found in the use of sensible things which is the Cause of Passions and which agitates the animal Spirits but when the animal Spirits are strongly agitated they impress deep Vestiges in the Brain they even break thro' their violent Course all the Fibres which resist them Thus as soon as we taste pleasure we must examine and see if it be advantageous that the Vestiges of the Object which cause this pleasure perfect their form if the Object which causes this pleasure is unworthy of our Application and Love we must deprive our selves of it and also shun the pleasure which enslaves us by the Vestiges it impresses in our Brain 'T is this I believe which we ought to do to hinder our Concupiscence from a continual growth Theod. But Erastus when you actually taste of pleasure can you easily quit the Object that causes it When Aristarchus was in the heat of the Chase the first time he went thither do you think he was in a Condition to reflect upon himself Did not the Sound of the Horn the Noise and running of the Dogs the motion of the Horse and above all this the pleasure that he found in all these different motions take up his mind Did not his Passion carry him as well as his Horse to the Death of the Hare or Stag And do you believe that he could then think of your Remedy Or if he had thought do you believe that he would have been willing to have made use of it Or that he could have resisted the Passion which agitated him The Philosophical Remedies which you have laid down are not proper at such a time Erastus to hinder our Concupiscence that it should not encrease Erast 'T is true Theodorus the most certain of all Remedies is that of privation Pleasure poysons us we must not taste it this the most short and sure Rule b He that commits Sin becomes the Slave of it Joh. 8.34 I find that reason perfectly agrees with the Gospel nevertheless I remember that I have cured my Imagination and resisted my Passion by the use of things which according to what you have said should encrease it Thus About three or four years ago I freely believed every thing that I heard One day there came an Officer hither who said that travelling with an Englishman that could not forbear smoking it hapned that this Englishmans Horse fell down and broke his Masters Leg who being upon the ground and thinking rather on his Pipe than Leg he put his hand into his Pocket and taking out his Pipe whole he cry'd out with Joy Well well my Pipe is not broke This Relation struck me and I imagin'd the smoke of Tobacco was the most agreeable thing in the World so that I perceiv'd my self urg'd with a violent Passion to try it but it happen'd to me as to many others that I had no sooner tasted it but had a horror for it Thus Theodorus your Remedy which is to deprive us of sensible things is not general for the use of Tobacco has cured me of the Passion I had for it and when I had not us'd it I was desirous of it Theod. But Erastus don't you see that we must be depriv'd of all that is capable of sullying the Imagination The Commerce we have with those who speak of Bodies as true Goods is capable of impressing traces in the Brain which carry us to the love of Bodies as well as the very use of Bodies A Drunkard who speaks of Wine as of his God who despises those who know not how to drink and who places amongst his bravest Actions the Victories which he hath got at the Table against the greatest Debauchees of the Province such a Drunkard in his gay humor easily persuades a young Man that 't is a fine quality to drink as much Wine as two Horses can drink Water 'T is for this that in all places where Men speak of drinking much as of a Vertue all the World drinks to excess for even those who don't at first delight in drinking doing as others to avoid being the Subject of their Companions Ralleries they are by degrees so accustom'd to Wine that they can't be without it Thus Erastus as Concupiscence does principally reside in the traces of the Brain which incline the Soul to the love of sensible things it must be depriv'd of all things which produce these traces not only of the actual use of Bodies which is of no use to the preservation of health and life but also of the Conversation of Debauchees who speak with esteem of the objects of their passions 'T is pleasure Erastus which agitates the Spirits and which produces dangerous traces not only that which we enjoy by our Senses but that also which we enjoy by Imagination not only the taste
the Reasons I have produc'd But these Instructions do so perfectly and universally remedy all our Evils they are so proportion'd to the Condition which Sin has reduc'd us to that if we cannot follow them we can't yet forbear to admire them Erast. 'T is true the Instructions of CHRIST do perfectly remedy Concupiscence but 't is provided we follow them We can do only those things which we would do and we are commanded to do what we would not for 't is pleasure that makes us willing and the Gospel forbids it Who then shall be able to follow these Instructions I am much afraid that Aristarchus's Friend will say That Christian Morality resembles Plato's Politicks that 't is beautiful in its Idea but has this essential fault which renders it wholly unprofitable that Men are incapable of it Theod. It 's necessary Erastus that Christianity should be such as it is to be perfect you agree with me in this but say it 's impossible to follow it Yes Erastus 't is so without CHRIST but with him all things are possible He is our Strength as well as our Wisdom If he counsels us to act contrary to our Wills 't is because he is able to change our hearts He is not like Plato who gives Laws to establish a Republic but does not make Men capable of observing those Laws CHRIST hath establish'd the most perfect Morality that can be and at the same time gives Men a power to act agreeably he regenerates them and strips them of the Old Man he gives them a heart of flesh in which he writes those Laws which the Jews receiv'd from Moses written in Stone Faith and Experience teaches us these things The Republic of Plato is a Republic in Idea it is not made up of Men but how many Christians even in a strict Sense pursue the Counsels of their Master How many Religious Saints continually mortify their Senses and Passions and labour with all their Might to destroy the Body of Sin this Old Man whose desires disturb their peace and hopes It 's necessary Erastus that the power of God appear in the execution of the Precepts of Morality that we may not doubt of the truth of Religion It 's necessary that there be nothing humane in the Religion which God establishes to the end that it attribute nothing of its establishment to the Politics of Princes the inclination of Men and the natural disposition of their minds The Precepts of CHRIST tho' painful in themselves yet being followed justify Religion and known Religion makes men obedient to his Precepts He in whom we believe enables us to act as we act and what we thus act is so much above our power that it makes us believe what we believe Thus the Precepts of CHRIST far from being unprofitable because they appear difficult and uneasy to us ought to be esteem'd by us wholly Divine since he that is wise enough to give them to us is also powerful enough to assist us We shall speak something the next Meeting of this power by which we are enabled to fulfil the Precepts of the Gospel Pray Erastus think of it with your Friend so that our next Discourse may be the more satisfactory DIALOGUE IX The same Subject continued Arist. I Have thought on those things you said to us yesterday Theodorus and on those whereof we are to treat this day I am convinc'd of the first and I will tell you what I think of the others I look upon Man as being between Heaven and Earth between the place of his Rest and Felicity and that of his Troubles and Miseries fasten'd to God yet knowing him not fasten'd to Bodies which he sees Seeing that pleasure moves and transports him and that whilst he enjoys it he doth not see Him who is the true cause of it in the same manner as he sees and feels the Bodies that are the occasion of it he runs with Fury after Bodies and doth not so much as think on God So it is necessary that he deprive himself of sensible pleasures if he will stop the motion that draws him out of the way to Heaven and carries him towards earthly things this is plain but a privation of pleasure is not yet sufficient to raise him towards Heaven Let us suppose Theodorus a Balance one of whose Scales is empty and the other heavily laden tho by little and little you take out of the Scale what was in it till there remain almost nothing in it notwithstanding all this there will be no alteration in the Balance For this you must altogether empty it or lay something of weight in the other Scale that may poize it equally Now our Mind is like a Balance nor is it perfectly free in one sense but when the weight that transports and captivates it is equal for Heaven and Earth or rather when there is no weight of either side For then the Mind being as it were in Aequilibrio easily moves of itself towards that which by reason it finds to be its true good It is not mov'd nor determin'd by preingaging pleasure but by reason alone its senses have no share in the Act it 's love is an understanding love and altogether worthy of it Adam before his Fall having no Concupiscence his Senses and his Passions yielding to him as soon as he desir'd it in short being not drawn in spite of himself to the love of sensible things by involontary and rebellious preingaging pleasures he was perfectly free and stood in no want of that kind of Grace which consists in a preingaging delectation because the Balance was not sway'd on either side by any weight But now that one of the Cups of the Balance is extremely loaded we cannot be free in the same manner as the first Man for even the most Righteous Persons cannot entirely free themselves of the weight of Concupiscence All they can do is to lessen the weight by retirement by a privation of pleasures and a continual mortification of their Senses and Passions But not being able to bring that weight to nothing they stand in need of the delectation of Grace to counterpoize it and put the Scale in a perfect Aequilibrium I therefore believe Theodorus that for us to deny our selves the Pleasures of this World is not sufficient to deliver us wholly from being Slaves to them but that in order to this we stand in absolute need of Christ's * Note By Christ's Grace is here meant that which he has particularly merited us which consists for in a preingaging delectation or in a loathing which he causes us to have for false good For the Graces of Light and Joy which Christ hat halso merited for us are common to us with the First Man who knowing no Concupiscence had no need of preingaging Pleasures as we have explained it in the foregoing Dialogue Grace But as a small Weight is able to make a pair of Scales even when one of them has very little
also by what he said to me Yesterday when I was come back from my Friend's Would you have me give you some account of it Theod. You will oblige me we are always very fond of knowing the last Words of those that leave us Arist Erastus never exprest himself with more Eloquence and Happiness of Thought He told me among other Things that Man is not only united to his own Body but also to all those that surround him that our Passions diffuse our Soul into all sensible Objects as our Senses diffuse it through every part of the Body and that those who launch into the wide World continually running after Riches Pleasures and Honours dissipate and lose themselves by being disperst as it were out of themselves While they fancy that they enlarge their own Being they weaken themselves and become Slaves to those whom they would command And while they encrease their Power on the Bodies that surround them they lose that which they have on the Truth that penetrates them Let me consider said he how Man comes to be sensible Out of his Brain certain Nerves are emitted whose infinite number of Branches are disperst over all the Parts of his Body These Nerves or Fibres which correspond to the Seat of the Soul agitate her as soon as they are stirred they disperse her through all the Parts into which they insinuate themselves and whatsoever happens in the Body breaks her Quiet and disturbs her Now let me examine the Condition which that Man is in who is led by his Passions and fasten'd to every Thing Out of his Heart some Bonds may in one sense be said to be emitted and thence their strings are disperst through all sensible Objects These Strings are no sooner stirr'd by the Motion of those Objects but his Heart is also mov'd If these Objects are remov'd at some distance his Heart must follow or be torn In short his Soul disperses her self by the Means of these Tyes through whatever surrounds him just as she diffuses her self by the Means of Nerves over every Part of the Body When a Man inconsiderately gives himself up to the Commerce of the World the Tyes of his Heart fasten him to a Thousand Objects which only serve to make him wretched and if he be mad enough to have a real Love for those Objects or to be pusst up with his new Greatness he is said he to me like those who would be proud of a Dropsie or of Wens or Bunches that swell their Body to a bigger Bulk than ordinary Do you think continued he that the Souls of Gigantic Men are greater than those of other Men They have indeed a larger Body and can put a greater Mass of Matter into Motion but if you examine them well you 'll find that their Motions are more irregular The very Horses and Elephants are stronger than they and more bulky and if these Men measur'd the Greatness of their Soul by that of their Body they would make themselves universally ridiculous Yet it were a juster Thing to measure the Greatness of the Soul by that of the Body than by that of Riches and Honours For after all our Body is more our own than our Wealth and we are more united to it than we are to our Clothes our House or our Lands How foolish and vain then are not Men when they pretend to grow greater by being disperst out of themselves Truely cry'd he Imaginary Greatness makes Men become very miserable Creatures Every thing offends them every thing disturbs them every thing holds them fast And can Men in a perpetual Hurry and as it were wounded in every Part be able to Think Can they be able to cleave to Truth for which alone they are made with which alone they can be nourish'd and through which alone they can grow more wise and more happy They are commonly mad stupid thoughtless Creatures void of Light and Understanding Do you think added he that the Voluptuous and those who continually strive to extend their Slavery by enlarging the Bounds of their Commands do so much as know that they are not made for Bodies nor for a Time and that they are not on Earth barely to live there Alas they know nothing of this they do not perceive that Bodies are inferiour to them uncapable of acting on them and altogether unworthy of their Love As they have not yet felt the Sting of Death they cannot strictly be said to know they shall dye Their Tongues indeed say they must and they believe it but they do not know it They think they shall be no more but they do not know they shall dye What vast difference is there not between seeing and seeing 'T is but a very little while since I know that I am not made for Corporeal Beings that the Figure of this World passeth away that the true Good of Spirits is a Spiritual Good and even since I know what it is to dye Nay as my Understanding is but small I have too been obliged to think with my utmost application to comprehend these Truths Before this I thought of Death what my Eyes discover'd to me of it and scarce any thing more And if I had not been in a greater Capacity of applying my self to thinking than those who are in the Hurry of Business or a hunting after Pleasure I must confess I had not known what I believe is unknown to great Numbers of Men. The application of the Mind produces Light and discovers Truth The sight of Truth gives perfection to the Mind and regulates the Heart Such an application is then necessary But can a Man when he is pull'd and drawn on all sides struck and wounded every where thrust back when he would get forwards dragg'd forwards when he would go back and continually disturb'd and misus'd can such a Man I say think with application Can a Man who fears every thing yet desires hopes for and runs after every thing think on what he does not see Truth is distant and not sensible nor is it a Good which we find our selves press'd to love We must seek it if we would find it But we may still put off the Search for it never wholly leaves us On the contrary Bodies cause themselves to be felt every Moment press us to love them and continually oblige us to cleave to them for they are transitory and leave us as soon as they have tempted us So because Opportunity when lost is not easily recover'd Men are quickly determin'd to enjoy them but as for Truth they put off from time to time the applying of themselves to it because it never leaves them nor causes it self to be felt and for that reason it does not press them to love it How happy are those added he who wait for Eternity in Deserts and who finding themselves too weak to preserve the Freedom of their Mind and the purity of their Imagination against the Efforts and Malignity of sensible Objects have bravely