title to their Crowns and all men their Estates by the records or testimony of others 9. It is impudent arrogancy for every Infidel to tie God to be at his beck to work Miracles as oft as he requireth it To say I will not believe without a Miracle and if thou work never so many in the sight of others I will not believe unless I may see them my self § 12. There need not be new Revelations and Miracles to confirm the former and oblige men to believe them For then there must be more Revelations and Miracles to confirm the former and oblige men to believe those and so on to the end of the World And then God could not govern the World by a setled Law by Revelations once made which is absurd § 13. Therefore the only natural way to know all such matters of fact is sensible apprehension to those that are present and credible report tradition or history to those that are absent as is aforesaid which is the necessary medium to convey it from their sense to our understandings And in this must we acquiesce as the natural means which God will use § 14. We are not bound to believe all history or report Therefore we must be able to discern between the credible and the incredible neither receiving all nor rejecting all but making choice as there is cause § 15. History is more or less credible as it hath more or less evidence of truth 1. Some that is credible hath only evidence of probability and such is that of meer Humane Faith 2. Some hath evidence of certainty from Natural causes concurring where the conclusion is both of knowledge and of Humane Faith 3. And some hath evidence of certainty from supernatural attestation which is both of Humane Faith and of Divine § 16. That history or report which hath no more evidence than the meer wisdom and honesty of the author or reporter supposing him an imperfect man is but probable and the Conclusion though credible is not infallible and can have no certainty but that which some call Morall and that in several degrees as the wisdom and honesty of the reporter is either more or less § 17. II. Where there is an evident impossibility that all the witnesses or reporters should lie or be deceived there the Conclusion is credible by humane Faith and also sure by a natural certainty § 18. Where these things concurre it is impossible that that report or history should be false 1. When it is certain that the reporters were not themselves deceived 2. When it is certain that indeed the report is theirs 3. When they took their salvation to lie upon the truth of the thing reported and of their own report 4. When they expected Worldly ruin by their testimony and could look for no commodity by it which would make them any reparation 5. When they give full proof of their honesty and conscience 6. When their testimony is concordant and they speak the same things though they had no opportunity to conspire to deceive men yea when their numbers distance and quality make this impossible 7. When they bear their testimony in the time and place where it might well be contradicted and the falsity detected if it were not true and among the most malicious enemies and yet those enemies either confess the matter of fact or give no regardable reason against it 8. When the reporters are men of various tempers countreys and civil interests 9. When the reporters fall out or greatly differ among themselves even to separations and condemnations of one another and yet none ever detecteth or confesseth any falshood in the said reports 10. When the reporters being numerous and such as profess that Lying is a damnable sin and such as laid down their liberties or lives in asserting their testimonies did yet never any of them in life or death repent and confess any falshood or deceit 11. When their report convinceth thousands in that place and time who would have more abhorred them if it had been untrue Nay where some of these concurre the conclusion may be of certainty some of these instances resolve the point into natural necessity 1. It is of natural necessity that men love themselves and their own felicity and be unwilling of their undoing and misery The Will though free is quaedam natura and hath its natural necessary inclination to that good which is apprehended as its own felicity or else to have omnimodam rationem boni and its natural necessary inclination against that evil or aversation from it which is apprehended as its own undoing or misery or to have omnimodam rationem mali Its liberty is only servato ordine finis And some acts that are free are nevertheless of infallible certain futurition and of some kinde of necessity like the Love and Obedience of the Saints in Heaven 2. Nothing can be without a cause sufficient to produce it But some things here instanced can have no cause sufficient to produce them if the thing testified were false As the consent of enemies their not gainsaying the concurrence of so many and so distant and of such bitter Opposites against their own common worldly interest and to the confessed ruine of their souls and the belief of many thousands that could have disproved it if false and more which I shall open by and by There is a natural certainty that Alexander was the King of Macedonia and Caesar Emperour of Rome and that there is such a place as Rome and Paris and Venice and Constantinople And that we have had Civil Warrs between the King and Parliament in England and between the Houses of York and Lancaster and that many thousands were murdered by the French Massacre and many more by the Irish and that the Statutes of this Land were made by the Kings and Parliaments whose names they bear c. Because that 1. There is no cause in Nature which could produce the concurrence of so many testimonies of men so distant and contrary if it were not true 2. And on the contrary side there are natural causes which would infallibly produce a credible contradiction to these reports if they were false § 19. III. When they that testifie such matters of fact do affirm that they do it by Gods own command and prove this by multitudes of evident uncontrolled Miracles their report is both humane and divine and to be believed as most certain by a divine belief This is before proved in the proof of the validity of the testimony of Miracles and such Miracles as these § 20. The Testimonies of the Apostles and other Disciples of Christ concerning his Resurrection and Miracles were credible by all these three several sorts of credibility 1. They were credible and most credible by a humane belief as they were the testimony of honest and extraordinarily honest men 2. They were credible as reported with concauses of natural certainty 3. They were credible as attested by God
hate such deceivers and make them a common scorn instead of being converted by them § 61. The foresaid impossibilities are herein founded 1. There is no effect without a sufficient cause 2. A necessary cause not sufficiently hindred will bring forth its answerable effect But the opposed supposition maketh effects without any sufficient cause and necessary causes without their adequate effects § 62. The providence of God permitted dissentions and heresies to arise among Christians and rivals and false Teachers to raise hard reports of the Apostles and the people to be somewhat alienated from them that the Apostles might by challenges appeal to miracles and future ages might be convinced that the matter of fact could not be contradicted The Romans had contentions among themselves the strong and the weak contemning or condemning one another about meats and days Rom. 14. and 15. The Corinthians were divided into factions and exasperated against Paul by false Apostles so that he is fain at large to vindicate his Ministry and he doth it partly by appealing both to miracles and works of power wrought among them and by the Spirit given to themselves 2 Cor. 12.12 and 13.3 4 5. and 1 Cor. 12.7 12 13. The Galatians were more alienated from Paul by Jewish Teachers and seemed to take him as an enemy for telling them the truth and he feared that he had bestowed on them labour in vain and in this case he vehemently rebuketh them and appealeth first to miracles wrought among them and before their eyes and next to the Spirit given to themselves Gal. 3.1 2 3 4 5. O foolish Galatians who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth crucified among you This only would I learn of you Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith He therefore that ministreth to you the Spirit and worketh miracles among you doth he it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith Now if no such miracles were wrought among them and if no such Spirit was received by themselves would this argument have silenced adversaries and reconciled the minds of the Galatians or rather have made them deride the cause that must have such a defence and say Who be they that work miracles among us and when did we receive such a Spirit So to the Romans this is Paul's testimonial Rom. 15.18 19. For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed Through mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God c. And to the Corinthians he saith 1 Cor. 14.18 I thank my God I speak with tongues more than you all So Gal. 2.8 1 Cor. 14.22 Tongues are for a sign to them that believe not So Acts 2.43 and 4.30 and 5.12 and 7.36 and 8.13 and 14.3 and 6.8 and 8.6 13. and 15.12 and 19.11 1 Cor. 12.10 Miracles are still made the confirmation of the Apostles testimony and doctrine And in Heb. 2.3 4. you have the just method of the proof and progress of Christianity Which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord but how is that known and was confirmed to us by them that heard him But how shall we know that they said truth God also bearing them witness with signs and wonders and with divers miracles and gifts of the holy Ghost according to his own will And Act. 4.33 And with great power gave the Apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus 1 Joh. 1.1 2 3. That which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life for the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and shew unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us c. § 63. III. The miracles of the Apostles are not only attested by the Churches which were eye-witnesses of them 1. By the way of most credible humane testimony 2. And by natural evidence of infallible certainty but also 3. By supernatural testimony of God himself as appeareth in these following evidences § 64. 1. Many miracles were wrought by those first Churches who were the witnesses of the Apostles miracles which is a divine attestation to their testimony 1. The Scriptures fore-cited tell us that the same holy Ghost was given to them all though all had not the same gifts and that tongues and healing and miracles were the gifts of many though not of all which as I have shewed they could not themselves have believed of themselves if it had not been true Yea sufficient historical testimony telleth us that for three or four hundred years at least till Constantine owned and protected Christianity by Secular Power miracles were wrought in confirmation of the Christian faith It hath been the devils craft to seek to destroy the credit of them partly by hypocrites who have counterfeited miracles and partly by lying Legends of the carnal proud domineering part of the Church who have told the world so many palpable lies that they seemed to do it in design to perswade them to believe nothing that is true But yet all wise men will know the difference between History credible and incredible The many testimonies of the miracles of Gregory Thaumaturgus and many others mentioned by Eusebius and almost all other Christian Writers of those times and those mentioned by Augustine de Civitate Dei lib. 22 cap. 8. and Retract lib. 1. cap. 13. passim and by Cyprian Tertullian and many more will not be thought incredible by impartial considering men § 65. 2. The eminent sanctity of the Pastors of the Churches with the success of their testimony and doctrine for the true sanctification of many thousand souls is God's own attestation to their testimony and doctrine How far the sanctifying renewing success of the doctrine is a Divine attestation to its verity I have before opened and how far God owneth even the truths of Philosophy by blessing them with an adequate proportionable success The defective partial truths of Philosophy produce a defective partial reformation how far God accepteth it belongeth not to my present business to determine The more full and integral discovery of God's will by Jesus Christ doth produce a more full and integral renovation And 1. The cause is known by the effect 2. And God will not as is before said bless a lie to do the most excellent work in all the world Now it is a thing most evident that God hath still bless'd the Ministry of the Christian Pastors in all ages to the renewing of many thousand souls That this is truly so I shall somewhat fullier shew anon but that
be more evident to reason than that something must be Eternal without beginning nothing being more evident than that Nothing hath no power no action no effects and so can make nothing And therefore if ever there had been a time when Nothing was Nothing could ever have been imagine that there were Nothing now and it is certain there never would be any thing Obj. Something may oriri de novo without any Cause as well as God be eternally without any Cause Answ It s impossible For he that is eternally hath all perfection eternally in himself and needeth no Cause being still in being and being the Cause of Causes But Nothing hath no perfection or being and therefore needeth an Omnipotent Cause to give it a being Obj. If the world may be created of nothing materially it may be what it is without any thing efficiently Answ Impossible Pre-existent matter is not necessary to the first created matter for Matter may be caused of Nothing by an Omnipotent Efficient as well as the wonderful frame of all things be made out of Matter But without an Efficient no Being can arise de novo So that it is most evident seeing any thing now is there hath been something eternally And if something it must needs be the first Cause which is chief in excellency and first in order of production and therefore of existence § 10. The first Cause must needs be independent in being perfections and operations and so be absolutely self-self-sufficient For it were not the first if there were any before it and being caused by nothing else it was eternally sufficient in and for it self otherwise that which it were beholden to would have the place of a Cause to it And if it caused not all or needed the help of any other it is not absolutely the first Cause to all others nor perfect in it self That which could be eternally without a cause and it self cause all things is self-self-sufficient and independent § 11. The first Cause must needs be free from all imperfection of Corporeity or Materiality Composition Passibility corruptibility Mutability and Mortality and all other imperfections of defendent beings There is such a thing as a Living Principle and a pure spiritual Nature in the created world and the Maker of it must be life and Spirit in a higher purer sense than it and therefore must be free from all its imperfections and having no cause hath no defect and having no beginning can have no end All this Reason doth certainly apprehend § 12. This perfect first Cause must be Immense or Infinite in Being Not by corporeal extension as if God as a Body were in a place and being more extensive than all place were called Immense But in the perfect Essence of an eternall Life and Spirit and Mind he is every where without Locality and all things live and move and be in him The thought of space is but a Metaphorical help to our conception of his Immensity § 13. Therefore he must needs be Omnipresent Not by extension quantitative but in a sort transcendent and more excellent according to the transcendent way of his Existence For if we must have conceived of him as no better than a Body and of Magnitude as an Excellency we might well have concluded that he hath made nothing greater than himself Nemo dat quod non habet and therefore he must be more extensive than all the world and consequently absent from no part of it Much more when his Being which surpasseth corporeity directeth us to acknowledge a more noble kind of Omnipresence than Extensive § 14. Therefore is he Incomprehensible as to humane understanding or any other created intellect Of our own incomprehension experience sufficiently convinceth us here and Reason evinceth the same of all created Intellects for the less cannot comprehend the greater and between finite and infinite there is no proportion We know nothing purely-intelligible so easily and certainly as that God is But there is nothing that we are so far from comprehending As we see nothing more easily and certainly than the Sun which yet we see not with a comprehensive but a partial and defective sight § 15. This Infinite Being can be but One. For if there were many they could not be Infinite and so indeed there would be none nor would there be any one first Cause of all things For if one caused one part of the World and another another part no one were the first Cause of all And if they joyned in causing all together they would all conjunctly make but one first cause and each one several be but part of the Cause If there be no one that is sufficient to make and govern all the World there is no perfect Being nor no God but the effect sheweth the sufficiency and the unity of the World the Orbs being one frame the unity of the first cause Perfection consisteth more in the unity of one all sufficient Being than in a voluntary concurrence of many Beings The most learned Heathens who thought there were many to be named Gods did mean but subordinate particular Gods that were under the one universal God whom the Stoicks and Academicks took to be the universal Soul and the subordinate Gods the Souls of the particular Orbs and Planets § 16. The Power of this God must needs be Omnipotency He that hath given so great Power to the creatures as is exercised by them especially the Sun and fixed Stars in their several Vortices or Orbs and he that could make such a World of nothing and uphold the being and maintain the order and cause and continue the rapid motions of all the Vortices or Orbs which are to us innumerable and each of incomprehensible excellency and magnitude is certainly to be accounted no less than Omnipotent By his Omnipotency I mean that by which in it self considered in primo instanti he can do all things possible that is which belong not to Impotency but to Power And by which in secundo instanti he can do all things which his Infinite Wisdom judgeth congruous and meet to be done And in tertio instanti can do all that he will do and are pleasing to him § 17. The understanding of the first Cause must needs be Omniscient and infinite Wisdom 1. He that hath given so much wisdom to such a Worm as Man must have more than all the men in the World Whatever knowledge is in the whole Creation being given by Him doth prove that formally or eminently he hath more Were it all contracted into one Intelligence it must be less than His that caused it He hath not given more wisdom than he had to give nor so much as he had or is himself For if he should make any thing equal to Himself there would be two Infinites and there would be a perfect self-sufficient being which yet had lately no sufficiency or being and there would be a being independent in facto
It is not one part of the Sun that moveth and another which illuminateth and another which heateth But the whole Sun if it be wholly Fire or aethereal matter doth move the whole illuminateth and the whole doth heat And Motion Light and Heat are not Qualities inherent in it But Motion Illumination and Calefaction are Acts flowing immediately from its Essence as containing the faculties or powers of such acts He that could write a perfect method of Physicks and Morality would shew us Trinity in Unity through all its parts from first to last But as the Veins Arteries and Nerves the Vessels of the Natural Vital and Animal humours and spirits are easily discernable in their trunks and greater branches but not so when they are minute and multiplied into thousands so is it in this Method But I must desire the Reader to observe that though I here explain this Trinity of Active Principles in the Divine Essence which is so evident to Natural Reason it self as to be past all controversie Yet whether indeed the Trinity of Hypostases or Persons which is part of the Christian Faith be not somewhat distinct from this is a question which here I am not to meddle with till I come to the second part of the Treatise Nor is it my purpose to deny it but only to prepare for the better understanding of it Of which more shall there afterward be said § 32. And thus all Creatures and especially our selves declare that there is a first Being and Cause of them all who is a Substance Life a Spirit or Minde an Active Power Vnderstanding and Will perfect eternall independent and self-self-sufficient not compounded not passible not mutable corruptible or mortall Immense Omnipresent Incomprehensible only One Omnipotent Omniscient and most Good most Happy in Being Himself in Knowing himself and enjoying him most Holy transcending all the Creatures of a Perfect Will the Fountain of all Morall Good Love or Benigne having a Trinity of essential Transcendent Principles in unity of Essence which have made their adumbration or appearance on the World whereof though he be not the constitutive form or Soul He is to it much more the first Efficient Dirigent and ultimate final Cause of all That is THERE IS A GOD. CHAP. VI. Of GOD as RELATED to his Creatures especially to Man And I. as his OWNER PAssing by all that is doubtfull and controverted among men truly Rational and taking before me only that which is certain undenyable and clear and wherein my own Soul is past all doubt I shall proceed in the same method secundum ordinem cognoscendi non essendi The word GOD doth not only signifie all that I have been proving viz. The perfect nature of the first Cause but also his Relations to us his Creatures And therefore till I have opened and proved those Relations I have done but part of my work to prove that THERE IS A GOD. § 1. GOD having produced Man and all the World by his Power Vnderstanding and Will is by immediate resultancy Related to him as his CREATOR Though he made his Body of pre-existent Matter yet was that Matter made of nothing and therefore God is properly Mans CREATOR and not his Fabricator only And a CREATURE is a Relation which inferreth the Correlate a CREATOR as a Son doth a Father This therefore is Gods first grand Relation unto Man which hath no cause to produce it but his actual Creation which is its fundamentum § 2. This Grand prime Relation inferreth a Trinity of Grand Relations viz. That God is our OWNER our RVLER and our BENEFACTOR of which we are now to speak in order That these Three are justly distinguished from each other is past doubt to all that understand what is meant by the terms An Owner as such is not a Ruler or Benefactor a Ruler as such is not an Owner or a Benefactor A Benefactor as such is neither an Owner nor a Ruler And the enumeration is sufficient All humane affairs or actions of converse and society belong to Man in one of these three Relations or such as are subordinate to them and meer dependents on them or compounded of them They are in some respect the Genera and in some as it were the Elements of all other Relations And from the manner of men they are applyed to God with as much propriety of speech as any terms that man can use concerning him And he that could draw a true scheme or method of the Body of Morality or Theology for all is one with me would reduce all the dealings of God with Man which are subsequent to the fundamental Act of Creation to these three Relations and accordingly distinguish of them all Yet in the Mixt acts as most are such distinguishing only of the compounding Elements I mean the interest of these three Relations as making up the several acts § 3. A full Owner or Proprietor is called Dominus in the strictest sense and is one that hath a Jus possidendi disponendi utendi a right of having or possessing disposing and using without any copartner or superior Proprietor to restrain him The meaning is better known by the bare terms of denomination through common use than by definition We know what it meaneth when a man saith of any thing It is mine own There are defective half-proprieties of Co-partners and subordinate Proprietors which belong not to our present case The word Dominus Dominuim is sometime taken laxely as comprehending both Propriety and Rule and sometime improperly for Government or Command it self But among Lawyers it is most commonly taken properly and strictly for an OWNER as such But lest any be contentious about the use of the word I here put instead of it the word Owner and Proprietor as being more free from ambiguity § 4. GOD is jure Creationis Conservationis the most absolute Owner or Proprietor of Man and the whole Creation It is not possible that there should be a more full and certain title to propriety than Creation and total conservation is He that giveth the World all its Being and that of nothing and continueth that being and was beholden to no pre-existent matter nor to any co-ordinate concause nor dependent on any superiour cause in his causation but is himself the first independent efficient total cause of being and well-being and all the means thereto must needs be the absolute Owner of all without the least limitation or exception It is not the supereminency of Gods nature excelling all created beings that is the foundation of this his Propriety in the creature For Excellency is no title to Propriety And yet he that is unicus in capacitate possidendi that is so transcendently excellent as to have no Copartner in a claim might by Occupation be sole Proprietor in that kinde of Propriety secundum quid which Man is capable of Because there is no other whom he can be said to wrong But GOD hath a
they were before notwithstanding their long converse with Christ in person it being his pleasure to illuminate them by supernatural infusion that it might appear to be no contrived design to deceive the world And they were enabled to preach the word with power and by this Spirit were infallibly guided in the performance of the work of their Commissions to settle Christ's Church in a holy order and to leave on record the doctrine which he had commanded them to teach Also they themselves did heal the sick and cast out devils and prophesie and by the laying on of their hands the same holy Spirit was ordinarily given to others that believed so that Christians had all one gift or other of that Spirit by which they convinced and converted a great part of the world in a short time and all that were sincere had the gift of sanctification and were regenerate by the Spirit as well as by Baptismal water and had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the holy Ghost which was given them A holy and heavenly mind and life with mortification contempt of the world self-denial patience and love to one another and to all men was the constant badge of all Christ's followers The first Sermon that Peter preached did convert three thousand of those sinful Jews that had crucified Christ And after that many thousands of them more were converted One of their bloody persecutors Saul a Pharisee that had been one of the murderers of the first Martyr Stephen and had haled many of them to prisons as he was going on this business was struck down by the high-way a light from Heaven shining round about him and a voice saying to him Saul Saul why persecutest thou me And he said Who art thou Lord And the Lord said I am Jesus whom thou persecutest it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks And he trembling and astonished said Lord what wilt thou have me to do And the Lord said Arise and go into the City and it shall be told thee what thou must do And the men that journeyed with him stood speechless hearing a voice but seeing no man And so Saul was led blind to Damascus where one Ananias had a vision commanding him to Baptize him and his eyes were opened This Convert called Paul did hence-forward preach the Gospel of Christ from Country to Country in Syria in Asia at Rome and a great part of the world in marvellous unwearied labours and sufferings abuses and imprisonments converting multitudes and planting Churches in many great Cities and Countries and working abundance of miracles where he went His History is laid down in part of the New Testament There are also many of his Epistles to Rome to Corinth Galatia Ephesus Philippi Coloss Thessalonica to Timothy to Titus and to Philemon and the Hebrews as is supposed There are also the Epistles of Peter James John and Jude with the Revelation of John containing many mysterious Prophesies An Eunuch who was of great power under the Queen of Ethiopia was converted by Philip and carried the Gospel into his Country The rest of the Apostles and other Disciples carried it abroad a great part of the world especially in the Roman Empire and though every where they met with opposition and persecution yet by the power of the holy Ghost appearing in their Holiness Languages and Miracles they prevailed and planted abundance of Churches of which the most populous were at Jerusalem Antioch Rome and Alexandria And though they were all dispersed abroad the world and out of the reach of mutual converse yet did they never disagree in their Doctrine in the smallest point but proceeded through sufferings in Unity and Holiness in the work of saving Souls till most of them were put to death for the sake of Christ having left the Churches under the Government of their several Pastors according to the will of Christ This is the abstract of the History of the holy Scriptures § 14. The summ of the Doctrine of Christianity is contained in these Articles following consisting of three general Heads I. Things to be known and believed II. Things to be willed and desired and hoped III. Things to be done I. 1. There is one only GOD in Essence in Three Essential Principles POWER UNDERSTANDING and WILL or OMNIPOTENCY OMNISCIENCE and GOODNESS in Three Subsistences or Persons the FATHER the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT who is a Mind or Spirit and therefore is most Simple Incorruptible Immortal Impassionate Invisible Intactible c. and is Indivisible Eternal Immense Necessary Independent Self-sufficient Immutable Absolute and Infinite in all Perfections The Principal Efficient Dirigent and Final Cause of all the world The CREATOR of all and therefore our Absolute OWNER or Supreme RULER and our Total BENEFACTOR and CHIEF GOOD and END 2. GOD made Man for himself not to supply any want of his own but for the pleasing of his own Will and Love in the Glory of his Perfections shining forth in his works In his own Image that is with Vital Power Understanding and Free-will Able Wise and Good with Dominion over the Inferiour Creatures as being in subordination to God their OWNER their GOVERNOUR and their BENEFACTOR and END And he bound him by the Law of his Nature to adhere to GOD his MAKER by Resignation Devotion and Submission to him as his OWNER by Believing Honouring and Obeying him as his RULER and by Loving him Trusting and Seeking him Delighting in him Thanksgiving to him and Praising him as his Grand BENEFACTOR chief Good and ultimate end to exercise Charity and Justice to each other and to Govern all his inferiour faculties by Reason according to his Makers will that he so might please him and be Happy in his Love And to try him he particularly forbad him to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death 3. Man being tempted by Satan to break this Law of God did believe the Tempter who promised him impunity and advancement in Knowledge and who accused God as false in his threatning and as envying Man this great advancement And so by wilfull sinning against him he fell from God and his uprightness and happiness under the displeasure of God the penalty of his Law and the power of Satan And hence we are all conceived in sin averse to good and prone to evil and condemnation is passed upon all and no meer Creature is able to deliver us 4. God so loved the World that he gave his only SON to be their REDEEMER who being the Eternal WISDOM and WORD of God and so truly GOD and one in Essence with the FATHER did assume our Nature and became Man being conceived by the HOLY SPIRIT in the Virgin Mary and born of her and called JESVS CHRIST who being Holy and without all sin did conquer the Tempter and the World fulfilling all righteousness He enacted and preached the Law or
so doth prove the Divine approbation of his Doctrine without which he could not have the command of mens Souls 7. Note also that the Gospel proposeth to the Soul of man both Truth and Goodness and the Truth is in order to the Good and subservient to it That Christ is indeed the Saviour and his Word infallibly true is believed that we may be made partakers of his Salvation and of the Grace and Glory promised And when the Spirit by the Gospel hath regenerated and renewed any Soul he hath given him part of that grace in possession and hath procreated in him the habitual love of God and of holiness with a love to that Saviour and holy Word which brought him to it So that this Love is now become as a new Nature to the Soul and this being done the Soul cleaveth now as fast to Christ and the Gospel by Love as by Belief not that love becometh an irrational causless love nor continueth without the continuance of Belief or Belief without the Reasons and Evidence of Verity and Credibility But Love now by concurrence greatly assisteth Faith it self and is the faster hold of the two so that the Soul that is very weak in its Reasoning faculty and may oft lose the sight of these Evidences of truth which it did once perceive may still hold fast by this holy Love As the man that by reasoning hath been convinced that hony is sweet will easilier change his mind than he that hath tasted it so Love is the Souls taste which causeth its fastest adherence to God and to the Gospel If a caviller dispute with a loving child or parent or friend to alienate their hearts from one another and would perswade them that it is but dissembled love that is professed to them by their relations and friends Love will do more here to hinder the belief of such a slander than Reason alone can do and where Reason is not strong enough to answer all that the caviller can say yet Love may be strong enough to reject it And here I must observe how oft I have noted the great mercy of God to abundance of poor people whose reasoning faculty would have failed them in temptations to Atheism and Infidelity if they had not had a stronger hold than that and their Faith had not been radicated in the Will by Love I have known a great number of women who never read a Treatise that pleaded the Cause of the Christian Religion nor were able to answer a crafty Infidel that yet in the very decaying time of Nature at fourscore years of age and upward have lived in that sense of the Love of God and in such Love to him and to their Saviour as that they have longed to die and be with Christ and lived in all humility charity and piety such blameless exemplary heavenly Lives in the joyfull expectation of their Change as hath shewed the firmness of their Faith and the Love and Experience which was in them would have rejected a temptation to Atheism and Unbelief more effectually than the strongest Reason alone could ever do Yet none have cause to reproach such and say Their Wills lead their Vnderstandings and they customarily and obstinately believe they know not why for they have known sufficient reason to believe and their understandings have been illuminated to see the truth of true Religion and it was this knowledge of Faith which bred their Love and Experience but when that is done as Love is the more noble and perfect operation of the Soul having the most excellent object so it will act more powerfully and prevailingly and hath the strongest hold Nor are all they without Light and Reason for their belief who cannot form it into arguments and answer all that is said against it Obj. But may not all this which you call Regeneration and the Image of God be the meer power of fantasie and affectation and may not all these people force themselves like melancholy persons to conceit that they have that which indeed they have not Answ 1. They are not melancholly persons that I speak of but those that are as capable as any others to know their own minds and what is upon their own hearts 2. It is not one or two but millions 3. Nature hath given man so great acquaintance with himself by a power of perceiving his own operations that his own cogitations and desires are the first thing that naturally he can know and therefore if he cannot know them he can know nothing If I cannot know what I think and what I love and hate I can know nothing at all 4. That they are really minded and affected as they seem and have in them that love to God and Heaven and Holiness which they profess they shew to all the world by the effects 1. In that it ruleth the main course of their lives and disposeth of them in the world 2. In that these apprehensions and affections over-rule all their worldly fleshly interest and cause them to deny the pleasures of the flesh and the profits and honours of the world 3. In that they are constant in it to the death and have no other mind in their distress when as Seneca saith Nothing feigned is of long continuance for all forc'd things are bending back to their natural state 4. In that they will lay down their lives and forsake all the world for the hopes which faith in Christ begetteth in them And if the objectors mean that all this is true and yet it is but upon delusion or mistake that they raise these hopes and raise these affections I answer This is the thing that I am disproving 1. The love of God and a holy mind and life is not a dream of the Soul or a deliration I have proved from Natural reason in the first Book that it is the end and use and perfection of man's faculties that if God be God and man be man we are to love him above all and to obey him as our absolute Sovereign and to live as devoted to him and to delight in his love Man were more ignoble or miserable than a beast if this were not his work And is that a dream or a delusion which causeth a man to live as a man to the ends that he was made for and according to the nature and use of his reason and all his faculties 2. While the proofs of the excellency and necessity of a holy life are so fully before laid down from natural and supernatural revelation the Objector doth but refuse to see in the open light when he satisfieth himself with a bare assertion that all this is no sufficient ground for a holy life but that it is taken up upon mistake 3. All the world is convinced at one time or other that on the contrary it is the unholy fleshly worldly life which is the dream and dotage and is caused by the grossest error and deceit Object But how
Benignitas a quibus omnia procedunt in quibus omnia subsistunt per quae omnia reguntur Pater est Potentia Filius Sapientia Sparitus sanctus Benignitas Potentia creat Sapientia gubernat â— Benignitas conservat Potentia per Benignitatem sapienter creat Sapientia per potentiam benignè gubernat Benignitas per sapientiam potenter conservat Sicut Imago in speculo cernitur sic in ratione animae Huic similitudini Dei approximat homo cui Potentia Dei dat Bonum posse sapientia tribuit scire Benignitas praeâ—tat velle Haec triplex Animae rationalis vis est scil Posse Scire Velle quae supradictis tribus fidei spei charitati cooperantur c. Read more in the Author and in Raimundus Lullius and among latter Writers in Campanella Raymundus de sabundis c. as I said before He that will give you a scheme of Divinity in the true method will but shew you how all God's Works and Laws flow from these Three Essentialities or Principles and the three great Relations founded in them His being our Owner Ruler and Chief Good And how all our duty is branch'd out accordingly in our correlations He will shew you the Trinity of Graces Faith Hope and Love and the three summary Rules the Creed Lord's Prayer and Decalogue and in a word would shew you that the Trinity revealeth it self through the whole frame of true Theology or Morality But who is able to discern it in the smaller and innumerable branches Yea if ever it were to be hoped that our Physicks should be brought into the light of certainty and true method you would see Vnity in Trinity in all things in the world You would see that in the Sun and the other Celestial Luminaries which are the glorious Images of the Intellectual world in the Vnity of their Essence there is a Moving Illuminating and Heating Power and that no one of these is formally the other nor is any one of them a Part of the Sun or other Luminary much less a meer accident of quality but an Essential Active Principle or Power the whole Luminary being essentially a Principle of Motion Light and Heat which are not accidents in them but Acts flowing immediately from their Essential Powers as Intellection and Volition from the Soul I shall now say no more of this but profess that the discovery of the emanations or products of the Trinity and the Image and Vestigia of it in the course of Nature and Method of Morality doth much increase my reverence to the Christian Doctrine so far is the Trinity from being to me a stumbling-block Object But what are such Trinities in Vnity as these to the Trinity of Persons in the Deity such weak arguments will but increase incredulity Will you pretend to prove the Trinity by natural reason or would you perswade us that it is but three of God's Attributes or our inadequate conceptions of him Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa Ergo No creature can reveal to us the Trinity Answ 1. It is one thing to prove the Sacred Trinity of Persons by such reason or to undertake fully to open the mystery and it is another thing to prove that the Doctrine is neither incredible nor unlikely to be true and that it implieth no contradiction or discordancy but rather seemeth very congruous both to the frame of nature and of certain moral verities This only is my task against the Infidel 2. It is one thing to shew in the creatures a clear demonstration of this Trinity of Persons by shewing an effect that fully answereth it and another thing to shew such vestigia adumbration or image of it as hath those dissimilitudes which must be allowed in any created image of God This is it which I am to do 3. He that confoundeth the Attributes of God and distinguisheth not those which express these three Essential Primalities or Active Principles to which our faculties are analogous from the rest or that thinketh that we should cast by this distinction under the name of an inadequate conception so far as we can imagine these Principles to be the same and that there is not truly in the Deity a sufficient ground for this distinction is not the man that I am willing now to debate this cause with I have done that sufficiently before Whether the distinction be real formal or denominative the Thomists Scotists and Nominals have disputed more than enough But even the Nominals say that there is a sufficient ground for the denomination which some call Virtual and some Relative And they that dispute of the distinction of Persons do accordingly differ calling it either Relative Virtual Formal or Modal or ratione ratiocinata as they imagine best And they that differ about these do accordingly differ about the difference of the faculties of our souls For my part I see not the least reason to doubt but that the Trinity of Divine Primalities Principles and Perfections hath made its impress on man's soul in its three parts viz. the Natural the Moral and the Dominative parts in the first we have an Active Power an Intellect and Free-will In the second Fortitude or holy promptitude and strength Wisdom and Goodness or Love In the third we are to the inferiour creatures their Owners Rulers and Benefactors or End and what ever you will call our faculties and their moral perfections it is undoubted that in God his Omnipotency Wisdom and Goodness are his Essence and yet as much distinct as is aforesaid And what mortal man is able to say whether the distinction of Persons be either greater or less than this And remember that as I speak of Motion Light and Heat both as in the faculties of the Sun as I may call them and in the Acts or Emanations and of the Power Intellect and Will of man both as in the Faculties and Acts so do I here of the Divine Primalities yet so as supposing that in God who is called a Pure Act there is not such a difference between Power and Act as there is in man or other creatures 4. No man I think is able to prove that the works of the Trinity ad extra are any more undivided than the works of the three Essential Active Principles they are so undivided as that yet the work of Creation is eminently or most notably ascribed to the Father as is also the sending of the Son into the world the forgiving of sin for his sake c. and the work of Redemption to the Son and the work of Sanctification to the holy Ghost We shall be as loth to say that the Father or holy Ghost was incarnate for us or died for us or mediates for us as that the Power or Love of God doth the works which belong to his Wisdom And the Essential Wisdom and Love of God are no more communicable to man than the Son and holy Spirit who are said to be given to us
these Who can say that God is unable to raise the dead who seeth so much greater things performed by him in the daily motion of the Sun or Earth and in the support and course of the whole frame of Nature He that can every Spring give a kinde of Resurrection to Plants and Flowers and Fruits of the Earth can easily raise our bodies from the dust And no man can prove that the Wisdom of God or yet his Will are against our Resurrection but that both are for it may be proved by his Promises Shall that which is beyond the power of Man be therefore objected as a difficulty to God 2. Yea it is congruous to the Wisdom and Governing Justice of God that the same Body which was partaker with the Soul in sin and duty should be partaker with it in suffering or felicity 3. The Lord Jesus Christ did purposely die and rise again in his humane body to put the Resurrection out of doubt by undenyable ocular demonstration and by the certainty of belief 4. There is some Natural Reason for the Resurrection in the Souls inclination to its Body As it is unwilling to lay it down it will be willing to reassume it when God shall say The time is come As we may conclude at night when they are going to bed that the people of City and Countrey will rise the next morning and put on their Cloaths and not go naked about the streets because there is in them a Natural inclination to rising and to cloaths and a natural aversness to lie still or to go uncloathed so may we conclude from the souls natural inclination to its body that it will reassume it as soon as God consenteth 5. And all our Objections which reason from supposed contradictions vanish because none of us all have so much skill in Physicks as to know what it is which individuateth this Numerical Body and so what it is which is to be restored But we all confess that it is not the present mass of flesh and humours which being in a continual flux is not the same this year which it was the last and may vanish long before we die Obj. X. If Christ be indeed the Saviour of the World why came he not into the World till it was 4000 years old And why was he before revealed to so few and to them so darkly Did God care for none on earth but a few Jews or did he not care for the Worlds recovery till the later age when it drew towards its end Answ It is hard for the Governour of the World by ordinary means to satisfie all self-conceited persons of the wisdom and equity of his dealings But 1. it belongeth not to us but to our free Benefactor to determine of the measure and season of his benefits May he not do with his own as he list And shall we deny or question a proved truth because the reason of the circumstances is unrevealed to us If our Physician come to cure us of a mortal disease would we reject him because he came not sooner and because he cured not all others that were sick as well as us 2. The Eternal Wisdom and Word of God the second Person in the Trinity was the Saviour of the World before he was incarnate He did not only by his Vndertaking make his future performances valid as to the merit and satisfaction necessary to our deliverance but he instructed Mankinde in order to their recovery and Ruled them upon terms of grace and so did the work of a Redeemer or Mediator even as Prophet Priest and King before his Incarnation He enacted the Covenant of Grace that whoever repenteth and believeth shall be saved and so gave men a conditional pardon of their sins 3. And though Repentance and the Love of God was necessary to all that would be saved even as a constitutive cause of their salvation yet that Faith in the Mediator which is but the means to the Love of God and to sanctification was not alwayes nor in all places in the same particular Articles necessary as it is now where the Gospel is preached Before Christs coming a more general belief might serve the turn for mens salvation without believing that This Jesus is the Christ that he was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buryed and descended to Hades and rose again the third day and ascended into Heaven c. And as more is necessary to be believed since Christs incarnation and resurrection than before so more was before necessary to the Jewes who had the Oracles of God and had more revealed to them than to other Nations who had less revealed And now more is necessary where the Gospel cometh than where it doth not 4. So that the Gentiles had a Saviour before Christs Incarnation and not only the Jewes They were reprieved from Legal Justice and not dealt with by God upon the proper terms of the Covenant of Works or meer Nature They had all of them much of that mercy which they had forfeited which came to them by the Grace of the Redeemer They had time and helps to turn to God and a course of means appointed them to use in order to their recovery and salvation According to the use of which they shall be judged They were not with the Devils left remediless and shut out of all hope under final desperation No one ever perished in any Age or Nation of the World who by believing in a mercifull pardoning holy God was recovered to love God above all And if they did not this they were all without a just excuse 5. The course of Grace as that of Nature doth wisely proceed from low degrees to higher and bringeth not things to perfection at the first The Sun was not made the first day of the Creation nor was Man made till all things were prepared for him The Churches Infancy was to go before its Maturity We have some light of the Sun before it rise much more before it come to the height As Christ now teacheth his Church more plainly when he is himself gone into Glory even by his Pastors whom he fitteth for that work and by his Spirit so did he though more obscurely yet sufficiently teach it before he came in the flesh by Prophets and Priests His work of Salvation consisteth in bringing men to live in Love and Obedience And his way of Teaching them his saving doctrine is by his Ministers without and by his Spirit within And thus he did before his coming in flesh and thus he doth since we that are born since his coming see not his Person any more than they who were born before But we have his Word Ministers and Spirit and so had they His reconciling sacrifice was effectual morally in esse cognito volito before the performance of it And the means of reconciling our mindes to God
another life and is made only to be happy in that knowledge love and fruition of God which the Gospel most effectually leads you to Cond 21. Mark well the prophesies of Christ himself both of the destruction of Jerusalem and the successes of his Apostles in the world c. and mark how exactly they are all fulfilled Cond 22. Let no pretence of humility tempt you to debase humane nature below its proper excellency lest thence you be tempted to think it uncapable of the everlasting sight and fruition of God The devils way of destroying is oftentimes by over-doing The proud devil will help you to be very humble and help you to deny the excellency of reason and natural free-will and all supernatural inclinations when he can make use of it to perswade you that man is but a subtil sort of bruit and hath a soul but gradually different from sensitives and so is not made for another life Cond 23. Yet come to Christ as humble learners and not as arrogant self-conceited censurers and think not that you are capable of understanding every thing as soon as you hear it Cond 24. Judge not of the main cause of Christianity or of particular texts or points by sudden hasty thoughts and glances as if it were a business to be cursorily done but allow it your most deliberate sober studies your most diligent labour and such time and patience as reason may tell you are necessary to a learner in so great a cause Cond 25. Call not so great a matter to the trial in a case of melancholy and natural incapacity but stay till you are fitter to perform the search It is one of the common cheats of Satan to perswade poor weak and melancholy persons that have but half the use of their understandings to go then to try the Christian Religion when they can scarce cast up an intricate account nor are fit to judge of any great and difficult thing And then he hath an advantage to confound them and fill them with blasphemous and unbelieving thoughts and if not to shake their habitual faith yet greatly to perplex them and disturb their peace The soundest wit and most composed is fittest for so great a task Cond 26. When upon sober trial you have discerned the evidences of the Christian verity record what you have found true and judge not the next time against those evidences till you have equal opportunity for a full consideration of them In this case the Tempter much abuseth many injudicious souls when by good advice and soberest meditation they have seen the evidence of truth in satisfying clearness he will after surprise them when their minds are darker or their thoughts more scattered or the former evidence is out of mind and push them on suddenly then to judge of the matters of immortality and of the Christian cause that what he cannot get by truth of argument he may get by the incapacity of the disputant As if a man that once saw a mountain some miles distant from him in a clear day should be tempted to believe that he was deceived because he seeth it not in a misty day or when he is in a valley or within the house Or as if a man that in many days hard study hath cast up an intricate large account and set it right under his hand should be called suddenly to give up the same account anew without looking on that which he before cast up when as if his first account be lost he must have equal time and helps and fitness before he can set it as right again Take it not therefore as any disparagement to the Christian truth if you cannot on a sudden give your selves so satisfactory an account of it as formerly in more clearness and by greater studies you have done Cond 27. Gratifie not Satan so much as to question well resolved points as oft as he will move you to it Though you must prove all things till as learning you come to understand them in their proper evidence time and order yet you must record and hold fast that which you have proved and not suffer the devil to put you to the answer of one and the same question over and over as often as he please this is to give him our time and to admit him to debate his cause with us by temptation as frequently as he will which you would not allow to a ruffian to the debauching of your wife or servants and you provoke God to give you up to errour when no resolution will serve your turn After just resolution the tempter is to be rejected and not disputed with as a troublesome fellow that would interrupt us in our work Cond 28. Where you find your own understandings insufficient have recourse for help to some truly wise judicious Divine Not to every weak Christian nor unskilful Minister who is not well grounded in his own Religion but to those that have throughly studied it themselves you may meet with many difficulties in Theology and in the Text which you think can never be well solved which are nothing to them that understand the thing No Novice in the study of Logick Astronomy Geometry or any Art or Science will think that every difficulty that he meeteth with doth prove that his Author was deceived unless he be able to resolve it of himself but he will ask his Tutor or some one versed in those matters to resolve it and then he will see that his ignorance was the cause of all his doubts Cond 29. Labour faithfully to receive all holy truths with a practical intent and to work them on your hearts according to their nature weight and use For the doctrine of Christianity is scientia affectiva practica a doctrine for Head Heart and Life And if that which is made for the Heart be not admitted to the Heart and rooted there it is half rejected while it seemeth received and is not in its proper place and soil If you are yet in doubt of any of the supernatural Verities admit those truths to your hearts which you are convinced of else you are false to them and to your selves and forfeit all further helps of grace Object This is but a trick of deceit to engage the affections when you want arguments to convince the judgment Perit omne judicium cum res transit in affectum Answ When the affection is inordinate and over-runs the judgment this saying hath some truth but it is most false as of ordinate affections which follow sound judgment For by suscitation of the faculties such affections greatly help the judgment and judgment is but the eye of the soul to guide the man and it is but the passage to the will where humane acts are more compleat If your wife be taught that conjugal love is due to her husband and your child that filial love and reverence is due to his father such affections will not blind their judgments but contrarily they do
they have done fair though afterwards they consider not that interest of his in all operations which their own concessions necessarily infer 10. Lastly I perceive that they proceed not methodically in their collections but confound all by mixing certainties with uncertainties Whereas the first the great the most discernable truths should be first congested as CERTAINTIES by themselves and the uncertainties should not be pleaded against them nor suffered to stand in contest with them Perceiving all these general Reasons to distrust this sort of Philosophers above others though I resolve to be impartial I cannot willingly be so foolish as to over-look their disadvantage in the present cause II. The particular reasons which disswade me from believing the Epicurean sufficiency of Matter and Motion are these following 1. They all with whom I have now to do are constrained to confess an incorporeal intellectual substance even that there is a God and that GOD is such Epicurus himself doth not deny it yea seemeth to speak magnificently of God and in honour to him would excuse his providence from the minding of inferiour things For 1. They know that matter did not make it self and motion is but its mode and therefore matter cannot be made by its own motion It s being is in order of nature before its motion And matter is in it self so dull a thing and by the adversaries stripped of all forms which are not caused by motion that if it were said to be from eternity in its duration they will confess it could be but as an eternal effect of some nobler cause So that at the first word they grant that matter hath an incorporeal cause 2. And motion as it is found in matter could not cause it self though it be but of the mode of matter it is such a mode as must have a cause And the passive matter yet unmoved is supposed by themselves to be void of all antecedent moving power So that they are all fain to say that God made the matter and gave it the first push And so all matter and motion is reduced to a first efficient who is incorporeal And therefore an incorporeal being is acknowledged 2. I meet with none of them who dare deny this God to be an intellectual free Agent so that though it be granted them that intelligere velle be not in God the same thing formally as it is in man yet is it something which eminently must be so called man having no fitter conception or expression of it than from these acts of his own soul Epicurus will not make God defectively ignorant impotent or bad When themselves divide all things into such as have understanding and such as have none of which part do they suppose GOD to stand Things that are void of understanding formally or eminently are below the dignity of things that have understanding So that they confess there is existent an incorporeal intelligent free Agent 3. As they confess that this intellectual Agent is the first cause both of matter and motion so they cannot deny that he still causeth both by his continued influx or causing efficacy For there can be no effect without a cause and therefore when the cause ceaseth the effect must cease The material part of a moral cause may cease and yet the effect continue But that moral causation continueth which is proportioned to the effect The Parent may die while the child surviveth but there is a continued cause of the life of the child proportioned to the effect Matter is not an independent being To say that God hath made it self-self-sufficient and independent is to say that he hath made it a God Suppose but a total cessation of the Divine emanation influx and causation and you must needs suppose also the cessation of all Beings If you say that when God hath once given it a Being it will continue of it self till his power annihilate it I answer if it continue without a continuing causation it must continue as an independent self-sufficient being But this is a contradiction because it is a creature GOD is no effect and therefore needeth no cause of subsistence but the creature is an effect and cannot subsist a moment without a continued cause As the beams or communicated light cannot continue an instant if there were a total cessation of the emanation of the luminary because their being is meerly dependent and they need no other positive annihilation besides the cessation of the causation which did continue them It was from one of your own Poets that Paul cited In him we live and move and have our being for we are his off-spring And nothing is more abhorrent to all common reason than that this stone or dirt which was nothing as yesterday should be a God to it self even one independent self-sufficient being as soon as it is created and so that God made as many demy-gods as atoms We see past doubt that one creature cannot subsist or move without another on which it is dependent how much less can any creature subsist or move without its continued reception of its Creator's influx If you could suppose that for one moment there were no God you must suppose there would be nothing If I thought any would deny this besides those inflated vertiginous brains that are not to be disputed with I would say more for the illustration of it Object But though matter subsist not without a continued divine causation or emanation or efficacious volition yet motion may continue when all divine causation of it ceaseth Because when God hath given it one push that causeth a motion which causeth another motion and that another and so in infinitum if there were no stop Answ 1. If this were so it must be on supposition of a vis motiva communicata vel impressa for if there had been no such the first motion would have not been or all have presently ceased for want of a continued cause As there is no motion sine vi motiva so none can be communicated but by the communication of that force Action is not nothing nor will be caused by nothing As the delapsus gravium would presently cease if we could cause the pondus or gravity to cease so is it in all other motions If there be no vis or strength communicated along with the motion there would be nothing in that motion to cause another motion nor in that to cause another And if it were by way of traction if the cause cease which is the prima trahens all the motion ceaseth and so also if it be by way of pulsion So that in every motion there is something more than matter and motion 2. All motion of things below within our reach hath many impediments and therefore would cease if the first cause continued not his powerful efficacy It is tedious and needless to enumerate instances 3. The moving power of the noblest creatures is not purely active but partly passive and partly
operosa multo quidem faciliora Certè ita temere de mundo effutiunt ut mihi quidem nunquam hunc admirabilem coeli ornatum qui locus est proximus suspexisse videantur Where he brings in this passage as from Aristotle that if we should imagine men to have lived in some Dungeon or Cavern in the Earth and never to have seen the Sun or Light or World as we do and if there should be a doubt or dispute among them whether there be a God and if you should presently bring up these men into our places where they might look above them and about them to the Sun and Stars and Heaven and Earth they would quickly by such a sight be convinced that there is a God But as he truly addeth Assiduitate quotidiana consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi neque admirantur neque requirunt rationes earum rerum quas semper vident perinde quasi novitas nos magis quam magnitude rerum debeat adexquirendas causas excitare But I suppose it will be granted me that the first mover doth more than meerly move the effects of Wisdom and Goodness being so legible on all the World but you 'l say that to do it wisely and to attain good ends by it c. is but the modus of action with the effect and therefore matter and motion rightly ordered may be nevertheless sufficient to all effects To which I answer that the Creatures motion requireth not only that the Creator move them but that he place and order them and move them rightly and that he remove and overcome impediments c. Therefore there is necessary in the first mover both Wisdom and Love as well as Power And neither his Power Wisdom or Love are Locomotion in himself And this much being proved that in every motion there is Divine Power Wisdom and Love which is more than matter and motion it self I proceed next to enquire 5. Do you think there is any thing existent in the World besides matter and motion or not As to meer site and figure and other such order or modes of matter I know you will not deny them to have now a being as well as motion But is there no different tendency to motion in the parts of matter Is there not in many Creatures a Power an Inclination or aptitude to motion besides motion it self Is there not a reason à priore to be given why one Creature is more agile and active than another and why they act in their various wayes Why is fire more active than earth and a Swallow than a Snail If you say that the different ratio motus is in some extrinsecal agent only which moveth them you will hardly shew any possibility of that when the same Sun by the same virtue or motion as you will say is it that moveth all And if it were so you must go up to the first Cause to ask for the different motions of those movers when our enquiry now is de natura moventium motorum Creatorum If you say that it is the Ratio recipiendi in the different magnitudes or positions of the parts of matter which is the cause of different motions I would know 1. Whether this difference of magnitude and figure and site being now antecedently necessary to different motions was not so heretofore as well as now If you say No you feign without proof a state of things and order of Causes contrary to that which all mens sense perceiveth to be now existent And who is the wiser Philosopher he that judgeth the course and nature of things to be and have been what he now findeth it till the contrary be proved or he that findeth it one thing and feigneth it sometime to have been another without any proof That which is now antecedently necessary to diversity of motion it 's like was so heretofore 2. And then how could one simple equal act of God setting the first matter into motion cause such an inequality in motions to this day if it be true that you hold that only that which is moved or in motion it self can move and that motion is all that is necessary to the diversity 3. Either the first matter was made solid in larger parcels or all conjunct or in Atomes If it was made first in Atomes then Motion caused not Division If it was made conjunct and solid then motion caused not conjunction and solidity And if the first division or conjunction site and figure of matter was all antecedent to motion and without it we have no reason to think that it is the sole Cause of all things now But surely quantity figure and site are not all that now is antecedent to motion Doth not a man feel in himself a certain Power to sudden and voluntary motion He that sate still can suddenly rise and go And if you say that he performeth that sudden motion by some antecedent motion I answer that I grant that but the question is whether by that alone or whether a Power distinct from motion it self be not as evidently the Cause For otherwise the antecedent motion would proceed but according to its own proportion It would not in a minute make so sudden and great an alteration I can restrain also that motion which some antecedent motion e.g. passion urgeth me to Surely this Power of doing or not doing is somewhat different from doing it self A power of not-moving is not motion And what is the Pondus which Gassendus doth adde to magnitude and figure as a third pre-requisite in Atomes I perceive he knoweth not what to make of it himself But in conclusion it must be no natural Gravity by which the parts are inclined to the whole in themselves but the meer effect of pulsion or traction or both At the first he was for both conjunct pulsion of the Air and traction of the Atomes from the Earth But of this he repented as seeing impulsionem aeris nullam esse and was for the traction of Atoms alone Than which his Friends conceit of the pulsive motion of the Sun in its Diastole or whatever other motion is the cause doth seem less absurd But that man that would have me believe that if a Rock were in the air or if Pauls Steeple should fall the descent would be only by the traction of the hamuli of invisible Atomes or by the pulsion of Air and Sun conjunct must come neerer first and tell me how the hamuli of atomes can fasten upon a marble rock and how they come to have so much strength as to move that rock which no man can move in its proper place if there be no such thing as strength or power besides actual motion and why it is that those drawing atomes do move so powerfully Earthwards when at the same time it is supposed that as many or more atomes are moving upwards by the Suns attraction and more are moved circularly with the Earth why do not these stop or
Marble feeleth no more than the solid stone nor the air than the earth for any proof that we have of it The boys that whip their tops and the women that turn their wheels so swiftly that the motion shall not be discerned yet put no feeling into either though the motion be swifter than that of the heart or lungs or blood What the learned Dr. Ward hath said of this against Mr. Hobs I refer you to peruse and excuse me for transcribing it Scaliger Sennertus and many others have heretofore challenged these Philosophers to shew the world how atoms by motion or elements by mixture can get that sense which neither matter motion nor mixture have but we can meet with no account of it yet worth the reading not by Cartesius not by Regius or Berigardus not by Gassendus nor any other that we can get and read How unsatisfactory is it to tell us that facultas sentiendi movendi quae anima sensitiva vulgo dicitur est partium animalis in spiritus nervos alia sensoria c. talis attemperatio conformatio qua animal ab objectis variis motibus affici potest as Regius l. 4. c. 3. p. 267. This is an easie solving of the Phaenomena indeed But qualis est illa contemperatio quomodo potest contemperantia insensibilium sensibile constituere Nonne dat ista contemperatio quod non habet Perhaps you will say with him in Cicer. de Nat. Deor. that by this argument God must be a Fidler because he maketh men that are such Answ By this argument no fidler nor any other man hath more wisdom than God or can do that which God cannot do but because God is above him in his skill doth it follow that the names which signifie humane imperfection must be put on God Can God enable a man to that which he is not able to do himself and can he give that which he hath not to give Object None of the parts of a clock can tell the hour of the day and yet all set together can and none of the letters of a book are Philosophy and yet the whole may be a learned system and no atoms in a Lute can make melody as the whole can do Answ This is but to play with words In all these instances the whole hath nothing of a higher kind in nature than the several parts but only a composition by the contribution of each part The clock telleth you nothing but per modum signi and that signum is only in the sound or order of motion And sound and motion belongeth to the whole by vertue or contribution of the parts and is not another thing above them And that the motion is so ordered and that man can by it collect the time of the day is from the power of our understandings and not from the matter of the engine at all So the book is no otherwise Philosophy at all but per modum signi which signum is related to mans understanding both as the cause and orderer and as the receiver and apprehender So that the letters do nothing at all but passively serve the mind of man And so it is in the other instance the strings do but move the air and cause the sound which is in the ear that this is melody is caused only by the mind of man who first frameth and then orderly moveth them and then suo modo receiveth the sound and maketh melody by the aptitude of his apprehension If you had proved that Clock or Book or Lute do make themselves and order and use themselves and know the time or understand or delight in themselves you had done something But by the deceitful names of Philosophy and Melody to confound the bare natural sound and sign with that ordering and that reception which is the priviledge of a mind is unfit for a Philosopher Moreover I expect from Matter and Motion an account of motions great concomitants that is of Light and Heat Mistake me not I am not undervaluing the effects of motion I take it for a most noble and observable cause of most that is done or existent in the corporeal world but must it therefore be the solitary cause I have long observed amongst wranglers and erroneous zealots in Divinity that most of their error and misdoing lieth in setting the necessary co-ordinate causes or parts of things as inconsistent in opposition to one another It would make one ashamed to hear one plead that Scripture must be proved by it self and another that it must be proved by reason and another that it must be by miracles and another by the Church and another by general History and Tradition c. As if every one of these were not necessary concurrent parts in the proof Such work have we among poor deluded women and ignorant men while the Romanists say that they are the true Church and the Greeks say it is they and the Lutherans say it is they and the Anabaptists say it is they as if my neighbours and I should contend which of our houses it is that is the Town And so do these Philosophers about the Principles and Elements The Intellectual nature which is the Image of God hath notoriously three faculties Vnderstanding Will and Executive Power and men think that they cannot understand the one without denying the other two and the fiery nature which constituteth the Sun and other Luminaries and is the image of the vital nature hath three notorious powers or properties Light Heat and Motion and they cannot understand Motion without making nothing of Light and Heat or greatly obscuring and abusing them Cull out into one and set together but what Patricius hath said of Light and what Telesius hath said of Heat and Campanella after him and what Gassendus and Cartesius have said of Motion and cut off all their superfluities and you will have a better entrance into sound Philosophy than any one book that I know doth afford you I confess that as wisdom must lead the will and determine its acts quoad specificationem and the will must set a work the same intellect and determine its acts quoad exercitium and the active power doth partly work ad intra in the operations of both these and ad extra is excited by the imperium of the will so that these three faculties as Schibler Alsted and many others truly number them are marvellously conjunct and co operative Even so it is in the Motion Light and Heat of the active element or fiery or aethereal nature I know motion contributeth to light and heat but it 's as true that light and heat have their proper coequal and co-ordinate properties and effects and that heat contributeth as much to motion at least as motion doth to heat indeed in one essence they are three coequal vertues or faculties the Vis Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva And so vain is their labour who only from matter
is such a thing as Justice due from man to man for the preservation of these Rights and Order and it 's injustice to violate them This is confessed by all the World that look for Justice from others And if it be not maintained the world will be as in a continual Warre or Robbery But better grounds and proofs of it will be mentioned anon § 8. Therefore there is a difference between good and evil as respecting the benefit or hurt of others beside that which respecteth men as to themselves Those that think they are bound to avoid hurting no man but themselves or for themselves nor to do good to any but themselves or for themselves have so far obliterated the Laws of Humanity and so openly renounce the benefits of Society and bid defiance to Mankinde that I suppose them so few that I need not dispute against them Nor have I ever met with any defender of so inhumane a Cause whatever may be in their hearts and practice § 9. Nature teacheth Parents to educate their children in sobriety obedience justice and charity and to restrain their contraries Did Parents make no difference between their Childrens temperance and gluttony drunkenness and unchastity between their obedience and disobedience and contempt of their own authority between actions of Justice and Charity and actions of falshood robbery cruelty and inhumanity what a degenerate thing would Mankinde prove even Cannibals exercise some government over their Children § 10. The means which Nature teacheth all the World to suppress iniquity and promote well-doing is by Punishments and Benefits that it may turn to the hurt of the evil-doer himself and to the benefit of the Well-doer Thus Parents do by Children yea Men by Beasts on the account of Prudence though not of Justice Without Punishments and Rewards or Benefits Laws are ridiculous or deceits and Government is nothing § 11. For the just and effectual performance of this nature teacheth the World to set up Governments that by setled Laws and righteous Judgement it may be rightly done Though better principles should acquaint men with the nature and necessity of Government yet these are so obvious to all the world that for their own preservation together with some natural sense of justice the most barbarous Nations that are nearest unto bruits are for some Civil Government besides Oeconomical Government which none but mad-men ever question'd § 12. By this Government the Liberty Estates and Lives of offenders are destroyed for the ends of the Government viz. for Justice and the common good That this is so de facto is so undeniable that even those Heathens the supposed relicts of the Pythagoreans who will not kill a harmless beast will yet kill those men who deserve to die And if Government had not the power over the Liberties Estates and Lives of offenders it could not preserve the Liberties Estates and Lives of the innocent § 13. The combination of the Power Wisdom and Goodness of the Individuals and the Eminency of these in the Governours is the cause of the order strength and safety of these humane societies All the parts are in the combination to contribute to the good of the whole and that according to the nature of the parts it is not a heap of stones nor a forest of trees nor a heard of cattle which we are speaking of but an association of men which must be promoted and blessed by the worth and duty of the individuals and this consisteth in the perfections and right exercise of their Power Intellects and Wills But as the place of the Governour requireth more of the exercise of these than is requisite in any individual else so doth it therefore require that these be in him in greater eminency and excellency than in others viz. that in himself he excel in wisdom and goodness and by his interest in the people that he excel in power or strength Take away power and Societies are indefensible exposed to the will of enemies and unable to execute their Laws upon their own offenders and so to attain the ends of their association and government Take away wisdom and they are a rout of Ideots or mad-men and government can be none at all Take away goodness and they are as a company of Devils or confederacy of Robbers or pernicious enemies who can neither trust one another nor promote the common good but are fit to destroy and be destroyed § 14. By all this it is manifest that MAN is not only a living Wight having Power Intellect and Will and Dominion over inferiour things as their Owner Ruler and End but also is a sociable Wight or fitted for society where Government is exercised by Power Wisdom and Goodness which are his perfections I have looked thus long at the things that are seen as nearest me and most discernable before I proceed to the Cause which is unseen CHAP. IV. Of Man and other things as produced by their first Cause § 1. I Was not always what I am It is not yet sixty years since I was no man I had a late beginning and though I now enquire not of what duration my soul is my present composition is not from eternity the same I see of others that are born men who were lately none and so of all things that are here generated § 2. I did not make my self at least as an independent uncaused being I could not as I am make my self what I am for so my self as the cause should be before my self as the effect which is a contradiction unless the word self be used equivocally When I was not I acted not If it be said by any that the Soul did fabricate a Body to it self and so one part of me made the other I answer 1. My soul did not make the matter of that Body for if it did it made it of something or of nothing if of something either it made that something or not if not then it made not the first matter of the Body If it made it of nothing it must be Omnipotent but it is conscious of impotency 2. My soul did not make it self for then it must be before it self which is impossible And if I made neither form nor matter I did not make my self If it be said that my Soul is an eternal uncaused being and so did fabricate this Body as a dwelling for it self I answer 1. As to the supposed fabrication it is conscious it self of no such thing And if my Soul made my body either it was as a causa subministra vel instrumentalis by the direction and power of a superiour cause or else of and by it self as the prime cause If the first then it is a caused and dependent being it self and so leadeth us to a higher cause If the second be affirmed and so my Soul an eternal uncaused independent being then 1. That which is without beginning cause and dependency must needs be
self-self-sufficient and be the highest excellency it must have an infiniteness and need no help from any other But my Soul is conscious of imperfection in knowledge its ignorance is its burden and dishonour it knoweth not so much as is here asserted of it self it knoweth no such perfections or operations it knoweth little comparatively of the Universe or of any particular thing in it If it were an eternal uncaused independent Being it need not all the helps of evidence and argument in this dispute Moreover it is conscious of imperfection in Goodness and defilement of Evil it is defective in governing this flesh which could never be able to make me a sinner or culpable if it were animated with an uncaused independent being Moreover I am conscious of impotency in every thing that I go about a thousand difficulties pose and stall me a thousand things I would do and cannot and as many I would have and cannot whereas an uncaused independent mind should necessarily have an uncaused independent power and wisdom and goodness and so should at least partake of infiniteness in all And if my Soul did thus fabricate my Body then what needed it pre-existent Matter to make it of And why did it not make it sooner seeing it hath such an inclination to it Can an independent Mind be ignorant what it was and what it did it self from all eternity before it entred into this flesh And why doth it not amend the infirmities of this Body or why did it not make it self a Body more excellent more comely more sound more clean and more durable Could it choose no better can it not heal and perfect this can it not prevent the dissolution of it Seeing I find it so much in love with it and so unwilling to be separated from it if it were an independent mind and caused it at the first it would not be unwillingly taken from it and leave it to rottenness and dust And if my Soul did thus independently make my Body did all other Souls do so by their Bodies or not If they did not then they had a superiour Cause if they did then it seems that every Worm and Fly and Toad hath a Soul that is an eternal uncaused independent being But why then have they no knowledge no reason no speech why did they not choose a more honourable dwelling why do they all stoop to the service of man if they are equally excellent And then it would follow that there are as many eternal independent beings as there are Souls or living Wights in all the world And so instead of one true perfect God there would be innumerable demi-gods which all had the perfection of independencies and none of them had a perfection of being and sufficiency which would put us upon the further enquiries whether they do all their business independently or by a general council and consent and how they all do to agree and not fall into perpetual wars how the soul of an ideot or a wicked man or of a Toad or Serpent came to be so self-denying as to be contented with that part when the Soul of Aristotle and Seneca and Paul were so much better provided for And if all this were so who made the things inanimate that have no souls of their own to make them For my part I made them not And my Soul is conscious that it is a dependent being that cannot illuminate it self nor know what it would know nor be what it would be nor do what it would do nor can support its body or it self an hour It looketh dependently to something higher for help and protection and supply and mercy and is past all doubt that it is no God If it be said that all Souls are but one even parts of the universal Soul of the World and that individuation is by Matter only and that so though my Soul be not the whole first cause and being it is a part of it I answer 1. I note by the way that this hypothesis acknowledgeth that which I am searching after viz. that there is a God and it asserteth higher things of man than I am proving viz. That he hath not only an immortal Soul but a Soul that is part of God himself 2. And according to this the Soul of every Heliogabalus Sardanapalus Ideot or Toad should be part of God 3. And then all souls should be alike if all be God the Soul of a murderer and of him that is murdered of a Nero and a Saint yea of Caesar and of his Dog And how then cometh there so much enmity between them and so great disparity why is one wise and another foolish or bruitish and one the Ruler of the other The Soul of a Bird or Horse seemeth to be lodged in as good a kind of matter as Mans or at least the Soul of a Nero in as good a matter as the Soul of Paul or at least the Soul of one that turneth to villany from virtue hath the same matter which it had before And certainly it is not matter that principally individuateth but forms Nor is the difference between good men and bad and between Men and Serpents or Beasts so much in Matter as in the Soul Moreover Nature teacheth all men to seek felicity and fear infelicity and calamity which they need not do nor could not do if they were all parts of God God cannot be miserable but Man can as to his Soul as well as his Body and the misery of his Body is little to that of the Soul even in this life God cannot be evil but the Soul may be vitiated and evil as experience teacheth God may not be punished or afflicted but a wicked man may be punished and afflicted even in his mind or Soul and a Magistrate will not think when he hangeth a thief that he either punished bare flesh or that he punished God Moreover God can wrong no man but one man may wrong another God need not fear doing any thing amiss but the Soul of man must fear it No part of God can be so unhappy as to choose to be a Toad or a wicked or miserable man God hath no Body but so have these Souls else when men eat a plant or bird or any flesh they eat part of the Body of God Moreover I find that it is Bodies only that are Quantitative or Extensive and so divisible into parts many parts of one Body may be animated by one Soul but not by many parts of that one Soul except the Soul be material it self But why may some object may I not hold that all the Orbs being one world or one Body of one informing Soul which is God and so that really those which you call individuals are but parts of this one animated world Answ This is confuted by what is said Whether the world be animated by one universal Soul we are not now enquiring But that God is not this informing Soul is