the advancement of the flourishing condition of the Church is not meerly by outward pomp and grandeur and that the purity of the Church is not inconsistent with a state of outward difficulties which the experience oâ— the Primitive Church gives an irrefragable demonstration of Thus much may serve to shew the necessity of a power of miracles conjoyned with the Christian Doctrine to manifest the truth of it by overthrowing the Kingdom of that great Antichrist the Devil who had usurped so much Tyranny over the world The last reason why a power of miracles was so necessary for confirming the truth of the Gospel is because the Gospel was to be propagated over the world without any other rational evidence then was contained in the miracles wrought for the confirmation of it Now the admirable success which this doctrine found in the world considering all the circumstances of it doth make it clear what certainty there was that the miracles which were wrought were true and they were certain evidences that the doctrine attested by them was from God Now this will appear from these two things That no rational account can be given why the Apostles should undertake to publish such a doctrine unless they had been undoubtedly certain that the Doctrine was true and they had sufficient evidence to perswade others to beleeve it That no satisfactory account can be given considering the nature of the doctrine of Christ and the manner of its propagation why it should meet with so great acceptance in the world had there not been such convincing evidence as might fully perswade men of the truth of it I begin with the first from the publishers of this doctrine in the world All that I here require by way of a Postulatum or supposition are onlythese two things which no man right in his wits I suppose will deny 1. That men are so far rational agents that they will not set upon any work of moment and difficulty without sufficient grounds inducing them to it and by so much the greater the work is the more sure and stedfast had the grounds need to be which they proceed upon 2. That the Apostles or first Publishers of the Christian doctrine were not men distracted or bereft of their wits but acted by principles of common sense reason and understanding as other men in the world do Which if any one should be so far beside his wits as to question if he have but patience and understanding enough to read and consider those admirable writings of theirs which are conveyed to us by as certain uninterrupted a Tradition as any thing in the world hath been and by that time he will see cause to alter his judgement and to say that they are not mad but speak the words of the greatest truth and soberness These things supposed I now proceed to the proving of the thing in hand which will be done by these three things First That the Apostles could not but know how hâ—zardous an employment the preaching of the Gospel would be to them Secondly that no motive can be conceived sufficient for them to undertake such an employment but the infallible truth of the doctrine which they preached Thirdly that the greatest assurance they had themselves of the truth of their Doctrine was by being eye-witnesses of the miracles of Christ. First That the Apostles could not but understand the hazard of their employment notwithstanding which they cheerfully undertook it That men armed with no external power nor cried up for their wit and learning and carrying a doctrine with them so contraâ—y to the general inclinations of the world having nothing in it to recommend it to mankind but the Truth of it should go about to perswade the world to part with the Religion they owned and was setled by their laws and to embrace such a religion as called them off from all the things they loved in this world and to prepare themselves by mortification self-denial for another world is a thing to humane reason incredible unless we suppose them acted by a higher spirit then mankind is ordinarily acted by For what is there so desirable in continual reproaches contumelies what delight is there in racks and prisons what agreeableness in flames and martyrdoms to make men undergo some nay all of these rather then disown that doctrine which they came to publish Yet these did the Apostles cheerfully undergo in order to the conversion of the world to the truth of that doctrine which they delivered to it And not only so but though they did foresee them they were not discouraged from this undertaking by it I confess when men are upon hopes of profit and interest in the world engaged upon a design which they promise themselves impunity in having power on their side though afterwards things should fall out contrary to their expectation such persons may die in such a cause because they must and some may carry it out with more resolution partly through an innate fortitude of spirit heightened with the advantages of Religion or an Enthusiastick temper But it is hard to conceive that such persons would have undertaken so hazardous an employment if beforehand they had foreseen what they must have undergone for it But now the Apostles did foreknow that bonds and imprisonment nay death its self must be undergone in a violent manner for the sake of the doctrine which they preached yet not withstanding all this they go boldly and with resolution on with their work and give not over because of any hardships and persecutions they met withall One of the chiesest of them S. Peter and as forward as any in Preaching the Gospel had the very manner of his death foretold him by Christ himself before his Ascension yet soon after we find him preaching Christ in the midst of those who had crucified him and telling them to their faces the greatness of their sin in it and appealing to the miracles which Christ had done among them and bidding them repent and believe in him whom they had crucified if ever they would be saved And this he did not only among the people who gave their consent to the crucifying of Christ but soon after being conventedâ—ogether â—ogether with Iohn before the Court of Sanbedrin probably the very same which not long before had sentenced Christ to death for a miracle wrought by them with what incredible boldness doth he to their faces tell them of their murdering Christ and withall that there was no other way to salvation but by him whom they had crucified Be it known unto you all saith Peter to the Sanhedrin and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Iesus Christ whom ye have crucified whom God raised from the dead even by him doth this man stand here before you whole Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved What
him to work upon So true is that of Balbus in Tully when he comes to discourse of the nature of God in quo nihil est difficilius quam à consuetudine oculorum aciem mentis abducere nothing is more difficult then to abstract our minds from the observations of this visible world when we seâ—k to apprehend the nature of the Deity Thus we see upon what general grounds the Philosophers proceeded and from what they took them and how insufficient any collections from the present order of the Universe are to determine any thing concerning its production by For supposing a production of the world several things must of necessity be supposed in it different from what the present order of the world is and it is an unreasonable thing to argue from a thing when it is in its greatest perfection to what must alwaies have been in the same thing for by this means we must condemn many things for falsities which are apparently true and believe many others to be true which are apparently false For which Maimonides useth an excellent fim litude Suppose saith he one of exquisite natural parts whose mother dies assoon as he is born and his Father brings him up in an Island where he may have no society with mankind till he be grown up to years of understanding and that he never saw any female of either man or beast Suppose now this person to enquire of the first man he speaks with how men are born and how they come into the world The other tells him that every man is bred in the womb of one of the same kind with our selves thus and thus formed and that while we are in the womb we have a very little body and there move and are nourished and we grow up by little and little till we come to such a bigness and then we come forth into the world and yet grow still till we come to such a proportion as we are of Here presently this young man stops him and enquires when we were thus little in the womb and did live move and grow did we not eat and drink and breath at our mouth and nostrils as we do now did we not ease nature as now we do If it be answered him no them he presently is ready to deny it and offers to bring demonstrations that it was utterly impossible it should be so For saith he if either of us cease breathing but for an hour our motion and life is gone how is it then possible for one of us though never so little to live and move in the womb for so many months when it is so close and shut up in the middle of the body If one of us saith he should swallow a little bird it would resently dye as soon as it came into the stomack how much more if it were in the belly If we should be but for few dayes without eating and drinking we could not live how can a childe then continue so many months without it Again if one doth eat and not void the excrements of what he eats he will be kild with it in few dayes how can it possibly be otherwise with a child If it be replyed that there is a passage open in the belly at which the child receives his nourishment he will presently say that it is as impossible as the other for if our bellyes were so open we should be quickly destroyed And again if the child bath all its limbs perfect and sound how comes it not to open its eyes use the feet mouth and hands as we do And so concludes it impossible that man should ever be born after this manner Much after this way saith that excellent Author do Aristotle and others argue against the production of the world for if the world were produced say they it must have been thus and thus and it is impossible that it should have been so why because we see things are otherwise now in the world Which how infirme a way of arguing it appears from the consideration of the former similitude in which the arguments are as strong to prove the impossibility of that which we know to be true as in the case about which we dispute And this now leads us to the second false Hypothesis which the opinion of the worlds eternity was founded on which is that there is no other way of production but by Generation Most of the arguments which are used by Ocellus and Aristotle against the production of the world run upon this supposition that it must be generated as we see things are in the world So Ocellus argues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every thing that comes into being and is subject to dissolution hath two observable mutations in it the one is whereby it grows from less to greater and from worse to better and this is called Generation and the height of this mutation perfection the other begins from better to worse and from bigger to less and the conclusion of this is corruption and dissolution But now saith he if the world had a beginning there would be such a mutation in it and it would have grown by degrees greater till it had come to its perfection and from thence it would sensibly decay till it came to dissolution but no body hath ever observed such a mutation in the world neither is there any appearance of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the world is semper idem it varyes not nor alters any thing from its self For which he particularly instanceth in the courses Symmetryes figures positions intervals proportions of motion which are in the world which things are all capable of such a mutation yet we see no such thing in the Universe from whence he infers that the Universe was alwayes and will be as it is Upon the same principle doth Aristotle dispute for the eternity of the world from the nature of his materia prima because if the first matter were generated it must be generated of other matter and so in infinitum and so he argues from the nature of the Heavens that they are not capable of generation and corruption as other bodyes are All which arguments signifie no more then this that the world was not generated as Plants or Animals are and who ever right in his wits asserted that it was But do any of these arguments prove it impossible that God having infinite power should produce the Universe after another way then any of those things are produced in which we observe in the world For we assert an infinite and eternal Being which was the efficient cause of the world who by his omnipotcut power produced it out of nothing and continues it in its Being which is well expressed by the author of the refutation of Aristotle in Iustin Martyrs works We assert saith he one God who is eternal himself that hath nothing else coaeval with himself neither by way of subjection or
reason of this diversity but that they thought them not so authentick but they might cut off alter and transpose as they saw occasion which is most plain and evident in Eusebius who makes no difficulty of â—utting of one whole Dynasty and dividing another into two only to reconcile the distance between Thuoris the Egyptian King and Tentamus the Assyrian Emperour and the destruction of Troy and therefore leaves out 4. Assyrian Kings and a whole Dynasty of the Egyptians to make a Synchronisme between those three But yet there hath been something very fairly offered to the world to clear the truth if not Manetho in order to his Dynastyes viz. that the subtle Egyptian to inhance the antiquity of his own Country did take implicite years for solid and place those in a succession which were cotemporary one with another This indeed is a very compendious way to advance a great sum of years with a very little charge Wherein he hath done saith Cappellus as if a Spaniard in the Indies should glory of the antiquity of the Dynastyes of Spain and should attribute to the Earles of Barcinona 337. years to the King of Arragon 498. to the King of Portugal 418. to the King of Leo 545. of Castile 800. years and yet all these Dynastyes rise from the years of our Lord 717. when the Saracens first entred Spain There are very few Nations but will go near to vie antiquity with the Egyptians if they may thus be allowed to reckon successively all those petty royalties which antiently were in most Nations as might be particularly instanced in most great Empires that they gradually rise from the subduing and incorporating of those petty royalties into which the several Nations were cantonized before And there seems to be very strong ground of suspition that some such thing was designed by Manetho from the 32. Dynasty which is of the Diospolitan Thebans for this Dynasty is said to begin from the tenth year of the 15. Dynasty of the Phaenician Pastours in the time of Saites now which is most observable he that begins this Dynasty is of the very same name with him who begins the very first Dynasty of Manetho who is Menes and so likewise his son Athothis is the same in both Which hath made many think because Menes is reckoned first not only in both these but in Diodorus Eratosthenes and others that this Menes was he who first began the Kingdom of Egypt after whose time it was divided into several Dynastyes Which makes Scaliger say illa vet ustissima regna fuerunt instar latrociniorum ubi vis non lex aut successio aut suffragia populi reges in solio regni collocabant This opinion of the coexistence of these Dynastyes is much embraced by Vossius both Father and Son and by the Father made use of to justifie Scaliger from calumniatours who made as though Scaliger did in effect overthrow the authority of the Scriptures by mentioning with some applause the Dynastyes of Manetho But to this opinion how plausible soever it seems I offer these exceptions First As to that Menes who is supposed to be the first founder of the Aegyptian Kingdom after whose death it is supposed that Aegypt was divided into all these Dynastyes I demand therefore who this Menes was was he the same with him whom the Scripture calls Misraim who was the first Planter of Egypt this is not probable for in all probability his name must be sought among the Gods and not the mortals that raigned If we suppose him to be any other after him it will be hard giving an account how he came to have the whole power of Egypt in his hands and so soon after him it should be divided For Kingdoms are ofttimes made up of those petty royalties before but it will be very hard finding instances of one persons enjoying the whole power and so many Dynastyes to arise after his decease and to continue coexistent in peace and full power so long as these several Dynastyes are supposed to do Besides is it not very strange that no Historian should mention such a former distribution of several principalities so antiently in Egypt But that which to me utterly overthrows the coexistence of these Dynastyes in Egypt is by comparing with them what we finde in Scripture of greatest antiquity concerning the Kingdom of Egypt which I cannot but wonder that none of these learned men should take notice of When the Egyptian Kingdom was first founded is not here a place to enquire but it is evident that in Abrahams time there was a Pharaoh King of Egypt whom Archbishop Usher thinks to have been Apophis not Abimelech the first King of Egypt as Constantinus Manasses reports in his Annals by a ridiculous mistake of the King of Gerar for the King of Egypt This Pharaoh was then certainly King of all the Land of Egypt which still in Scripture is called the Land of Misraim from the first planter of it and this was of very great antiquity and therefore Funccius though improbably thinks this Pharaoh to have been Osiris and Rivet thinks Misraim might have been alive till that time here then we find no Dynastyes coexisting but one Kingdom under one King If we descend somewhat lower to the times of Iacob and Ioseph the evidence is so undoubted of Aegypts being an entire Kingdom under one King that he may have just cause to suspect the â—yes either of his body or his mind that distrusts it For what more evident then that Pharaoh who preferred Ioseph was King of all the Land of Aegypt Were not the seven years of famine over all the Land of Aegypt Gen. 41. 55. Was not Joseph set by Pharaoh over all the Land of Aegypt Gen. 41. 41 43 45. And did not Joseph go over all the Land of Aegypt to gather corn Gen. 41. 46. Nay did not he buy all the Land of Aegypt for Pharaoh Gen. 47. 20. Can there possibly be given any fuller evidence of an entire Kingdom then these are that Egypt was such then Afterwards we read of one King after another in Egypt for the space of nigh two hundred years during the children of Israels slavery in Egypt and was not he think we King over all Egypt in whose time the children of Israel went out thence And in all the following history of Scripture is there not mention made of Aegypt still as an entire Kingdom and of one King over it Where then is there any place for these co-temporary Dynastyes in Aegypt Nowhere that I know of but in the sancies of some learned men Indeed there is one place that seems to give some countenance to this opinion but it is in far later times then the first Dynastyes of Manetho are supposed to be in which is in Isai. 19. 2. Where God saith he would set the Aegyptians against the Aegyptians and they shall fight every one against his brother City against City and Kingdom
uses And although Aristotle in his books de partibus animalium hath said enough to refute the fond opinion of those Philosophers yet none hath handled this argument with more exactness and accuracy and with a more peculiar reflection on Epicurus then Galen hath done in his excellent piece De usu partium Which Gassendus thinks Galen writ with a kind of Enthusiasm upon him adeo totum opus videtur conscriptum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so that all those seventeen books of his on that subject are a kind of 119. Psalm in Philosophy or a perpetual Hymn upon the praise of the great Creator or a just Commentary on those words of the Psalmist Psal. 139. 14. I am fearfully and wonderfully made marvellous are thy works and that my soul knoweth right well In the entrance of those books Galen first shews the great variety of parts which is in several animals suitable to their several natures the horse because of his swiftness and pride hath the strongest hoofs and most curled main the Lyon because of his fierceness and courage hath his strength lying in his teeth and paws the Bull in his horns the Boar in his tusks the Hart and Hare being timerous creatures their parts are made fittest for flight but man because he hath a principle of reason in him hath no defensive or offensive weapons in his body but he hath hands to make use of both which being joyned with and imployed by his reason far exceed all those advantages which any other creatures have being imployed not only to defend himself but to build houses make clothes arms nets whatever is useful for himself or hurtful to those creatures which he hath command over but because man was made for society and civil converse therefore his hands were not only imployed to defend himself or hurt other creatures but for the mutual benefit and advantage of mankind for by these were Laws written Temples built all instruments of Arts framed by them we enjoy the benefit of others wits we can discourse with Plato Aristotle Hippocrates and other antients though at such a distâ—nce from us Now that the configuration of parts is not the cause of the use of them afterwards as the Lyons paw of his courage the Bulls horns of his fierceness or the slenderness of the Hart of its fearfulness appears by this because the young ones of the several kinds of animals before their parts are grown up strive to make the same use of them which the others do As Galen saith he had often seen a Bull-calf pushing with his head before any horns were grown out and a Colt kicking when his hoofs were yet tender and a young Boar defending himself with his jaws before he had any tusks which is an evident argument that the parts were designed for the use and not the use follow the parts So saith he take three eggs one of an Eagle another of a Duck and a third of a Serpent and after they are hatched through a moderate heat we shall find when they are but newly hatched the two first will be striving to fly before they have wings and the third endeavouring to creep away on its belly and if you breed them up to greater perfection and bring them into the open air you will presently see the young Eagle mounting into the air the Duck quoddling into a pool and the Serpent creep under ground Afterwards he comes particularly to handle the several parts of mans body and first begins with the Hand and shews in each part that it were impossible to have framed them with greater conveniency for their several uses then they have The use of the hand is to take hold of any thing which man can use now there being things of such different sizes which men may use it had been impossible for the hand if it had been one entire thing and undivided that it could have held things greater or lesser then its self but it must have been equal to it But now as the fingers are placed and divided they are equally fit for laying hold of objects of any size or quantity For the least things as a Barley corn are taken up with the fore-finger and the thumb things somewhat bigger are taken up by the same but not by the extremities of them as before things somewhat bigger then these with the thumb fore-finger and middle-finger and so on by degrees till at last the whole hand is used so that the division of the hand into fingers is necessary Neither were this enough but the very position of the fingers as they are is necessary too for they had been useless if they had been all divided in a right line for the firmest hold is either circular or at least in two opposite points but now this is provided for by the position of the thumb which may equally joyn with any of the fingers in taking hold of any thing After this he largely shews the patticular necessity of the softness roundness of the flesh and nails on the tops of the fingers and the special usefulness of these and then comes to the bones of the fingers how necessary they are for firm hold and if there had been but one bone in each finger they would have served only for those things which we take up when they are extended but now seeing they have three several joynts they are fitted for all kinds of things for when we bow our fingers we use them as though they had no bones at all and when we stretch them out as though they were all but one entire bone and the several inflections of the joynts serve for all kind of figures and then he shews the necessity of the flesh within the fingers and on either side of them and upon them and so with wonderful accuracy handles the magnitude number figure of the bones and nature of the joynts of the fingers and then the tendons and muscles belonging to the several fingers which after he hath discoursed on through his first Book he concludes it with the manifest inconveniency which would follow in the hand were not every thing in it in that exact magnitude position and figure in which it is With the same exactness he goes through all the parts of the body handling in the second Book all that belongs to the arm in the third the legs in the fourth and fifth the Organs of nutrition in the sixth and seventh the lungs in the eighth and ninth the Head in the tenth the peculiar and admirable fabrick of the eyes in the eleventh the other parts of the face in the twelfth the parts of the back and so in the thirteenth in the fourteenth and fifteenth the genitals in the sixteenth the arteryes veins and nerves and in the last the peculiar disposition and figure of all these parts and the usefulness of the whole design Which is as great as can be in any work whatsoever which is for us to take notice of