Selected quad for the lemma: day_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
day_n	eclipse_n	hour_n	minute_n	17,598	5	14.3206	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28958	A discourse of things above reason· Inquiring whether a philosopher should admit there are any such. By a Fellow of the Royal Society· To which are annexed by the publisher (for the affinity of the subjects) some advices about judging of things said to transcend reason. Written by a Fellow of the same Society.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.; Fellow of the same Society. aut	1681 (1681)	Wing B3945; ESTC R214128	62,180	202

but as the Gospel delivers it I can as little explain by any thing in Nature how God who is an immaterial Substance can move Matter as how he can create it nor would it at all satisfie me to tell me that a Rational Soul moves a Human Body for I do not allow that it gives any motion to the Body but only guides that which other Agents have put the parts of it into And tho it did produce motion in the Body my scruple would yet remain for the Cartesians themselves confess that the power the Soul has of so much as determining the motion of the Body belongs to it not upon any Physical Account but by the particular Appointment and immediate Power of God who would have that Power one of the Conditions or Properties of the Union of the Soul and Body So that to me who desire to have it explained how an immaterial Substance can move Matter and consequently how God can do it it will be no satisfaction to say that the Rational Soul can move the Body 't is joyned to since that Power is referred merely to God's Appointment And the question is how God himself can be conceived to move matter Arnob. I know not whether upon the same Grounds which I do not disallow I may not add that whereas by many 't is looked upon as an inconceivable thing that God should see mens Thoughts to me it appears as little intelligible how he can know their outward Actions For since we have no way of discerning the particular motions of Mens Bodies but by some of our Senses especially our sight and since those Sensations themselves necessarily require Organs duly constituted that is made up of divers parts fram'd and joyn'd after such a determinate manner I see not how we can explain the Perception of visible Objects without an Eye or so much as any Corporeal Organ or Substance especially since 't is and that very justly asserted that the Deity is not united to any portion of matter as the Human Soul is to the Human Body And to these Instances others to the same purpose might be added but that I think it fitter to mind you that of those it already mention'd amongst us there are some that I presume you will judg referable to that which I lately called a possible Modus since it seems toto genere as they speak inexplicable how the Attribute inexists in the Subject and after what manner the Cause can produce the Effect ascribed to it Tim. I know you too well Gentlemen to suspect you mean by this to deny to God either the power of moving matter or that of perceiving all its motions Arnob. You may well take that for granted and you may remember that to prevent mistakes I was careful in proposing my Advice to except those things for which there is some positive proof competent in its kind Pyrocl. One may then without surprising you ask what kind of proofs those may be Arnob. A full Answer to that Question would take up too much of that little time that is allowed us before it grow dark to go thorow the Advices that yet remain unspoken of But yet to comply with you as far as my haste will permit I shall name two or three kinds of positive proofs that may be employed on such occasions as we speak of And first if there be an effect that we discern must proceed from such a Cause or Agent we may conclude that such a Cause there is tho we do not particularly conceive how or by what operation 't is able to produce the acknowledg'd effect Thus tho a man otherwise of a good Judgment being wholly a stranger to the Mathematicks cannot conceive how a skillful Astronomer can many years before hand fore-tell Eclipses to a day and hour and perhaps to a few minutes yet when the success does as it often happens verifie such Predictions he will be satisfied that the maker of them had the skill to foreknow the things foretold in them And so the generality of Learned Men among us who are not so much acquainted with that part of Navigation which some Moderns have by a Greek Name called Limen-Euretica or the Art of steering to Harbours cannot well conceive how a Ship that is for instance in the vast Atlantick Ocean above a thousand miles from any shoar should be so directed as to arrive just at a little Harbor not Cannon-shot over which perhaps neither the Pilot nor any other in the Ship ever saw And yet as little as we can distinctly conceive how such an Art of finding Ports can be framed we scruple not to allow there is such an one because Navigators to the East and West Indies could not without the Guidance of such an Art find the remotest Ports they are bound for A second sort there is of positive proofs consisting of those Consequences that are clearly and legitimately inferr'd from any manifest acknowledg'd or already demonstrated Truth To this sort belong divers Mathematical Propositions and Corollaries which tho being nakedly proposed they seem incredible to the generality of Learned Men and sometimes to Mathematicians themselves are yet fully assented to because they clearly follow from either manifested or demonstrated Truths Thus many cannot conceive how 't is possible there may be a million for instance of Circles or as many more as you please whose Circumferences shall each of them come nearer and nearer to one another and to a straight Line assign'd and yet none of them either touch much less cut either any other Circle or that Line but in one and the same point And yet this is one of the odd Propositions that Geometers have rightly deduc'd as Corollaries from the sixteenth of Euclid's third Element And tho we cannot clearly conceive how two Lines that at their remotest ends are but little distant from each other should perpetually incline towards each other without ever concurring yet Geometricians that is the rigidest Reasoners that we know of have been compell'd admit this in the Linea Conchoides of Nicomedes to name no more But tho not to touch the same strings too often I thought fit to mention these Instances yet whether you judge them sufficient or no you will allow that which may be taken from the endless divisibility of a Line For tho if I misremember not Sophronius told me he took notice to you how unable we are to have a satisfactory apprehension how a short line as well as a long can be divided into more and more parts without any stop yet Geometricians generally admit this because it may be clearly deduc'd from some Geometrical Truths and particularly from the incommensurableness of the Side and Diagonal of a Square And if you will allow me to have once more recourse to Divine Prescience I may add another acknowledg'd instance by representing that Philosophers have admitted that because they judged it clearly to follow from the infinite Perfections of God tho how he can

he demonstrated But Pyrocles to look back to the first part of your Objection tho what you say will hold in ordinary Cases yet such peculiar ones as we are speaking of deserve a particular Consideration About some privileged things there are and about some others there may be contradictory Opinions taking that term in a strict sense maintain'd Now as both of these cannot be true so one of them must be so as tho it be hotly disputed whether Quantity be endlesly divisible yet certainly it either must or must not be divisible without end And as was formerly observed which side soever you take the Inconveniencies will be exceeding great and perhaps there will lye Objections scarce to be directly answered And since one of the two opposite Opinions must be true it will not always be necessary that an opinion must be false which is incumbred with great difficulties or liable to puzzling Objections And therefore if the positive proofs on one side be clear and cogent tho there be perplexing Difficulties objected by the other the truth ought not for their sake to be rejected because such difficulties proceeding usually either from notions that men presume to frame about things above their reaches or from Rules that were not made for such points as are in dispute the Objections are not to be judged so well founded as is that acknowledged Principle in Reasoning that from Truth nothing but truth can be legitimately inferr'd Eugen. I confess I have always thought it reasonable in such Cases to compare as well the positive proofs of one opinion with those of the other as those Objections that are urg'd on either side and there make my estimate upon the whole matter tho with a peculiar regard to that opinion that has a great advantage in point of positive Arguments Because as Arnobius observ'd those are the proper Inducements to the Assent of the Intellect And then the Objections may well enough be suspected to proceed from the abstruse nature of privileg'd things and the over-great narrowness of the Rules that men are wont to judge of all things by For we may have a sufficiently clear proof that a thing is whilst we have no satisfactory conception of its manner of existing or operating our illative knowledge if you will allow me so to speak being clearer and extending further than our intuitive or apprehensive knowledge Arnob. But even about things that we cannot sufficiently understand we may in some cases exercise our Reason in answering objections that are thought not to be at all answerable because they are not directly so For we may sometimes shew by framing in another case a like Argument which the Adversary must confess does not conclude well that neither does the Argument that contains his Objection conclude aright This I could exemplifie tho that may seem no easie Task but that I fear I should want time to propose Examples whose being very paradoxical would make them need much proof which you who I fear are quite tired already would want patience to hear Wherefore I shall rather recommend to you one Observation which I take to be of no small moment and use when we contemplate things of the nature of those we have been discoursing of and it is this that we must not expect to be able as to privileg'd things and the Propositions that may be fram'd about them to resolve all Difficulties and answer all Objections since we can never directly answer those which require for their solution a perfect comprehension of what is infinite as a man cannot well answer the Objections that may be made against the Antipodes the Doctrine of Eclipses that of the different Phases of the Moon and of the long days and nights of some months apiece near the Poles not now to name that more abstruse part of Astronomy the Theory of the Planets unless he understand the nature of the Sphere and some other Principles of Cosmography FINIS Ovied contr 17. Phys Rationem habere inter se quantitates dicuntur quae possunt multiplicatae sese mutuo superare Definit 5. Elem. V. Euclidis * See his Treatise de Sectionibus Conicis