and uses For although the Almighty Wisdom and Power could have made all this Fabrick of the World in its full complement and perfection in one moment and although he produced and perfected Vegetables Brutes and Man in one moment without the gradual procedures through those several stations and degrees which Nature now observeth and so he could have done in the production of all other the Integrals of the Universe yet he seems in some parts of this Processus formativus of the Universe to use sometimes such Methods Means and Instruments and such Times Periods and Orders as might seem to bear in some measure a congruity to a Natural Procedure thus he used that Motion or Agitation of the Spirit for the ripening and influencing of the vast Mass he first begins with the production of those more simple constituent Particles of Matter which might yield Matter suited and prepared to Mixt Natures And it is not unreasonable for us to think that this great flaming Light in the first three days of the Creation was used as a most suitable Instrument for the Rarefaction Digestion Separation and Distribution of the remaining part of the Chaotical Matter in those greater Agitations that it had in the production of the Aether the separation of the Water and the arefaction of the Earth which Processes required a more severe and violent active Instrument than was necessary or indeed suitable to those smaller Mutations which were after made and probably if that piercing and great Lucid Nature had continued its Revolutions about the World it would have been too strong and violent either to the production or conservation of those Animals and Mankind that were now to be produced And so the diffused Light that circulated about the Universe is now this fourth day distributed into these several Heavenly Bodies 1. Because now its use in that former state and method of its existence ceased 2. It was now for the use of the Universe to have it distributed and ordered into those several Vessels the Sun and Stars that might with a gentler and better regulated Heat and Motion influence the World 3. It was now more for the Beauty Order and Ornament of the Universe for the Glory and Honour of the Divine Wisdom Power and Goodness to distribute this Light into several Vessels and according to various measures and proportions and accommodated with several Motions than to keep it in one vast and terrible Body circulating the Universe which unrefracted might have been too penetrating and violent to the other parts of Nature And this seems to be the Method of the Origination of the Heavenly Bodies For though the firt Verse tells us that In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth we have no reason to suppose that the Etherial Bodies and the Heavenly Luminaries were completed in the moment of Time whatever may be conjectured touching the Coelum Empyraeum for it is evident that Light the first-born of the Universe was not made till the first day the Expansum or Aether till the second day nor the Heavenly Host the Planetary and Fixed Stars till the fourth day I shall not here contend much touching the System of the Universe whether the Earth be the Center thereof or the Sun whether it consist of so many several Systems or Vortices whether every Fixed Star hath its Vortex and the Sun the Center of the Planetary Vortex only thus much I shall say 1. That this Diving Hypothesis delivered to us by the hand of Moses seems wholly to contradict the Supposition of Solid Orbs and strongly concludes that the Heavenly Bodies are moved in liquido Aethere 2. It seems rather to countenance that System of the Universe that supposeth the Earth to be the common Center thereof than 〈◊〉 the imaginary Hypothesis of Copernicus Galileus Kepler or Des Cartes 3. That it utterly contradicts the Hypothesis of Aristotle and Ocellus and the Pythagoreans touching the Eternity of the World or of the Heavens and likewise the Fiction of Democritus and Epicurus of the casual Coalition of the Universe by the motion or interfering of Atoms 3. I come to consider of the Fifth Days Work touching the production of Fish and Fowls Vers 20. And God said Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven and God created great whales and every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind and every winged fowl after its kind and God saw that it was good The great Engin of the Heavenly Bodies being now constituted in that excellent state and order for the use and conservation of animal Life God Almighty proceedeth in a most exquisite order for the production of Animals and because the Waters were in themselves a more ductile and possibly a more fertil Body than the Earth and also because caeteris paribus the Fowls and Fishes are not of an equal perfection in their natures to the Brutes or Terrestrial Animals for these have certainly a more digested constitution greater variety and curiosity in their bodily texture and a higher Spirit and Soul of nobler Instincts and more capable of Discipline than the Fowl or Fishes Therefore as the production of Vegetables anteceded the production of Animals so the production of Animals aquatil and volatil preceded the production of terrestrial Animals What may else be said in relation to this Days Work I shall deliver in the Consideration of the next first Part of the sixth Days Work Therefore 4. The first Part of the sixth Days Work comprized the production of Terrestrial Animals Vers 24. And God said Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind and cattel and every creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind and it was so The Reasons why Terrestrial Animals had their production after the Fowls and Fishes have been partly before intimated and shall be here somewhat farther considered And they are these 1. Although Almighty God be not bound or straitned in his Operation to the sequaciousness of the Matter yet it is not improper for us to suppose that he may pursue the Laws of his own making where it consists with his design and intention The production of Vegetables by the Earth was indeed earlier but then the energy of his Instrument the Light perchance was stronger than after the distribution thereof into the Receptacles of the Heavenly Luminaries 2. Ad plurimum the nature of Terrestrial Animals was a more refined nature than that of Fowls and Fishes and therefore as the Matter might reasonably expect a longer mora for its Concoction so the Method of Creation caeteris paribus proceeded from the less elaborate Integrals of Mixt Bodies to the more elaborate concluding with Man And this preference of the Brutes above Fowls and Fishes appears 1. In the manner of their natural procreation the Brutes being ad plurimum vivipara the
answer that imaginary Obligation or Necessity of his nature to do good ad ultimum posse for still it might have been made before any hora signata 3. Consequently the time of the Creation of the World if it were on this side an eternal period could neither be determined by his want of Power nor by his necessitated Benignity agere ad ultimum posse for in that indefinite time within the limits of Eternity no time can be assigned before which he could not have made the World though it be admitted it could not be eternal 4. Consequently there could be nothing that could determin the time or period wherein the World was to have been made but the absolute Divinum beneplacitum there could be nothing without him to determin it for nothing was till he made it nor any thing but his own Will within him that could determin it for his power and goodness were undetermined to do it sooner or later since no time could be assigned for the doing of it but it might be done sooner And when all is done his Beneficence nor the good which the created Beings might receive from that Beneficence had had no imaginable advance or enlargement if the World had been created millions of millions of years before it was and that upon these plain evident Reasons 1. Because though the World had indeed been at this hour ancienter and lasted longer if it had been created a million of years sooner yet the future Eternity or Sempiternity of the World being of all hands admitted though the Eternity à parte ante be denied there will be a future infinity for the emanation of the Divine Goodness and Beneficence to his Creatures 2. Considering the nature of the Beings themselves that partake of the Divine Beneficence there is no advance at all to them by receiving it sooner or later If Plato had been a million of years before he in truth was and had lived his proportion of eighty years he had tasted no more of the Divine Beneficence than if he had lived as he did about two thousand years since 3. Neither is there any difference in respect of the ever-glorious God for he received no access of happiness by the Creation of the World nor stood at all in need of it And if he might be imagined to have received any contentment in it yet he had an eternal prospect of all things as if they had been really made eternally And besides if the World had been myriads of millions of years sooner than it was yet it was still infinitely short of an eternal duration Almighty God had been an infinite duration before without that World which had it been made millions of years before it was yet had not held any proportion to that infinite duration that preceded And whatsoever hath been formerly said against the Eternity of this World doth equally conclude against an eternal being of any World antecedent to this much more against an eternal succession of infinite Worlds either of which can have no certainty nor have any evidence or probability so that as there cannot be attributed an eternal duration à parte ante to any one such supposed pre-existing World so much less to a succession of Worlds The very same Arguments that conclude against the possibility of eternal Motion or the eternal successions of Generation and Corruption or of successive Individuals of Mankind do as effectually conclude against an eternal succession of infinite Worlds and therefore I shall spare the repetition of them The Arguments which I have before used are such as though at the first view they seem intricate yet they have strength of evidence in them and such as are accommodate to the nature of the thing which requires Arguments of such a nature and those Arguments that are more experimental and obvious to sense though they are more easie to be apprehended yet are more easie to be evaded by the Assertors of the Eternity of the World In the before-mentioned Book De Aetate Mundi two experimental Arguments are brought against the Eternity of the World upon which the Author lays some weight 1. That if the World were eternal by the continual fall and wearing of Waters all the protuberances of the Earth would infinite Ages since have been levelled and the Superficies of the Earth rendred plain no Mountains no Vallies no inequalities would be therein but the Superficies thereof would have been as level as the Superficies of the Water 2. That if this World had been eternal there would have been no Rocks appearing in the Seas above the Water whereof there are very many visible for the motion and agitation of the Water doth wear and eat off gradually the roots and other parts thereof as is visible to our observation some whereof have their roots so corroded by the Water that they are ready to fall and others have apparently by that means been either wasted or decayed that now they are not extant which in some mens memory have been standing and if the bredth of a Barley-corn had been consumed in a million of years there had been nothing of them left That these things are true in fact and that the reason why many of these effects are apparent to us to be as they are is because that these Rocks and these Protuberances have not been eternal may bp well attributed to that novitas essendi that finite period wherein they have continued is very probable and evident to him that is satisfied otherwise that the World had a beginning I easily grant But he that asserts the Eternity of the World will find out easie evasions of these sensible Arguments They will tell us and with truth enough that in a great tract even of a finite duration the Earth must have and hath had great mutations That by the eruption of Bituminous and Sulphureous Vapours and the firing thereof these protuberances of Mountains and Hills may be made and have been made in many parts That as Warts or Wenns growing in our Hands are thrust up by the humors ministred by the extremity of the orifice of some Capillary Vein and increase so in the great Body of the Earth such protuberances may be thrust out and gradually increased though not so easily perceptible in one Age and by this means there may be a continued supply of what is successively abraded from them by decursion of Waters That Matter is never lost or annihilated That what is decayed by that decursion of Waters is in some measure supplied by the terrene faeces which that Water brings with it That by continued vicissitudes the Earth is repaired by the insensible descent of Atoms of Matter raised in others places the Atmosphere being evermore filled with little particles and concretes of Matter which are uncessantly discharged upon the Earth and as uncessantly again supplied in the Air by the more gross and terrestrial parts of those Vapours that are raised principally from the Sea and watrish
eternal but must be done gradually and successively and from one degree of bigness to another and since that augmentation could never be of an infinite procedure but being successive we must come to the beginning of that increase within the measure of such a portion of time as we now find sufficient for such a production or increase it may be two or three hundred years which being but a finite duration can never be eternal And this necessary Supposition of a successive alteration or increase utterly destroys the possibility of an eternal duration in any thing capable of such alterations 1. Because it necessarily supposeth somewhat precedent to that state wherein it is namely a precedent alteration of it whereby it is now become what it now is and what before it was not so that it had somewhat before its present state which stateth it to be what it now is namely that alteration or augmentation which so preceded its present state and consequently that present state wherein it is could not be eternal for it had somewhat before it 2. Because that very alteration that anteceded that state which it hath cannot possibly be eternal but must be perfected within a certain portion of time destined to it and consequently must have beginning within the compass of a determinate time and cannot be eternally moving to its accomplishment And as this Instance gives the impossibility of an eternal Existence in any thing essentially alterable or corruptible so it would be possibly more conspicuous in the Contemplation of the Humane Nature If we should suppose a Man to have been eternal Was that Man ever an Embryo a Child a Youth a ripe Aged Man Did he grow from a smaller stature to a greater had he vicissitudes of temperaments and distempers did he eat digest c. If he did not then those eternal Men were not of the same Make with the Men that are now but quite another thing which we know not what it was or where to find it But if he had all those changes he could not be eternal he should be eternally a Child and eternally a Man eternally young and eternally old yea eternally living and yet eternally dead for all these must fall within the compass of Eternity 2. But let us now consider how the Case falls out in relation to alterations and corruptions occasioned ab extrinseco and we shall find 1. That as the World is framed and as those that suppose it eternal must suppose it to have been always so framed there must necessarily be incessant mutations alterations generations and corruptions by the invasion and juxta-position of contrary Natures Agents Patients Qualities Motions the Earth naturally dry is moistned by the vicinity of the Water and again dryed by the heat of the Sun the Earth obstructs the fluidity of the Water by mingling its grosser parts with it all things as it were in continual motion and agitation and mutual preying as it were one upon another which as necessarily occasioneth mutations alterations generations and corruptions as the very intrinsecal dissolubility of the natures of mixt Bodies 2. And as we find this now so we must suppose that this hath been always so since the World had a being unless we shall suppose as I have often said another kind of World than what we see And although we are not acquainted with the state of things out of or beyond this sublunary World in which we see this vicissitude of alterations yet whether there may not be some such mutations in the Ethereal World we know not but there may be such though we cannot certainly know them 3. And yet it is most certain that it is impossible that any thing that is capable of these mutations and changes can be eternally under them but must of necessity if it were eternal consist in such a state of fixedness and permanency that were not obnoxious to these changes 4. And since it is not possible for the inferior World at least to be de facto one moment of time without these changes and variations alterations generations and corruptions which as before are not at all consistent with an eternal duration à parte ante of that that is so subject to changes we have just reason to deny and disesteem this imaginary Eternity can belong at least to the sublunary World The late Author of a Book De Aetate Mundi hath given us an Instance herein that if it would hold we need not go farther namely That the great Rocks in the Sea are yet many of them eminently visible to this day and yet daily experience shews us that those Rocks are gradually diminished by the beating of the Sea against them which had they been so dealt with from Eternity though they lost but one grain in a million of millions of years they would not have been but would have been consumed an indefinite time long since elapsed But the Supposition fails because it may be that these Rocks have at least vicissitudes of increase and diminution by the very alluvion of the Sea or which seems far more easily supposed that the Earth and Seas might notwithstanding have been eternal but yet the Sea might not have kept the same Channel where these Rocks now are from eternity but gained it in time the Ancients telling us that the great Atlantick Sea was for the most part of it anciently a Continent or at least a great Island as big as Europe and Asia and after swallowed up and corroded into that vast Sea called the Atlantick Ocean leaving behind it only those reliques now called the Canary Islands I will therefore take my Instance in some other things 1. It is evident that divers Minerals are bred in the Earth from an earthy consistence by the heat of the Sun and other concurrent causes successively as may appear to any man's observation touching Coals Rocks especially of Stone which from a sandy kind of Earth gradually concoct into Free-stone when they were before Earth as may be seen in many Quarries by those pieces of unconcocted Earth not yet perfectly digested into Stone If the Body of the Earth were eternal either these concretions were also as eternal as the Earth gradually and successively digested into these concretions or else the Earth must have had an eternal permanency in that state of simple natural Earth without any such concretions or alterations in it If we shall say the latter we make the Earth another thing than what in truth it now is which by the aid of the Sun hath these concretions and alterations even by a kind of necessity of Nature wrought in it And besides if in that portion of eternal duration wherein the Earth and Sun were in that very same natural state wherein they now are the one active piercing and digestive by its heat the other passive receptive and stored with materials for such a production What should hinder but that there should be such production gradually and successively
places by means whereof the Water justly pays in process of time what is borrowed from the Earth by a perpetual circulation And that hence it comes to pass that in process of time even to our view Channels that were deep and broad yet by a little time of dryness grow narrow and shallow that those Mountains whose chief substance is Rock become cloathed with a superficial Mantle of Earth and Mould that those places which were formerly filled with Wood have buried the fallen Trees three four or five foot deep in the ground by an accretion or cover of Earth derived to them sometimes by Alluvions or Floods sometimes and most ordinarily by the descent of those Terrestrial Particles that are drawn up together with watry Vapours and either together with those Waters or after arefaction thereof in the Air discharged upon the Earth which doth reparare deperditum And as to those Rocks in the Sea they will also tell us that the vicissitudes of the Sea and Land in a long process of time much more in an eternal duration are very many and various Sometimes that becomes Land which was once Sea as appears in that part of Egypt thorough which Nilus runs long since observed by Aristotle and before him by Herodotus and even in our memory great quantities of Land are now firm and habitable where Ships anciently rode and on the other side many parts are become Sea which were once firm Land They instance in that traditional vast Island in the Atlantick Ocean which is drowned and hath left no Remains of it self but those Islands called the Canary Islands but whether that tradition be true or not it is very probable that by particular Inundations the Face and State of the Terrestrial Globe by great vicissitudes is much changed And therefore though they suppose the Terrestrial Globe Eternal yet the Earth and Water hath not eternally kept the same position or site that now it hath And therefore the Sea so often at least in an Eternal Period shifting its Channel hath not eternally washed the same Rocks that now it doth but after an indeterminate and vast uncertain Period it may be of ten or twenty thousand years leaves that Channel which before it had and gives those Rocks that it wasted opportunity to recruit again and then perchance after a like vast Period of Time visits the same Channel again and therefore though the World might be Eternal the alluvion of the Sea upon those Rocks might not be eternally continued but interpolated And though the Earth be not animated with a Sensible Soul yet it is possible that it may be a great Immortal Vegetable which may reproduce or increase Rocks or Mountains in various vicissitudes of vast Periods of Duration And this they think very probably to be collected by the observation of things and yet if it be not to be proved to be thus yet thus possibly it may be which is sufficient to elude the force of those sensible Arguments And the truth is these Solutions do evade the edge and concludency of those Physical Arguments and therefore much weight is not be laid upon them but upon those of another nature whereof in the foregoing part of this Chapter And there is no way to encounter the Solutions that these Men do or may give of these two last Arguments but to have recourse to what hath been before said namely that since the Solutions are grounded upon a Supposition of Eternal successive Motions whereby by vicissitudes of long uncertain Periods of the Decays and Reparations of the inferior World and by eternal vicissitudes of the translation of the Earth and Seas to several sites either by interpolated or successive Motions And since by what hath been before proved there is an utter impossibility in Reason and Nature of any Eternity à parte ante of continued or interpolated Motion there is likewise an impossibility in Nature that there should be this eternal vicissitude of decays and repairs of the Earth or shifting of stations between the Earth and the Sea And thus we are at last driven to resort to those though more obscure yet more concludent Arguments against the Eternity of the World which are mentioned in the beginning of this Chapter or such as are of the like nature some whereof will be hereafter farther considered Averroes who was a strong Assertor of the Eternity of the World insisteth upon a Reason which is witty but upon a mistake of the nature of eternal duration viz. That if the World were not eternal but created in some certain Epocha or Period it could never have been at all because an eternal duration must necessarily have anteceded the first production of the World and that Supposition excludeth the possibility of such its production and is contradictory to that supposed novitas essendi of the World for infinitum non potest pertransiri an infinite duration pre-existing to the Worlds production could never be passed through so no possible accession to the first existence of the World through the vast compass of a pre-existing infinite duration But this reasoning of his is insufficient because it takes in but a portion of Eternity which is à parte ante whereas that Maxim is to be applied to the full and entire compass of Eternity or Infinitude For if that Argument should hold neither Averroes nor Plato nor any man else could have been born in the World but must have had an eternal existence upon the very same reason that Infinitum non potest pertransiri for it is certain that as well an infinite duration anteceded the Birth of Plato or Averroes as it must do the production of the World if admitted to have novitas essendi And thus much touching this preparatory Disquisition concerning the Eternity of the World in general CAP. IV. Concerning the Origination of Mankind and whether the same were Eternal or had a Beginning IF the World it self were not eternal this Disquisition touching the Eternity of Mankind were needless because decided in that decision Therefore our Inquiry touching the Origination of Mankind and whether it had or had not a Beginning is in this place by way of Supposition or Admission namely Whether admitting the great Integrals at least of the Universe the Heavens and Heavenly Bodies the Elementary World were or at least might be eternal whether yet Mankind were or might be eternal And the Question possibly will be much of the same kind with relation to other at least perfect Animals and Vegetables yea and all mixed or compound Bodies for we shall easily find that admitting those greater Integrals of the World were eternal yet whatsoever is said against the Eternity of Mankind will bear as hard against the Eternity of perfect Animals and almost of all compound Bodies And although for the more orderly discussion of this Enquiry concerning the Original of Mankind I must gratia argumenti and according to the Method proposed admit the Eternity of the great
of that very Scripture which this Man in Complement at least seems to venerate might have remembred That the Tradition of the Universal Flood hath obtained in all places even among the Americans themselves and that the Race of Mankind was thereby destroyed except some few that were preserved That the most severe and observing Sect of the Philosophers namely the Stoicks have constantly held vicissitudes of Destructions of Mankind by successive Deluges and Conflagrations and a new Peopling of the World successively by the Power of God That Aristotle himself insinuates those great Vicissitudes especially of Deluges in those Periodical great Winters which he supposeth to have hapned and for the future to happen in this lower World But of this hereafter And although this Author in his 8 th Chapter of his 4 th Book gives us a computation of a declivity of 600 Perches from the Fountain of Danubius until its fall into the Pontus Euxinus and supposeth the highest Mountains of Armenia whereof Ararat where the Ark rested was the highest doth not exceed the perpendicular height of one Mile above the plain of the Earth and therefore that an excess of 15 Cubits above Ararat would not reach the Head of Danubius or at least the upper Plains of the Upper Asia yet he might have remembred That though it were admitted that usually the heights of most Mountains do not exceed a Mile in perpendicular height above their Basis yet many Mountains are situate in the more elevated parts of the Earth and have the advantage thereby of the height of their Basis and possibly it will be found that the Basis of the Mountains of Armenia is situate in higher ground than the Fountain of Danubius or Euphrates So that an excess of 15 Cubits above their height must in all probability cover the Plain of the Upper Asia Again he might have remembred that Egypt that from the Authority of the Fable of the Egyptian Priest is favoured by him with an immunity from Inundation lyes much lower than the Plains of Palestine yea than the Superficies of the Red Sea it self And therefore the Water that naturally keeps its level neither without a Miracle can lose it which overflowed the whole Continent of Palestine even to 15 Cubits above its highest Mountains must of necessity overflow Egypt which Aristotle by impregnable Evidences concludes to be one of the lowest Countries in the World and the very Production and Accretion of the Slime of Nilus so that if the Flood covered Palestine nothing but a Miracle could protect Egypt from it The Author of the Dissertation De Aetate Mundi cap. 12. though he reprehend the Praeadamitae and confutes the extravagancy of their Opinion yet he seems to mince the Universality of the Flood Nullum itaque relinquitur dubium quin unum tantum fuerit diluvium idque universale cujus apud omnes penè gentes extat memoria Verùm hîc minime probo eorum sententiam qui totum terrae globum it a aquis tectum fuisse existimant ut nulla prorsus extaret ejus portio ad hoc efficiendum multa debuissent concurrere miracula Cum enim universae orbis aquae non sufficiant ad obruendam tam altè terram etiamsi omnia maria siccentur debuissent vel plures aquae creari vel dicendum cum aliquibus istam aquarum molem ex aliis coeli orbibus decidisse demum finito diluvio ad sedes suas revolasse Verùm hoc est piè nugari Deus non facit miracula sine causa Quid opus erat mergere terras ubi nec olim fuere homines ac ne nunc quidem sunt Stultum est putare ante diluvium adeò multiplicatum fuisse genius hominum ut omnes terrae angulos pervaserit c. Ut verò diluvii inundationem ultra orbis habitati termines producamus nulla jubet ratio imo prorsus absurdum est dicere ubi nulla hominum sedes illic etiam viguisse effectus poenae solis hominibus inflictae This indeed salves the necessity of drowning America and the greatest part of the New habitable World when it extends the Flood no farther than there were Mankind inhabiting and confines those Habitations possibly within the Circle of Syria and Mesopotamia And so all the Brutes that possibly in their first Creation were produced sparsim through all the parts of the habitable World as well in America as Asia or Europe were safe and untouched and all those Birds and Fowl that were within 40 or 50 Miles of the Circulus diluvii might easily preserve themselves by flight out of the extent of it yea and the Brutes and Birds which were out of that supposed narrow extent of Syria and Mesopotamia where the Flood prevailed might easily refurnish the same Continent after the subsiding of the Flood without the wonderful and difficult including of their kinds within the Ark for their preservation which if this Supposition hold seems a needless Institution and Miracle by the wise God Gen. 7.1 Therefore I confess I am no way satisfied with this Gratification of that Author to the Prae-Adamitae For first although I take this Flood to be somewhat more than Natural and a thing instituted by the Will of God yet do I not esteem it a thing purely Supernatural or Miraculous neither do I suppose those Waters created de novo nor sent out of the Orbs of Heaven to drown the Earth I do not think the Face of the Earth and Waters were altogether the same before the Universal Deluge and after but possibly the Face of the Earth was more even than now it is the Seas possibly more dilate and extended and not so deep as now the Waters possibly more than now and in those respects more capable of diffusion over the dry Land For though there be many great variations in process of time in the Sea and Land yet it seems that ad plurimum the Seas grow deeper and eat lower into the Earth and consequently more dry Land is daily acquired and the Seas grow narrower and deeper Now to deliver this Supposition of an Universal Deluge from those difficulties and that necessity of multiplication of Miracles which that Author hath substituted we are to consider 1. That we are not to make our estimate of the quantity of Waters meerly by the Superficies of the Sea but by its vast depth which in some places is unfathomable and by those vast subterraneous Receptacles of Water which pour themselves out in several great Ebullitions and Marine Springs Neither is it altogether improbable that the Waters of the Sea naturally tending downward and being of a fluid searching consistency might in process of time have worked themselves even almost to the Center of the Earth and there residing in great and vast quantities and possibly have in a manner undermined much of the appearing Continent of the Earth so that that which the Prophet speaketh may be true literally Psal 24.2 He hath founded it upon
the Continent of Asia about Japan or Cathay so that a Land-passage might be out of Asia into Groenland and thence into America But this is only conjectured and not fully discovered to be so But however the Case now stands with the three known Parts of the World in relation to its contiguity with the Continent of America it is not impossible but in that long tract of 4000 Years at least which hath hapned since the Universal Deluge there hath been great alterations in the situations of the Sea and Earth possibly there might be anciently Necks of Land that maintained passage and communication by Land between the two Continents Many Instances of this kind are remembred by Pliny not only of the great Atlantick Island mentioned by the Egyptian Priest in Plato's Timaeus of a great bigness almost contiguous to the Western parts of Spain and Africa yet wholly swallowed up by that Ocean to which it hath given its Name of the Atlantick Ocean which if true might for ought we know afford a Passage from Africa to America by Land before that Submersion but also many more Instances of the like Variations thus he reports that Sicily was anciently divided from Italy Cyprus from Syria Euboea from Boetia Vide Plin. l. 2. cap. 88 89 90 91. Strabo also in his first Book seems to referr the Straits or Apertures of the Euxin and Mediterranean Seas to the like separations made by the force of the Sea and attributes those great Floods and Inundations to the elevation and subsiding of the Moles terrestris in these words Restat ut causam adscribamus solo sive quod mari subest sive quod inundatur potius tamen ei quod mari subest hoc enim multo est mobilius quod ob humiditatem celerius mutari possit Spiritus enim hujusmodi omnium rerum causa ibi est copiosior Sed sicuti dixi causa horum efficiens accidentium est quod eadem sola alias attolluntur alias subsidunt and he resembles the ordinary Elevations and Depressions whereby the ordinary Fluxes and Refluxes are made to the Exspiration and Respiration of Animals but those greater and extraordinary Elevations and Depressions of the Earth to the greater Accidents Nam diluvia terraemotus eruptiones flatuum tumores subiti terrae in mari latentis mare quoque extollunt subsidentésque in se eaedem terrae faciunt ut mare dimittatur And it is no new or feigned Observation That as the Volcans in the Land as Aetna and Vesuvius raise up those great Protuberances which seem Natural Mountains so the like Volcans or Fiery Eruptions happen sometimes in the Land subjected to the Sea whereby great quantities of Earth together with Fire are thrown up and grow into Islands De quibus videsis Strabonem Plinium in locis citatis And if we may give credit to the Conjectures of Verstegan the Countries of England and France were formerly conjoyned and after separated by the Irruption of the Sea between Dover and Calais And therefore although it may be that at this day there is no Land-passage from this Elder World unto that of America yet within the tract of 4000 Years such there might have been whereby both Men and Beasts especially from about Tartary or China might pass or between Norway or Finland and the Northern part of the American Continent But we need not go so far from home nor resort to the Ages of ancient times for the evincing the great Changes that have been between the Sea and Lands sometimes by tempestuous Winds sometimes by Earthquakes sometimes and that most commonly by the working of the Sea by casting up Silt and Sand and by exaggerations thereby wrought elegantly described by Ovid 15. Metamorph. Vidi ego quod fuerat quondam solidissima tellus Esse fretum vidi factas ex aequore terras Et procul à pelago conchae jacuere marinae Et vetus inventa est in montibus anchora summis Quódque fuit campus vallem decursus aquarum Fecit eluvie mons est deductus in aequor Eque paludosa siccis humus aret arenis The Instances of latter Discoveries which make evident this various state of the Globe of Earth and Water thus described by the Poet are among others those that follow 1. Some Towns that were anciently Havens and Ports where Ships did ride are now by exaggeration of Sand between those Towns and the Sea converted into firm Land 2 3 4 Miles distant from the Sea such was S t Omer in Flanders Old Rumney in Kent Rye in Suffolk vide Mr. Dugdale his History of Draining pag. 173. and the Authors there cited by him 2. some whole Countries as well as the Egyptian Delta recovered to be dry Land partly by the exaggeration of Sand by the Sea or the out-falls of great Rivers thus the whole Country of Holland seems to be an Accretion partly by the Sea partly by the River Rhine Dugdale ibid. p. 12. 3. Some great Continents and Tracts of Ground were anciently firm Land and full of great Woods that could not have less time than 500 Years continuance and yet were afterwards reduced again into the Dominion of the Ocean and after all that re-reduced into firm Land leaving the infallible Signatures of these several Changes though the precise times thereof exceed the Memory of any Men alive Instances whereof are as follow In the great Level near Thorny several Trees of Oak and Firr some severed from their Roots others joyned to their Roots which stand in firm Earth below the Moor and in all probability have lain there hundreds of Years till covered by the inundation of the fresh and salt Waters and the Silt and Moorish Earth exaggerated upon them and the like monuments of great Trees buried in great quantities in the Isle of Axholm about 3 Foot and some 5 Foot under ground whereof there are multitudes some Oaks of 5 Yards in compass Firr-Trees of 30 Foot long Vide Dugd. ubi supra pag. 141 171. Mr. Ray in his Ingenious Observations upon his Travels in the Netherlands c. pag. 6. gives us the like account of great quantities of subterraneous Woods lying 10 and 20 Ells below the Superficies of the Ground prostrate towards the East which are supposed to be anciently thrown down by the irruption of the Sea and strong Western Winds which yet now and for all the time of the Memory of Man or History extant are firm Land namely Bruges in Flanders But that one Instance is instar omnium remembred by Mr. Dugdale ubi supra pag. 172 but of known and notorious truth the Sceleton of a great Sea-fish above 20 Foot long found in the Downs or Uplands of Cammington in Huntingdonshire very far distant from the Sea which is an unquestionable Evidence that the Sea was sometime Master of that Tract of Ground 4. Touching the Conchae marinae of several sorts it is most unquestionable I referr my self herein to the Relation of Mr.
Ray ubi supra pag. 114. seqq wherein he gives us an account of these Petrified Shells found in great quantities within Continents at a vast distance from the Sea and some Shells that are found in the Continent which are strangers in the Ports of the Sea conterminous to those Continents There are two Opinions concerning the Origination of these Petrified Shells 1. Of those that have thought and with great probability that these were left in those places by the Sea either by the Universal Deluge or that really the Sea did possess those places where it left these Relicks and Memorials of it self upon its recess to a more setled Channel And certainly if this be so we must needs suppose anciently another Face of the Sea and Earth than what now is possibly many of these Vallies and lower grounds might be entirely Sea and the Hills and Mountains and other Prominences of the Earth where these Petrified Shells are often found being the Shoars of that great Ocean in those elder times those Shells were there cast up as they are at this day upon the Shoars The second Opinion is of those that think that these Conchae or Petrified Shells were no other than the Lusus naturae the Effects of the Plastick power of the Earth 1. Because they are found at such great distances from the Sea 2. Because they are many times of such a kind of Fabrick as are not to be found in those parts of the Sea that is conterminous to those Continents where they are found some are found in the middle of Germany 200 Miles distant from the Sea at the nearest Scallop-shells are found in the Ditches of Antwerp and yet they are rarely to be gotten on the Sea or Sea-shoar nearer than Gallicia in Spain 3. Because these Shells are ordinarily filled with Stone suitable to the Stone of those places where they are found These and the like Reasons though not evidently concludent against the former Supposition yet have induced many Learned Men to attribute these Phaenomena to the Plastick power of the Earth For my own part I have seen such apparent Evidences in and near the place where I live of things of this nature that I am satisfied that many of them are but the Relicks of Fish-shells left by the Sea and there in length of time actually Petrified and the Instance of the great Fish-sceleton found at Cammington seems an undeniable Evidence thereof And I remember in my youth in the Lisne of a Rock at Kingscote in Glocestershire I found at least a Bushel of Petrified Cockles actually distinct one from another each near as big as my Fist and at Adderly mentioned by Mr. Cambden about 40 or 50 Years since those Configurations of great Shells in Stones were frequently found and for their curiosity as many as could be found were taken up by several persons and carried away since which time for above 20 Years last past there are none or very few found which nevertheless if they had been the Product of the Plastick power of the Earth would have been Annually re-produced And yet I do think that all these Petrifications are not always necessarily the Monuments of the Sea possessing those places as its constant or usual Seat but that many of those Shells arise de novo not barely from the Plastick power of the Earth as some Insects and Vegetables arise spontaneously but from certain Seminal Ferments brought thither which are as it were the Seminium of their production And these Seminal Ferments were first in the Sea and Sea-Waters and might by many means by brought into those new parts of firm Land 1. By the Universal Deluge 2. By the various mutable stations of the Land and fluxes of the Sea 3. By elevation of those Seminal Ferments from the Sea or some desiccated places thereof by the heat of the Sun and discharging them by Rain upon several parts of the dry Land and where possibly those Seminal Ferments might be digested and ripened gradually into these Configurations But touching these kinds of Seminal Ferments and their Energy more will be said hereafter By this digression I mean but thus much namely That we can by no means reasonably suppose the Face Figure Position and Disposition of the Sea and dry Land to be the same anciently as now but there might then be Sea where there is now dry Land and dry Land where there is now Sea and that there might have been in former times Necks of Land whereby communication between the parts of the Earth and mutual passage and re-passage for Men and Animals might have been which in long process of time within a Period of 4000 Years may have been since altered That those parts of Asia and America which are now dis-joyned by the interluency of the Sea might have been formerly in some Age of the World contiguous to each other and those Spots of Ground namely the Philippine Islands and others that are now crumbled into small Islands might anciently have been one entire Continent And if in places that have been long inhabited and observed by Men these mutations have happened as are apparent to our very Senses yet the precise Times Manner and Circumstances thereof are wholly lost to us as in divers parts of Europe is apparent much more the like Changes may happen in those remote and vast Marine Tracts which have been long unknown and unobserved and scarce possible to be observed by Mankind as in the Scythian Atlantick Pacifick and other Northern and Southern parts of the Seas Touching the Second Means namely the Passage by Sea It seems very probable that the greatest and readiest means of the migration of Colonies or Plantations into the Western World from the Eastern was by Sea and the help of Navigation whereof much might be casual by Tempests or contrary Winds but some and the more principal might be ex instituto industria Navigation and the use of Ships is of that great Antiquity that it is difficult to assign when it began to be in use It seems probable that it was not unknown to the Old World before the Flood and yet not in that perfection that it was after their Vessels being not reduced to that perfection as to endure a wide Sea such as the Universal Deluge was neither were they probably fitted with such Stores as might be requisite for so long and unexpected a Navigation as the Flood lasted But the Ark of Noah was certainly a most exact piece of Architecture and might give a Pattern or Instruction for Vessels of great burthen and very probably since that time the skill of Making and Navigating of Ships was much ripened and improved If we consult the Heathenish Histories we shall find Navigation very ancient among the Grecians but especially among the Phenicians Tyrians and Carthaginians Polydore Virgil de Inventione Rerum l. 3. cap. 15. and before him Pliny in his Natural History lib. 5. cap. 57. gives us an Account of
an univocal production For first their first production is strangely numerous out of Putrefaction and much Moisture influenced by Heat Hence Diodorus Siculus in his first Book tells us of the numerous productions of Mice after every Inundation of Nilus sensibly and visibly growing out of the slime Juxta Thebaidem cum Nili cessavit inundatio calefaciente Sole limum ab aqua relictum multis in locis ex terrae hiatu multitudo Murium oritur which Aristotle also observes as frequent in other places lib. 5. de Histor Animal cap. 37. Locis enim compluribus tam inaudito modo oriri solent ut parum ex universo frumento relinquatur And in my remembrance after the drayning of the great Level in Northamptonshire and other Shires such an innumerable company of Mice did upon a sudden in the Summer time arise as it were immediately out of the slimy Earth warmed by the Sun that they were constrained to cut their Banks to drown the Lands and so cure one Inundation with another The like numerous production of Frogs happens in some Years which Aristotle in the first Section of his Problems and Sir Francis Bacon out of him makes a Prognostick of a sickly Year because such Productions are the effect of a great degree of Putrefaction in the Elementary Bodies And we read that in Norway there was not long since such innumerable company of Field-Rats of a new Make produced somewhat larger than Rats that they threatned a general Consumption of all their Fruits but by some extreme hard weather they were destroyed yet so as the multitude of their Carcases produced a noysom Contagion in the Countrey And the like numerous production every Year gives us though some Years more than others of divers other kind of Insects as Flies Locusts Worms Caterpillars and divers others which in some Countries so abound that they cover the face of the ground especially in the parts of Africa quod vide in the 9 th Book of Leo his History of Africa and those additions out of Paulus Orosius and Alvarez in confirmation thereof 2. As this original spontaneous production is very numerous so the multiplication of these Insects by their Eggs or Seeds is infinitely more their Lives are short some dye within the compass of one Summer as the Silk-worm yet a curious Observer of that Insect namely Malpighius hath given us an account of the number of Eggs of one Silk-worm in one Year to be above 500 though all possibly prove not fruitful yet preserved carefully from the injury of the Winter many of them come to perfection the next Spring And it is apparent that the Erucae Caterpillars and Worms we see upon Hedges and Leaves multiply their Seeds to a very great excess and this is much more visible in the Spawn and production of Frogs and also in the multiplication of Mice the blowings of Flies and almost all kind of Insects though their Lives are shorter yet their productions are more numerous and frequent in the short Period of their Lives than the perfect Animals So that if there should not be some Corrective of the excesses of their Productions the whole Atmosphere Earth and Waters would be crouded with their numbers The contrary whereof is nevertheless apparent for the multitudes of one Summer are for the most part exhausted and invisible by the next Spring The Correctives therefore of the numerous Excess of Insects seem to be principally these 1. The Industry of Mankind in destruction of noxious Insects 2. The Wise Providence hath placed a certain Antipathy between some Animals and many Insects whereby they delight in their destruction though they use them not as food As the Peacock destroys Snakes and Adders the Weasel Mice and Rats Spiders Flies and some sorts of Flies destroy Spiders 3. The common sort of Insects are the ordinary food of divers Animals as well Insects as others The Spider and all sorts of small Birds especially the Swallow feed upon Flies the Mole feeds upon Worms Ducks and divers Water-fowl upon Frogs the Cat and Owl upon Mice and thus Insects become the prey of other Animals which correct their excess 4. As the hot and moist temperament of the Air and Earth produce and increase Insects so that temperament of the Air Earth and Waters that seems most opposite to Putrefaction either destroys many of the Individuals or at least renders their numerous Eggs and Seeds unfruitful and resists as well the original Production of them from Putrefaction or abates the Prolifick power of their Eggs or Seeds 5. Great Rains and Showers and Inundation of Waters drowns oftentimes many sorts of Insects and renders their Seeds and Eggs unprolifick or destroys them 6. But especially the Winter Cold Frost and Snow do kill many Insects and their Eggs and Seeds and renders them unfruitful The Cold and Winter season is a great Enemy not only to Insects but to many sorts of Birds Beasts and Fishes and therefore Aristotle most truly observes in his 8 th Hist Animalium cap. 13 14 15 16 c. that to avoid the severity of the approaching Cold many of them retire into the closest and warmest Caverns they can get wherein some lye for many Months without the benefit of Food and if they escape the severity of the Cold they as it were revive the next Spring For instance Serpents hide themselves 4 Months Swallows betake themselves all the Winter to low Vallies and Caverns Tortoises close up themselves in Holes and Earth all the Winter as is obvious to daily Experiences Et Insecta penè omnia conduntur praeter ea quae vitam in domiciliis cum hominibus agunt quaeque prius intereunt quam omnino tempus excedunt And therefore Bees keep themselves close in their Hives ab ortu Vergiliarum till the next Spring And yet though Nature hath given Insects this Sagacity to avoid the Winter Cold yet they are not always successful in it but the severity of the Winter finds them out and destroys them But as for their Seeds or Eggs which in the precedent Summer are laid up and down upon Leaves and in other places they are for the most part destroyed by the Winter except such as casually by the Wind or otherwise are dispersed and lodged in safer Receptacles and thereby survive the inclemency of the Winter and yield a new Production or Increase the next Spring And thus we have seen the Methods and Correctives that by the Divine disposition of these small and inconsiderable pieces of Nature are used whereby at once there is a preservation of the Kind of those little Animals and yet a prevention of that Excess and Redundance which would happen by their numerous Increase to the detriment and surcharge of the inferior World In all this Consideration of the Reduction of Excesses and Increase of Animals and Insects two things are observable in a special manner namely 1. That in the state of Animals and Insects we may see something
of times and yet to be in some sort Periodical and with a kind of stated Revolutions Plato supposeth his Floods to be certis temporum curriculis Aristotle supposeth his Floods to be also Periodical Haec omnia fieri ordine quodam ambitu and again Magno quodam circuitu hyems magna imbrium excessus fiunt bearing some proportion to our Season of the Solar Year Therefore it may be fit to consider what kind of Year this must be wherein this Hyems magna is supposed to happen Seneca as before hath given us out of Berosus some description of the Periods namely when all the Planets shall meet in one streight Line drawn from the Center of the Earth to the Tropick of Cancer then the great Conflagration shall happen and again when they meet in the like position under the Tropick of Capricorn then the Universal Deluge shall happen So that these two Conjunctions divide that Annus magnus into two parts and the Summer-Solstice thereof shall be for Conflagration the Winter-Solstice for the Inundation or that Magna hyems which Aristotle hath assigned for his Periodical Inundations But what is that Magnus annus wherein these Revolutions must happen or what number of Solar Years it contains is uncertain some assigning a Period that seems too short some a Period of a wonderful length Censorinus de Die Natali cap. 10. speaking of this Magnus annus whereof Aristotle's Winter seems to make the Conclusion gives us several Estimates of the same some making them 2484 Years others 5552 Years others 10224 Years others 100020 others 360000 Years and others supposing it Infinite and that such a Conjunction will never happen Macrobius in Somn. Scipionis lib. 2. cap. 11. both describes and determins this Magnus annus to be when all the Heavenly Bodies shall return to the same position as they were in any time given which he resolves to be 15000 Years in which all the Heavenly Bodies shall be in the same position as they were 15000 Years before So that if we should assign the Caput anni to be 〈◊〉 this Day and Year wherein I write at the end of 15000 Years all the Heavenly Bodies will be in the same position that how they are this he calls Annus mundanus Josephus lib. 1. Antiquitat cap. 4. in fine determins that the Magnus annus is 600 Years and yet the Flood happened not till 1656 Years from the Creation which according to the Supposition therefore of Aristotle should be the Magnus annus and that Year the Winter-Solstice thereof Plato supposeth that the Magnus annus animarum is 12000 Years for in that Period the Soul hath run through all the Spheres and Dances of the Gods and Daemons and returns to its first Station and the Annus magnus mundanus consists of three of those Periods namely 36000 Years wherein the Soul of the World hath performed its great Circuit or one Revolution of the eighth Sphere vide Marsil Ficin prolog in lib. 10. Platonis de Republica and then not only all the Heavenly Bodies will be just in the same position in which they were 36000 Years before but all Humane things will be in the same state as they were Alter erit tum Typhis altera quae vehet Argo Dilectos heroes erunt itidem altera bella Ad Trojámque iterum magnus mittetur Achilles The Egyptians had their great Apocatastases viz. 1. Apocatastasis dierum which was 1461 Days 2. Apocatastasis annorum aequabilium which was 1461 Years 3. Their Apocatastasis magna consisting of 25 Apocatastases annorum which amounted to 36525 equable Years which was their Magnus annus canicularis whereunto Manetho accommodates his fabulous Egyptian Dynasties There seems to be another Annus magnus viz. the Motion of the ninth Sphere or Chrystallin Heaven from West to East which though some to make it agree with the Magnus annus Platonicus suppose to be 1 Degree every 100 Years in all performing its Revolution in 36000 Years according to the great Platonick Year yet Alphonsus allows a greater number of Years to that Revolution viz. 49000 Years and others I think more But I think that we shall not be able to fit the Seasons of this Year to the Magna hyems Aristotelica or his Winter-quarter because 1. We know not whether any of these or any other that can be found will suit with these Instances upon which it may be thought he grounds his Supposition for the Incendium Phaetontis and the Flood of Deucalion happened very near one the other as also the Incendium Idae and besides if that Flood of Deucalion had faln within the Winter-quarter of any of these Anni magni it would have had a longer Influence upon the World and extended at least successively to all the several Parts thereof For the Winter-quarter of the Magnus annus Platonicus if it had any thing of proportion to our Seasons must have been a fourth part of that Magnus annus and then it had lasted above 8000 Years But howsoever it must upon the lowest Account have lasted a thirty sixth part viz. 1000 Years and then the Effects thereof would certainly have been more permanent and extensive than to one or two Floods in Greece 2. Again could we know the extent of this Magnus annus yet we can never find the Caput anni when it begins and consequently cannot possibly assign any probable Period for the Seasons of it unless we shall fondly with Virgil suppose it began with the Birth of his Patron Pollio's Son Jam redit virgo redeunt Saturnia rgna Again these must needs be meerly Conjectures and can have no possible Evidence because meerly depending upon Fact and Experience it is not possible that any Man or any Age of Men can give us any Account of any one Revolution of this Magnus annus which amounts to 36000 Years Therefore it seems difficult and utterly uncertain to suppose those Inundations and Conflagrations to be Periodical in any proportion to any supposed time or duration And thus far touching the urging of this Expedient for the Reduction or Correction of the Excesses of the Generations of Men or Animals by Periodical Floods or Conflagrations which though the Generations of Men were supposed Eternal might Regulate and Reduce their Numbers when beginning to be immoderate as our annual Winters correct the excrescence of Insects whose multiplication is far more excessive than that of Men and would apppear so if we had a perpetual Summer yet are reduced to a mediocrity and due equability by the vicissitudes of Winter Cold and Rain CAP. X. The farther Examination of the precedent Objection I Have been the longer in the Explication and Inforcement of the former Objection because as the necessary and sensible Multiplication of Mankind upon the face of the Earth by the ordinary course of Natural Generation seems to be the most sensible Evidence of Fact against the Eternal Succession of Mankind so the Reductives
Origination of Mankind upon the Reasons first given in the beginning of this Tract and I have only subjoyned those Reasons of Fact that might probably bear testimony to the truth of the Supposition and I have endeavoured to shew where the strength and where the deficiencies of those Evidences of Fact do rest and which are most concludent and which not I have concluded all these Evidences of Fact with this concerning the common or general consent of the greatest and learnedst part of Mankind therein and I have concluded with this Evidence of Fact not as if this were entertained by all for 1. It is not without Opposers as Aristotle Ocellus Lucanus and the Pythagoreans and 2. Common Opinion or Perswasion of Mankind especially touching Matter of Fact is very fallible and unstable 3. In this very Matter in question there are by common perswasion of many of these Men superadded certain fabulous incredible and untrue Surmises touching the Manner and the Methods of this Origination appearing in some of the Opinions delivered in the former Chapter But the reason why I conclude with that Instance touching the Opinions of Men is because it lets me into that which is the Second principal Part of this Discourse namely The various Hypotheses of those that supposed admitted or believed this Origination which are in effect all contained in the former Chapter which I intend in the following Discourse to examin Therefore having thus partly out of the common Perswasion of Mankind but principally by the other foregoing Reasons made my Conclusion That Mankind had a Beginning now as I think delivered what may be said for the proof of this Proposition That Mankind had their Original ex non genitis and in some good measure established that Supposition I now proceed to examin the truth or probability of those several Suppositions which are before delivered touching the Means Method or Manner of this Origination And not to examin every particular Adjunct or Explication of these several Methods I shall divide these general Suppositions of the Ancients touching the Origination of Mankind into these three 1. The Opinion That the production of Mankind was ex non genitis was fortuitous or casual such was the Opinion of Democritus Epicurus and some others the manner of the Explication thereof I shall hereafter consider 1. The Opinion That the production of Mankind was ex non genitis was natural and was founded upon a natural concourse of Causes especially the disposition of the Earth and Water and the Influx of the Heaven This was the Opinion of some of the Antients but much improved by some later Philosophers 3. The Opinion That the production of Mankind ex non genitis was by the immediate Power Wisdom and Providence of Almighty God and his meer Beneplacitum This was the Opinion of the Stoicks and differs but very little from the Divine Truth touching Man's Creation as it is delivered by Moses And that which is said either for or against these Methods of the production of Mankind will be also applicable to the production of the perfect Animals that have their ordinary production ex conjunctione maris faeminae and not otherwise though what is said concerning those Animals will be more evident touching Man which is a far more perfect nature than other Animals First therefore I begin with the Opinion of the Epicureans which was in substance this That there were eternally an infinite number of small imperceptible Bodies that floated up and down in a vast infinite Inane and these were the Principia of all other Beings beneath Almighty God these they call Atoms That those Atoms were eternally and casually moved in this infinite Vacuum and by their mutual percussions the great Systems of the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies were framed and concreted That besides that concourse of Atoms that constituted the greater Integrals of the World there was a certain coalition of Atoms that constituted certain Semina or Seminal Bodies for the storing and furnishing the greater Integrals of the Universe especially the Earth and Seas That though the coalition of those Semina were casual and by an accidental or fortuitous aggregation of some Atoms yet these were the immediate primitive productive Principles of Men Animals Birds and Fishes and that determined them in their several Species That those Primordial Seeds thus fortuitously coagulated out of the Prima principia or Atoms were scattered by their Motion into the Earth and Seas That by reason of the strength of the newly coagulated Bodies of the Earth and Water and the heat of the Sun these Semina did bring forth Man and Brutes and Birds and Fishes but that by the decay of the strength of the Earth and Waters that Method of production of Men and perfect Animals is ceased and their production now delegated ordinarily to Propagation though in some places and at some times especially between the Tropicks such a Pullulation of Men and Beasts may be supposed to be That yet to this day the spontaneous production of some sort of Vegetables and Insects continues still in force the Earth and Waters being furnished with a sufficient store of such Semina either of old or daily production and with a sufficient strength by the help of the Solar or Ethereal Heat to perfect their productions That the first spontaneous production of Men and the perfect Animals was in certain Folliculi or Bladders excrescent from the Earth and the growth of these Men and Animals gradual being first Embryones then grown ripe for Birth then breaking out of those Folliculi and furnished with nourishment from the Earth instar lactis till they were able to shift for themselves Touching this Supposition although it contain in it that Truth that I have hitherto contended for namely That Mankind had an Original ex non genitis or That the Generations of Mankind in that order which now it holds was not Eternal yet the Manner or Method of this Epicurean Origination of the World and particularly of the perfect Animals but especially of Mankind is meerly fictitious untrue and impossible 1. The Principia or Atoms of infinite number floating in Vacuo infinito is a thing meerly invented and hath neither truth nor evidence nor probability in it 2. The Motion of these Atoms in this great Vacuum unless first excited or put into Motion by some intelligent active Principle is fabulous and incredible 3. The Coalition of these Atoms by fortuitous strokes or motions and their Coalition into that admirable Order and Constitution which we see in the Universe or greater Integrals of this Mundus aspectabilis is utterly incredible and indeed impossible But these things being beside my present purpose and deserving a large prosecution I shall dismiss 4. Touching these Semina and the Coagulation of them by the fortuitous coalition of Atoms they were driven to this Supposition because they found themselves at a loss if they should have supposed that per saltum their Atoms had
Position of Cardanus and contends not only that it is possible but that de facto it is true The sum of his Opinion seems to be this That although the Soul of Man be of a higher nature and extraction yet the Body and these Powers or Faculties of Life and Sense may be and have been formed ex putredine without the conjunction of Sexes as Weeds Vegetables and Insects And that he meaneth such a Production to be by an ordinary course of Nature he largely insists upon that Axiom of Aristotle Sol homo generant hominem which he understands in sensu diviso and that there is in the heat of the Sun an active generative Principle which in Matter prepared for its operation commonly called Putrefaction produceth a Seminal Formative Seed sufficient of it self for the production of the Humane Nature as also of the nature of other Animals That the Species of Animals are eternal not upon the account of an eternal succession by ordinary propagation but by that succession that would arise in certain great Conjunctions of the Heavens and the heat of the Sun which would be productive of the Individuals of the several Species though all the Species of Animals were destroyed by Floods or other accidents as possibly they might be That although the ordinary Method of preserving the Species of Men and Animals by ordinary Generation be fitted for the ordinary continuation of the Species yet without this Method of production out of prepared Earth Nature were defective and wanted a sufficient Expedient for the preservation of Species upon great Occurrences That although this production of Men and perfect Animals ex putri be not obvious to our ordinary Experience it is not because the Supposition wants truth but because 1. Every place is not fit for such a production but where there is a constant and sufficient heat duly to prepare and digest the Matter But the likeliest place for such production is some unknown place between the Tropicks where the heat is great and constant 2. Because the maturation and ripening of such Productions require longer time than that which is sufficient for the production of Insects for we see greater Animals even with all the advantages of the calor uterinus require a longer time for their formation and maturation as a Man nine months an Elephant two years and consequently their productions without this auxilium uterinum must require longer time Then he gives us a large account touching Insects that arise ex putredine and yet are of the same Species with those that are produced per coitum and that when they are produced ex putri materia yet they propagate successively Individuals of the same kind and that if greater Animals were thus produced they would be of the same Species with the like Animals propagated per generationem ordinariam and would accordingly propagate their kind as many Herbs and Trees arise spontaneously yet are of the same Species with others that are per seminationem and produce Seed and thereby continue their Species as well as others that arise per proseminationem This I take to be the effect of his Position and his Reasons which are very learnedly and smartly refuted by Fortunius Licetus in his first Book de Spontaneo Ortu But yet there was one difficulty which Caesalpinus doth not at all as I remember obviate which yet renders his Supposition utterly inexplicable namely since the Heat and Influences of the Heavens even in their supposed extraordinary Conjunctions must needs be uniform at those times and in or near those Climates wherein they happen how comes it to pass that the same univocal Heat doth produce at that time any variety of Animals why should it not produce only Men as the best of Animals rather than Horses Tigers Lions c. Again on the other side since the disposition of all the parts of Terrestrial Matter is so divers and qualified with infinite combinations of Qualities and Particles how it comes to pass that in these great Conjunctions there are not infinite varieties of things produced but they are determinate in certain Ranks and Species of Being whereas the modifications of the Matter are so various and infinite that the Species of things would be infinite irregular Humano capiti cervicem equinam So that there seems necessary some superintendent Intellectual Nature that by certain election and choice determined things in those determinate Ranks and contained them within it For the heat and influence of the Heavenly Conjunctions and of the Sun being common and universal and the various Particles of the Earth variously modified and qualified there could never only by these means be any determining or containing the Species of Animals within any determinate constant figures or bounds And this we shall hereafter find necessary when we come to consider the determination of Insects also in their several Species Again he gives us not any reasonable Explication by this Hypothesis how the discrimination of Sexes happen how all things thus produced come to propagate their kind and to contain their Productions within the specifick limits of the natures of such Animals all which were necessary to be done to render his Supposition of this natural production of Men or Animals ex putredine to be any way tolerable Beregardus therefore in his 10 th Circulus Pisanus hath refined and rectified this Hypothesis of Caesalpinus and of Pomponatius that went before him and though he can never make out the truth or probability of his Supposition yet he hath rendred it more tolerably explicable especially in relation to the forementioned deficencies I will give the sum of his Supposition briefly as I understand it And it seems thus That the Calidum innatum is that Altrix anima and Princâ—pium seminale sine quo nihil gignitur and is the Basis of Life in all things that have it but yet it is never single and by it self but is the first Rudiment of Life and determined by the particular Species of Life in every Individual that hath Life for there is no vivens that is not either Equus or Canis or Vitis or some other determinate Vegetable or Animal That there are three kinds of this Life wherein it is specifically determined viz. Vegetable Sensible and Rational That at least the two former he means the latter also if he durst speak out are raised out of certain Seminal Principles whereby the Calidum innatum is specifically determined to this or that Specifical Life That these Semina are not eternal because made up of things or Principia that are pre-existing this seems perfectly to agree with the Doctrine of Epicurus before mentioned whose Patronage he seems to take in the Person of Aristaeus yet with some Correctives as is hereafter shewn That there were in Nature various kinds of Calida or Fiery Particles or Spiritus ignei and various kinds of Humida and Frigida these were eternally floating up and down in small Particles and
variously agitated and mingled which made up by this mixture the constituent Semina of Vegetative and Sensitive Natures That in this Constitution of the various kinds of the Spiritus ignei were the constituent Animae vegetabilium sensibilium and the various kind of Humores were the Oleum and Balsamum vitae and according to the variety of these Spiritus ignei which were as it were Seminium naturae were the various Species of these Semina and the various specifical production of Vegetable and Sensible Natures arose from them That the Composition of these Semina was not meerly fortuitous as Epicurus but he gives us a more gentle Explication thereof Praecipua verò planè divina est permistio ista quae in particulas diffringuntur minutissimas quantum satis est ad componendum semen misti alicujus aptissime coagmentantur ut non magis quam par est neque minus illud efficient quippe sunt naturae ad hoc determinatae That these are the Seeds of all living things and they were scattered up and down in the Earth and Waters and that therefore every living Being had its proper Semen for his Origination there lodged That yet till the Matter wherein these Seeds were lodged were conveniently prepared there would be no production of Animals by these Seeds That the Semina of Mankind and of the greater Animals required a greater and more effectual preparation of the Matter or a Menstruum for their production put of those Semina and therefore required the greater Conjunctions of the Heavens for their production though ordinary Conjunctions serve for the production of Insects and Vegetables namely the regress of the Sun That by these Semina of all living Beings though the World were eternal there might be successive Supplies and Reparations of Animals and Men and though the whole Species of Men and Animals were destroyed yet upon the returns of these great Conjunctions and Positions of the Heavens requisite for a due preparation of the Menstruum in the Earth for these Semina their Species would be restored out of these Semina That the Terrigenae might either be produced adulti and so able to shift for themselves or else be furnished with a convenient nourishment from the Earth or that they might be in their first production not like Infants new born but able to get their livelihood as some young Brutes are Thus we have the Supposition of this witty Man also who by the supposition of these antecedent Semina made up of the divers Spiritus ignei and Humores hath supplied what was wanting in Caesalpinus or at least better explicated it and by supposing this mixture of these Spiritus igneì and Humores in their several proportions by something more than a fortuitous means hath something rectified the exorbitancy of Epicurus though still he suppose those Spiritus ignei which were as it were the various Souls of those various Seeds and afterwards of the several Animals produced by them were natural and eternal That which seems to have given the original ground-work of all these Opinions hath been 1. Some Expressions that fell from Aristotle which are before mentioned that seem to give countenance to this Opinion 2. A proud vanity in Men of Wit to resolve all things into Nature and pure natural and necessary Causes unwilling to recognize the interposition of Almighty God and his Beneplacitum in the Origination of things and yet finding too many absurdities accompanying the Hypothesis of Eternal Generations of Mankind ex successivis genitis 3. But principally the Observation of the spontaneous production of Insects and little Animals ex putri materia whose structure nevertheless is as admirable as the structure of greater Animals and that they also being thus originally produced yet propagate their kind by successive Generations have distinction of Sexes and Faculties This it seems principally gave start to this Opinion touching the like Origination of Mankind and greater Animals by a natural spontaneous production And because this Instance of the natural production of Insects is that which as it probably gave the rise to this Opinion for the like production of Mankind or other Animals and seems to be the only experimental Instance that is given to assert the possibility or probability of the other I shall consider it largely under these several Examinations 1. Whether there be any sponte orta among Vegetables and Insects but especially the latter 2. Admit there be yet whether those sponte orta do arise meerly from any natural or accidental Cause 3. Admit they may arise from any natural or accidental Cause yet whether there be any consequence of a like possibility in the Origination of perfects Animals but especially of Mankind 4. Admit it may be possible in Speculation yet how far forth de facto the same hath happened without the interposition of the Divine Power which renders it a supernatural not a natural production CAP. IV. Concerning Vegetables and especially Insecta Animalia whether any of them are sponte orta or arise not rather ex praeexistente semine THere are several Ranks of Being in this inferior World which have various specifical Degrees or Ranks of Perfection one above another The first division of them is into things Inanimate and things that are Animate wherein the latter have another and a nobler Form or if that Word be disliked Nature than the former Of things Animate there are three distinct natures the latter exceeding still not only in degree but in kind perfection and excellence of nature the former namely things vegetable that have simply Life with those operations incident to Life The second sensible that have not only a Life of vegetation but a Life of sense and faculties and operations corresponding to it The third rational or intellectual that hath not only a Life of vegetation and sense but an intellectual Life and faculties and operations subservient and suitable to that Life Among Vegetables as to the purpose in hand there seem to be two kinds or degrees Some are the more perfect which do not ordinarily arise but from Seminal Particles immediately derived from the Vegetable either the Root or the Branch or the Semen formatum of these Vegetables as an Apple-tree or a Rose c. Others seem to be less perfect because they seem oftentimes to arise equivocally neither from Seed Root or Branch of the same Species as well as from it But even in all these there are none but arise from a vegetable Principle and not barely from what is inanimate and for the most part if not altogether from a vegetable Principle or Semen of the same kind 1. It seems that the upper superficies of the Earth at least is plainly a Vegetable Nature and that it is no more forcible Argument to say that the Grass of the Earth Nettles Docks Thistles and such like common excrescences are no more spontaneous productions in the Earth than the Feathers upon Birds or the Hair upon
and fitted for this production which could not be but after some great and long continuing Flood or Inundation that might prepare and dispose the Matter for the Activity of that great Revolution and if these should not meet together or in some convenient nearness the production of Mankind and perfect Animals would be frustrated 3. That in as much as provident Nature hath had for many Ages and yet hath a sufficient Seminium and stock for the preservation of the Species of Men and perfect Animals raised by propagation and the mutual conjunction of Sexes Nature is not necessitated to have recourse to this extraordinary way of peopling and furnishing the World and therefore it cannot be expected but after some vast devastation that may endanger at least the extinguishing of the species of things To these things I say first in general That if Men shall upon such a Method of Arguing go about to establish a Supposition that neither they nor any else have ever known or experimented and make a Conclusion of a thing as natural upon such Suppositions as never any Man knew or heard to produce such effects Men may assume any thing to be natural which yet hath not footsteps in Nature bearing any analogy to it But to the particulars As to the first it is unreasonable to make such a Supposition for since it is not possible for any Man to know whether there be any such Influence of the Heavens to effect such productions unless by Experience and Observations of some Men or some other way the notice thereof were given to Mankind it being a Matter of Fact that can no other way be known but by Experience or Revelation and since the bare beholding of those Heavenly Bodies being of that distance can never without Observation of Events give us any natural estimate of their Effects what they are or may be and since it must needs be granted that such imagined Conjunctions as may be effectual for such productions are at vast unknown distances and such as no Age before hath or indeed can leave us any Memorial of it must needs be a vain and precarious assumption to attribute any natural Efficacy to any Conjunction whatsoever for such a production The Ancient and Divine Historian Moses gives us indeed an account of the Origination of Man and all other Animals but not upon any natural causation or activity of the Heavens or Heavenly Bodies but as he gives us the History of the Things so he gives us the true Resolution of the Cause not a natural but a supernatural Cause namely the Intention and Volition of the Great and Wise God and to exclude any imagination of a natural or necessary Cause of these productions doth not only tell us in express terms that the production of them was by the Energy of the Divine Fiat but also that the production even of Vegetables themselves that seem to have the greatest dependance upon Celestial Influences was antecedent to the Constitution of those Heavenly Bodies 1. As the Supposition of such a Natural Causality in the Heavens is meerly precarious so it seems even to our Sense apparently false for we see every year without any other than an ordinary Conjunction by the Access of the Sun Insects and Plants sponte nascentia do arise and we know that ordinarily in the compass or revolution of 800 or 1000 years very great and considerable mutations happen in the Position and Conjunction of the Heavenly Bodies and we know that within the compass of Authentick History these Revolutions have happened above thrice and since the latest Epocha of the Worlds Inception above five times yet none of these great Revolutions have for any thing we ever knew or heard produced any one Horse or Lion or Wolf much less any one Man as a Terrigena And therefore Experience the best means to settle such an Hypothesis doth not only not warrant it but is evidently contrary to it and denies it 2. As to the second the Mosaical History gives us an account of an Universal Deluge about 4000 years since which lay long upon the whole Earth and the Grecian History gives us an account of two very great Floods namely the Ogygian and the Deucalian Floods and every Year gives us an account of the Inundation of Nilus in Egypt a most fruitful Continent and near the Sun whereby the Soil is made admirably fruitful and there is scarce any Age but some great portions of Land are laid dry by the recess of some parts of the Ocean which had lain covered for many thousands of years before with the sea And as the universal Deluge was as great a preparation of the whole Earth so these particular Inundations and Recesses of the Sea left particular Spots of Land as well prepared for such productions as can well be imagined and yet in no Age have we any Instance of any such production abating the Story of the Egyptian Mice which concrete after the recess of Nilus which yet of most hands are agreed to be Insects and sponte nascentia ex putredine Indeed Beregardus tells us ubi supra out of Camerarius that about Cayro after the reflux of Nilus there are often seen divers Limbs or Parts of Mens Bodies whether this be true or no or if true whether they are not only relicks of some Bodies swept away by the Inundations of Nilus out of their Graves or Sepultures and torn asunder by the furious Cataracts of Nilus is not clearly evident But be they what they will or whether the Lusus naturae yet they make nothing to this matter unless Camerarius or some other had seen those divulsa membra come together and configured into an humane Shape and animated with a humane Life which neither he nor any other have yet affirmed or pretended 3. As to the Third I say 1. If by Nature they intend the great and glorious God that most wise intelligent powerful Being they do indeed in effect affirm what I have designed to prove but do not make good their Supposition of such a Natural Cause as they declare in their Hypothesis wherein they mean only that natural connexion and series of Causes whereby Natural Effects are naturally produced And if they intend by Nature that unintelligent series or order of Natural Causes or the blind and determinate Cause of Natural Productions How comes that Nature to know when and where this necessity of Spontaneous Productions doth happen or in what proportion measure limits or place it is necessary to be done Such a provisional care requires a knowing and perfectly intelligent Being that operates ex cognitione intentione voluntate which is not to be affirmed of Agents purely natural who do therefore act according to a Law of necessity and determination non ex consilio cognitione 2. It is plain that Insects and Vegetables spontaneously produced are produced every Year and their production is as natural as the access of the Sun and the constitution
of the Earth These are procured every Year whether there be any need of them or not and possibly sometimes in greater numbers than is convenient for this inferior World And although it be true that the Divine Power doth intend or remit or manage these Productions secundùm regimen consilium voluntatis yet it is most evident these Productions are ordinary animal and natural without choice or design in inanimate Nature If therefore these Productions be natural and periodical every Year why should there not be as well productions of Men or perfect Brutes if it were purely natural as well as Frogs and Flies since the former may be of more use especially in many desolate places than always the latter How many great and vast Islands and Continents are there especially in Armenia which have no considerable number of Inhabitants if any at all to people them In Ireland there are great store of Wolves and so there were anciently in England till they were destroyed by the Industry of the Inhabitants in Ireland their increase is by propagation without any new production in England they cannot increase by propagation because here are none How comes it to pass that Nature doth not produce new Wolves in England as well as Frogs Adders Hornets and Wasps If it be said that Nature neglects it because they are noxious as this is to make Nature an intelligent Agent so it answers not the difficulty For why doth she then not destroy the Species in Ireland upon the same account But this is but a vanity Nature as well intends the existence of a Wolf as of a Sheep where the means of its production is equal though Mankind prefer the latter as more useful to him If any thing therefore of this deliberative nature be to be found in the voluntary and intentional Regiments of things of this kind it is to be attributed to the great and supreme Rector of the World who doth work according to Counsel Wisdom and Will Upon the whole matter therefore I conclude That as well by the reason of the thing and upon true natural congruity as also de facto and upon experimental Observations Mankind no nor the perfect Animals are not produced nor producible by any meer natural Cause as at this day or in any Age or Time since their first Creation otherwise than by a natural production which is the Truth asserted by the Great Verulam in his 9 th Century in fine As for the Heathen Opinion which was That upon great Mutations of the World perfect Creatures were first ingendred of Concretion as well as Frogs Worms and Flies and such like we know it to be vain but if any such thing should be admitted discoursing according to Sense it cannot be except you admit a Chaos first and a commixture of Heaven and Earth for the Frame of the World once in order cannot effect it by any Excess or Casualty And as thus neither Casualty nor bare Nature cannot originate Mankind or any perfect Animal ex putri so much less can Art The Chymists tell us that by re-union of separate Principles of Vegetables they will in a Glass revive a Vegetable of the same species at least in figure and effigies this hath been pretended but I could never hear any Man speak it that saw it done But never was any so mad except Paracelsus that could ever pretend to make up a Sensible Being much less the Humane Nature Paracelsus vainly and falsly pretended to the raising of an Homunculus but yet not without the help of those Naturales geniturae utriusque sexus wherein notwithstanding he lyed as he did in many things else which he never could effect notwithstanding his vain boasting of his Skill Upon the whole Matter therefore I conclude That the Origination of Mankind or of the inferior perfect Animals neither was nor could be the Effect of Humane Art or Skill as Paracelsus nor of Chance or Casualty as Epicurus nor of Nature as Cardanus Caesalpinus and some other Recreants in Religion and Philosophy But it was the free powerful and wonderful Work of the God of Nature who made all things by his Power and Wisdom and having made them lodged in them and for them that pre-ordained Law of their Creation and Existence which we commonly call Nature That Nature indeed is the Law or Rule instituted and implanted by the wise and glorious God in things when made but in the first Effection of Mankind God Almighty not Nature was the Author As in my Watch the Law and Rule of its Motion is the Constitution and Position of its Parts by the Hand and Mind of the skilful Artist but the Author or Efficient of my Watch is the Artist himself and not that Motion that is as it were the Law or Rule of the Engin. SECT IV. CAP. I. Concerning the last Opinion attributing the Origination of Mankind to the immediate Power and Will of Almighty God IN the foregoing Section and Chapters I have performed these things 1. I have removed the Supposition of an Eternal Existence of the Humane Species as altogether incredible and indeed impossible 2. I have established consequently this Truth That the Species humana had a beginning and this I have done principally upon natural Evidence of the incompossibility of an Eternal Existence of successive Generations 3. I have considered those Evidences of Fact or Moral Evidences of the Inception of Mankind and removed such as seem more fallible and less concludent and subjoined such as seem to be of greater weight 4. Among these of the latter sort I have considered the general Tradition thereof both of the unlearned and learned part of Mankind wherein among others I have considered the Opinion of those Famous Sects of Philosophers the Platonists Epicureans Peripateticks and Stoicks 5. Though I have made use of their common Suffrage in order to the Proof of the Origination of Mankind yet I have not allowed all their several Notions or Hypothesis touching the Method or Manner of their admitted Origination of the Humane Nature And therefore 6. I having thus established the Thesis in general I have descended to the Examination of the particular Hypotheses taken up by various Philosophers touching the same Origination And those I have distributed into these three Ranks 1. Those that suppose an accidental or casual Production of Mankind which was principally the Opinion of the Epicureans This Opinion I have examined and rejected as vain 2. Those that suppose this Production to be Natural or by the bare Concurrence of Natural Causes as Avicen Cardan and some others which I have likewise examined and rejected as utterly inevident and false 3. There remains therefore the third Opinion that attributes the Origination of Mankind to the immediate Power and Beneplacitum of the Supreme Intellectual Being namely Almighty God and this was the Opinion of divers of the Platonists and Stoicks This Opinion is in the general true and agreeth not only with the Divine
this time it is apparent there were no Clouds neither had it rained upon the Earth Gen. 2.6 It seems therefore that this Expansum rendred here Firmament is nothing else but that limit or boundary between the more refined liquid nature which we usually call Air and Aether and the grosser or fluid Element properly called Water So the Firmament was nothing else but that Expansum of Air and Aether that are contiguous to the Superficies of the Water The Reasons that induce me so to think which also explicate the Notion of the Supposition are these 1. Because frequently both in the Language of the Holy Scripture and of divers of the ancient Heathen Authors the whole Diaphanum of the Air and Aether is in one common appellation called Heaven which is the denomination here given to this Expansum God called the Firmament or Expansum Heaven thus we have frequent mention of the Fowls of the Heavens the Clouds of Heaven which yet are situated in that part of Heaven which is the Aiery Region And again here Vers 14. the Sun and Moon are said to be great Lights placed in the Firmament of the Heaven which are yet placed in a Region of the Aether though above the Atmosphere and the region of the common Air yet are far below that liquid region of the Aether wherein the Stars move and Vers 20. the Fowls habitation is said to be in the open Firmament of Heaven which yet fly no higher than the lower region of the Air. So that the Heaven and the Expansum here called the Heaven seems to be that great Expansum of the Diaphanum including the more sublime and pure part thereof called the Aether and the grosser and lower part thereof called the Air and the Waters above the Firmament were that refined rarified liquid Matter which was Aether and Air and the 〈◊〉 Waters below the Firmament were those gross and fluid parts of Nature called ordinarily Water 2. Because it appears Vers 9. that the Waters which were gathered together in the Constitution of the Air were the Waters under the Heavens Waters that were next contiguous to that common Expansum consisting of Air and Aether called Heaven there was nothing interposed between that fluid Water which constituted the Sea and that common Expansum called Heaven consisting of Air and Aether 3. It seems that the great Moles Chaotica was in its appearance and external consistency of a waterish nature for it is said that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Waters which though it contained the confused Mass of all things as well those that grew into a more solid consistence as the more reformed or subtil Matter yet in its first deformed exhibition of its appearance it had the shape of Water and therefore Plutarch de placitis Philosophorum lib. 1. cap. 3. tells us that Thales Milesius held that Water was the common Principle of all things which Position he learned partly by the Analogy that he found therewith in things existing whose first Rudiments and last Resolution seems to be a watry or fluid substance and partly by Tradition from the Egyptians or rather from the Hebrews whose first habitation was in that Country And the manner of the resolution of this Aqueous appearance into Aether and Air seems to be this This great aqueous Chaotical Mass contained in it Particles of various natures some more feculent and gross as the Earthy Particles which floated up and down in it till they were driven down by the Fire and Heat or otherwise by some disposition 〈◊〉 or agitation of that Incubation of the Spirit of God were disposed and subsided in the middle of this Aqueous substance which became in time the Moles terrestris Other parts less feculent than these resided in a Region or Circle next to that grosser and more feculent Sediment but by virtue of the Divine Disposal the Incubation of the Spirit and the Energy and Efficacy of that great circulating Fiery Nature which was maintained in a continued rotation about the Massa Chaotica called Light and that internal hot and fiery Nature that still resided within the Body of the Massa Chaotica the more subtil and pure particles of this Watrish Matter were separated divided and exhaled from it and constituted that Consistency that is called the Air and Aether here called Heaven And this diaphanous Body of the Air and Aether thus extracted from the Water varied in degrees of Subtilty or Rarity according to the degrees of its elevation the more high and elevated parts being more pure according to the degrees of their ascent and the lower more feculent and thick and filled with more gross Exhalations and Vapours arising from the contiguously subjected parts and therefore it is said Gen. 2.6 There went up a mist from the earth and watered the face of the ground And I am farther induced to think that those Waters above the Firmament or Expansum were no other than this Aether and Air raised and separated from the Massa Chaotica upon these Reasons 1. Because there seems to be a great congruity between the Water and the Air in their quality of liquidity or moisture 2. Because there seems to be a more connatural Transmutation of either into other the Air and for ought I know the Aether which is but a purer sublimated Air by condensation easily re-assuming the nature of Water and the Water by heat and rarefaction easily assuming the nature of Air and by the continuance and constancy of that heat containing it self in that consistency And from hence it is that the Waters were the common material Principle of both the Fishes and Fowls And if we may conjecture that great Inundation Gen. 7.1 was not by a new Creation of Water but by the wonderful and powerful Condensation of the Region of the Air which seems to be that opening of the Windows of Heaven whereby great portions of the Aerial and Etherial Matter discovered themselves to be Water 3. Because we have no other part of Holy History that gives us an account of the production of that vast Continent of the Air and Aether out of the Chaotick Mass but this place And here we must observe once for all That there was no Creation of Matter after the Beginning it was all created in that moment of Beginning 2. That from that Creation till the first Day wherein Light was produced there was that continued preparation impregnation disposition and agitation of Matter by the Spirit of God 3. That all the Productions of the Six Days except the Creation of the Soul of Man and Angels were not by any new Creation but by separation of the parts of that pre-existing Matter formation of them and composition and effection of Beings out of the first created disposed and ordered Matter by the Power of Almighty God and the influencing them with those active Principles which we usually call Forms Energies and Active Qualities 3. The Third great Integral of this lower
World especially in the Work of the third day was the dividing of the Earth and Waters Vers 9. And God said Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together and let the dry land appear and it was so and God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he called seas The Divine Historian herein brings us to the Formation of this lower Globe of Water and Earth and the distinction thereof This portion of the lower World seems to be the whole residue of the visible Chaotical Mass which by the former Rectification was reduced to a small portion like the Caput mortuum after Distillation for out of it had been before drawn those two mighty and large portions of Matter namely the Fiery and Flammeous and Lucid Nature imbodied in a Vehicle sufficient to contain and receive it in the Work of the first day and secondly the Expansum the vast Body of the Air and Aether in the Work of the second Day So that this Elementary portion of Earth and Water seems to be as it were the sediment and relique of the Massa Chaotica And those other two vast Extractions being drawn from it it seems this lower Region of Nature consisting of an aggregation of Water and Earth by the Divine Disposition of things either immediately or partly by the instrumentality either of the ambient Fire or by the implanted tendency of the grosser Particles to one common Center of this residue of a Chaotick Mass the gross Terrestrial parts subsided into the middle of the Water and though it was in bulk far greater than the Water yet it had there two concomitants with it 1. The Water by reason of its fluidity and penetration mingled it self as far as it could at least with the superficies of the Terrestrial Sediment to some considerable depth into it so far as it could pierce until it were excluded by the denser coagulation of the Earth 2. The Water did encompass the whole Terrestrial Globe to some proportionable depth or thickness though not equal to the quantity of the Earth So that as the circular Scales of a Pearl incompass one another so did the several extâ—racted great Integrals cover one another The first extracted Nature was the Light the Fiery or Luminous Body which must needs be uppermost because first drawn off from the Chaotick Mass The second the Aether and Air drawn off encompassing the remaining part of the Chaotick Mass The third the Watry Consistence left in a circular subsistence by the subsiding of the Ball of Earth into the common Center of the Universe And by this means the Earth was not at all conspicuous but involved in an involucrum of Water so that it must necessarily be 1. That hereby the whole Superficies of the Earth was covered with Water 2. That the upper part of it must needs be a moist muddy substance fluid and lubricous like Slime or Mud. The appearance therefore of the dry Land was by the excavation of certain Sinus and Tracts of the Earth and exaggerating or lifting up other parts of the Terrestrial Matter and by this means the Water subsided into those Caverns and Valleys prepared for its reception Whether this excavation of the Terrestrial Body or elevation of other parts thereof whereby the Water subsided were immediately by the immediate Power of God or whether he did it by the instrumentality of the Water working room for it self in the more soft and penetrable part of the Earth and exaggerating and raising Islands and Continents in other parts by such exaggeration as we see is done at this day by the Ocean producing Islands and enlarging Continents Or whether by the instrumentality of the Fire either subterraneous or ambient raising up the Earth or what other immediate way it was done most certainly it was done by the Will Direction and Regiment of the Divine Wisdom and Power so that it is truly said Job 38.10 He brake up for it its decreed place Prov. 8.28 He gave the sea its decree that the waters should not pass his commandment Hitherto the Divine History hath given us an account 1. Of the Materia prima of all Corporeal Beings the Massa Chaotica 2. The Materia proxima or secunda of all other Corporeal Beings being the simple Elements and the next Matter of all Mixtions or Composition 3. The Natura ignea calefactive lucid and penetrating the Elementary Matter 4. The Natura aetherea and aerea the Expansum 5. The Natura aquea or the Water 6. The Natura terrestris or the Earth And then he proceeds to those mixed or compounded Natures drawn out of those or some of those simpler Existences the Furniture of the Earth and Heaven I shall therefore now proceed to his Description of the Production of Mixt Natures and Vegetables in part of the third day Celestial Bodies in the fourth day Fish and Fowls in the fifth day Brutes and Man in the sixth day 1. Therefore touching the production of Vegetables Vers 11. And God said Let the earth bring forth grass the herb yielding seed and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after her kind whose seed is in it self upon the earth and it was so Here we have the beginning of the Vegetable Nature and mark what I say concerning this will be applicable with some variation to the Brutes and Fish We have three sorts of Vegetables here described 1. Some that seem to be of the lowest rank and such as we do find oftentimes sponte orta the Grass 2. Those Herbs that are of a more perfect nature which as they bear Seed so they do not usually arise but by it 3. Trees bearing Fruit and Seed being the nobler sort of Trees but this includes all kind of Vegetables as well Trees that bear not Fruit or Seed as those which do In the production of these Vegetables these things are observable 1. The Supreme Efficient the Word of Command of the Divine Will was that which was the Supreme productive Efficient 2. The subordinate Instrument germinet terra wherein we have these two great Truths delivered 1. That the Earth yielded the Matter of Vegetables 2. That the Earth was now impregnated to be an active Instrument to this production and concurred therein at least instrumentally with the Supreme Efficient and that Activity that was in the Earth did not arise meerly from the Matter for that in the beginning was purely passive but 1. by the Fecundating Principle the Spirit of God moving upon the Face of the Chaotick Matter 2. by the powerful Energy of the Fiery and Luminous Principle that partly resided in the Earth partly incompassed it 3. but principally by the Efficacy of the Word of the Divine Command which was no other but the determination of His Efficacious Will 3. But though the more solid Matter of these Vegetable Productions was the Earth yet it was the Earth conjoined with that vigorous Fire which was mingled with that active Air or Aether that was
interspersed in it and that fruitful Water which remained conjoined with it 4. That this Production was not by any formed antecedent Seed dispersed in it but immediately the Vegetable Individuals were antecedent to any Semina that might be productive of it and according to the true Method of Existence of Things in their first Origination the Herb and Tree were the Cause the Original of the Seed the Seed was not the Original of the Herb or Tree though in the secondary production by generation the Semen precedes the thing generated according to the Order settled after the first production of things which doth reasonably solve the Dispute of Plutarch Whether the Hen were before the Egg or the Egg before the Hen And as the Supposition that the first Principle in the Origination either of Vegetables or Sensitives to be ex praeexistente semine seems incongruous and unreasonable I mean as to perfect Vegetables or Animals so it is idle and needless For certainly the same Infinite Power that could form a Semen univocum to be the immediate Principle of an Animal or Vegetable in the primordial Origination of them could with equal facility form perfect Individuals of the several Species and endue them with a prolifick power of propagation of their kinds by seminal Principles decised from them and no lesser Power and Wisdom was required to mold up a specifical operative Semen than to frame the Individual or Species to be produced by it 5. The Supreme Power of the Great Efficient of Vegetables as well as Animals was seen in this in that it determined their Species which Matter alone nor any Universal Cause purely natural could never have done in respect of their universal common indeterminate Nature which could never fix nor settle in any determinate specifick production Therefore in that the Individuals of Vegetables Fish Fruits and Birds as well as Men were made after their kinds it ascertains us that this Origination of things was by a Wise Free Intelligent Being full of Power and Wisdom acting secundum intentionem electionem voluntatem 6. By virtue of this Divine Intention Ordination and Command these three things were settled touching Vegetable Natures which is also true concerning Animals as to the two latter of them at least 1. The Earth was endued with prolifick vital Energy whereby it was enabled with the vigorous assistance of the Fiery Nature included in it and accompanying it to put out many spontaneous productions of some ordinary Vegetables and probably of some Insects and to exhibit a succus nutritionis to support all kind of Vegetables and many Animals in their vital existence 2. The Individuals of Vegetables of all sorts as also of Animals Fishes Fowls Insects and Man were in a moment of time produced in their full and perfect complement laden with their Fruit and Seed without ruining the natural gradual process of Maturation which was to ensue in the course of future Generations and this could not be done either by force of any natural fecundity that was then in the Earth or the bare strength of the formed natural accommodation of Light or Heat for though it be true that the natural fecundity and heat of some Climates and also artificial fecundations of Matter may conduce much to the acceleration of Maturity yet it is hot imaginable that these could be ripened into the full growth and burden of Fruit in the period of a Day but by virtue of a supernatural Efficient and Power namely the Energy of the Divine Command Germinet terra c. 3. The third admirable Demonstration of the Immediateness of the Divine Power Wisdom and Ordination is this That Vegetables as also Animals and Mankind were endued with a Power Faculty and a certain Law fixed and radicated in them to transmit their specifical Nature to succeeding Individuals by propagation and seminal traduction whereby their Species might be preserved and this was done by force of the Divine Institution and Benediction the Vegetables were produced with their various Semina in them ready formed for their several specifical productions in their full and perfect stature quasi per saltum and endued with a prolifick power of multiplication of their kind by virtue of that Soveraign Institution and Commission Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth Gen. 1.22 28. 2. I come now to the Fourth Days Work Verse 14 15 16 And God made two great Lights the greater Light to rule the Day and the lesser to rule the Night and he made the Stars also It is true what I before observed that first Matter of all things corporeal was made and this only was properly Creation or making out of nothing and all corporeal things that were made within the compass of the Six Days was Creation only per analogiam for it was only separation and distribution of that Matter which before existed in the Materia Chaotica or else an elevation or rectification of some parts of that Matter or a composition out of it or of some parts of it it was effectio or creatio secunda not creatio prima and though the Word Create be applied to some things that were thus effected as Vers 21. yet it is not purely creatio prima or ex nihilo but creatio secunda ex praeexistente materia Now What was the Matter of these Heavenly Bodies the Sun the Moon the Stars for in this Fourth Day all the Matter of the Chaos was before distributed into these four Simpler Natures Light or Fire Air or Aether Water and Earth The first Matter of these Heavenly Luminaries therefore was the common Chaotica materia but the Materia proxima out of which they seem to be constituted were principally those two great Natures which were separated from the Chaos the first day viz. The Fiery Nature imbodied in a suitable Vehicle and the second day the Aether or Aery part these two great Integrals of the first Universe were far greater than all the rest of the Chaotick Matter and therefore might very well subminister the principal and predominant Matter for those great and vast Luminaries the fixed Stars the most whereof are far greater than the Globe of Earth and Water But to the Constitution of the Planetary Bodies which seem to be more gross than the Stars there was a greater proportion of more gross and feculent Matter added to the Fiery and Aerial Particles in their coagulation though in some of them more in some less according to the various degrees of subtilty and grosness of their constitution And these goodly Bodies being formed and molded it should seem that that great and mighty flaming Light which was made or produced the first day and for the two ensuing days had rolled about the rest of the Chaotick Mass was by the Glorious God distributed into those several Heavenly Vessels of the Sun and Stars who succeeded unto and as it were inherited that primitive Light now divided among them according to their several measures
others arising ad plurimum ex ovo 2. In the great variety of their bodily composure the texture of the Bodies of Brutes being far more curious and fuller of variety than others 3. Ad plurimum the animal Faculties of the brutal Soul are far more perfect than those of others their Phantasies and Memories refined they have greater and more lively Images of Reason and more capable of Discipline than either Fowls or Fishes Now touching the production of Animals whether Terrestrial Aquatil or Volatil we may observe that they are in the ordinary course of Nature of two kinds Some which arise among us no otherwise nor in any other manner than ex semine which we usually call perfect Animals and arising by univocal generation others there are that be imperfect arising spontaneously in the Earth Air and Water as Worms Flies and some sort of small Fishes and watry Insects This being premised I shall now set down some Suppositions which seem to me truly to explicate the production of these Animals which are these that follow 1. Although the predominat Matter in the constitution of Fowls and Fishes were Water and in the constitution of Terrestrial Animals were Earth yet that Water nor that Earth were not simply such but were mixed and impregnated with the other Elementary Principles 2. That all the Species of perfect Animals of all kinds were constituted in their several Sexes in the fifth and sixth day of the Creation but yet we must not think that all those kinds which we now see were at first created but only those primitive and radical Species How many sorts of Animals do we now see that yet possibly are not of the same Species but have accidental diversifications as we may observe in the several Shapes and Bodies of Dogs Sheep Pyes Parots which possibly at first were not so diversified some variation of the same Species happen by mixt Coition some by diversity of Climates and other accidents 3. That the first Individuals in their distinction of Sexes were not produced according to those Methods of Nature which they now hold nor ex aliquo praeexistente semine but by the immediate efficiency of Almighty God out of the Matter prepared or designed for their Constitution 4. That they were made in the first instant of their Constitution in the full perfection and complement and stature of their individual and specifical nature and did not gradually increase according to the procedure of animal augmentation at this day and the reason is because those gradual augmentations arise from the Seminal Principle which gradually expands it self to the full growth but here they arose not from any such Seminal Principle but the Hen was before the Egg. 5. There was no mean portion of Time between their Formation and Animation but both were together they were living Beings and living Souls and living Creatures as soon as they were formed 6. That consequently the Formation of the Body of these Animals was not as now it is by the Formative Power of the Soul which must needs be gradual and successive as we see it is and must be at this day in all natural Generations but the Formation and Information of them was by virtue of the immediate Fiat Determination or Ordination of the Divine Will 7. That in their Origination the Species of these Animals were determined neither from the Matter nor from the universal Cause the Celestial Heat but by the Divine Intention and Ordination 8. That by the same Divine Ordination and Intention the Faculties specifically belonging to every Individual were annexed and alligated to it especially the power conficiendi semen prolificum speciei propagandae ex mutua utriusque fexus conjunctione 9. That although by the Divine Power and Ordination all these perfect Animals did arise from the Earth yet that Prolifick Power of propagating of them was never delegated or committed to the Earth or any 〈◊〉 other Casual or Natural Cause but only to the Seminal Nature derived from their Individuals and disposed according to that Law of propagation of their kind alligated as before to their specifical and individual nature And therefore it its perfectly impossible that any of these perfect Animals can be casually or naturally or accidentally produced by any Preparation of Matter or by any Influence of the Heavens without the miraculous interposition of Almighty Power because the Earth or those Influences have not this power concredited to them but their production is irresistibly alligated to the Semen innatum and conjunction of Sexes the Earth can as naturally produce a Sun or a Star as it can a Man or a perfect Animal 10. Whether those imperfect or equivocal Animals were created or no it is not altogether clear possibly some might be then produced whose kinds were likewise producible spontaneously after but it seems beyond contradiction that all were not 11. As by virtue of that general Commission or intrinsick Prolifick Power given to the Earth to produce spontaneous Herbs as Grass c. it doth naturally produce such Herbs so by virtue of that common Commission given by Almighty God to the Earth and Water and to that Spirit of Nature diffused in it it doth naturally produce those equivocal insect Animals which arise out of them The same Law of the Creator that hath eternally excluded or rather not committed to the Earth or Water the power of producing perfect Animals hath given and committed to them by concurrence of that Vital Heat of the Sun and the common Spirit of Nature residing in them a Productive Power of some equivocal insect Animals in Matter fitly prepared Touching therefore the Origination of Insects I shall declare my thoughts as followeth 1. That by virtue of the Divine Fiat the Earth at first did produce some Individuals of several kinds which is imported under the words Every creeping thing after its kind 2. That as I have before shewn the greatest part of the Insects that are commonly produced and seem to be spontaneous productions are yet the univocal and seminal productions of Insects of the same kind 3. That yet it is a certain Truth that some Insects are and have an Origination since the first Creation without any formal univocal seminal production some out of Putrefaction some out of Vegetables some by very strength and fracedo of the Earth and Waters quickned by the vigorous Heat of the Sun which infuseth into some Particles of Matter well prepared and digested a kind of Vital and Seminal Principle Some have thought the very Sun and Earth are endued with a Vital yea and with a kind of Sensitive Nature and thereby enabled as it were to spin some prepared Matter into vital and sentient Semina for those insect Animals But we shall not need to trouble our selves with that incertain Speculation we are sure that the greatest part of the Superficies of the Earth being daily and hourly impregnated with the corrupted and dissolved Particles of Vegetables and Animals is
at least highly prepared for the spontaneous production of Insects and Vegetables of some kinds and the benevolent Heat of the Sun hath a great influence thereupon to be the Instrument of Almighty God in these Productions but it is his Sovereign Institution that committed to the Sun the Earth and the Waters and their Particles to produce some insect Animals and therefore they produce them as Worms Flies Frogs but he hath not concredited or committed to them that primitive Productive Power of perfect Animals nay not of some noble Vegetables fine praeexistente semine univoco Thus we have considered the History of the Worlds production and the reasonableness thereof Now to the production of Terrestrial Animals for of the Creation of Man I shall speak in the next Chapter It is true that there are two sorts of natural Integrals whose History is here omitted and yet that omission not without great reason because it seems their production was in a manner accidental and spontaneous depending upon the various mixture of Materials formerly created namely Meteors and Minerals the former consummated in the Aery Region by the apposition and mixture of divers Excretions and Exhalations of the other parts of Nature for we neither find nor have any cause to look for Clouds Comets or Meteors in the compass of the first six Days The latter seem to be Concretions and Digestions in the Bowels of the Earth either altogether or for the most part begun and perfected after the Six Days Work by the energy of the external and Celestial and internal and connatural Fire and Heat Some Jews and Cabalists there have been that have supposed those six Days to be of different length and extent from these Natural we are acquainted with and that those six Days especially the three first and three last thereof differed exceedingly one from another and that as the three last were of a far greater length and extension than our ordinary day or night so the three former were exceedingly larger than the three latter of the six and the computation of the whole by Six Days was only by a kind of Analogical Expression to give Mankind a distinction of the Order of Production and they suppose 1. That the Divine Author by this distribution of Days did not intend any determinate portion of Time much less days or times conformable to the length of our days but certain Mysterious Numbers of Times and therefore Philo Judaeus in his first Book Allegoriarum Legis tells us Rusticanae simplicitatis est putare sex diebus aut aliquo certo tempore mundum conditum complevit sexto die opera intelligere non debes de diebus aliquot sed de senario perfecto numero and then takes a great deal of pains in illustrating the Mystery of that Number 2. Because they would willingly introduce a kind of natural production of things according to a natural method and gradual and successive procedure without the Supposition of an immediate concurrence or interposition of a Supernatural Influx or Causation and therefore because the separation of Light the first Days Work naturally required a great time as also the rarefaction and separation of the Expansum the separation of the Bodies of Earth and Water and likewise the maturation and production of Vegetables out of it might require a longer time than some of the subsequent days Works therefore the three first days were much longer than those that follow And again since each of these great Works attributed to the three latter days were great Works required great digestion and separation and maturation of the Matter for the Heavenly Bodies as also for the maturation of living Animals and their production that even those days might be conceived of a dimension or computation much larger than our Days and possibly than our Months or Years or Ages But these seem to be vain Conjectures introduced meerly to exclude an intermixture of a supernatural concurrence in the speedy production and formation of things and not warranted by the Holy History but contradicting it For we have no reason to imagin that the sixth day was of any other dimension than the seventh day wherein God Almighty rested nor the fifth any longer than the sixth neither was it at all necessary the days should be protracted to that length of time for two Reasons 1. Because if we should be so vain as to suppose a long process somewhat sutable to what we now see in Nature for the separation disposition and production of the Six Days Work yet certainly there was a time intervening between the first Creation of the Materia Chaotica and the very inception of its complement into that Order that the Six Days Work exhibit to us and although that time is not determinately set down yet we may justly think it a long time And again in that long interval there was a powerful Agent subacting disposing and influencing the Massa Chaotica expressed by the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the Waters whereby if it were necessary to have such a preparatory process towards the formation of the World antecedent to such formation it was not wanting here and every Particle might thereby be so ripened and prepared that they might successively give their apparences in those portions of time wherein they are ranged by the Sacred History 2. Although in the Creation of the World and the Integrals thereof Almighty God seemed something to conform to the reasonable Order of Causes sutable or congruous to Effects and did not put forth such an immediate Activity in the Production of things as he did in their first Creation this being done in an instant that successively gradually and yet per moram Yet he was not bound to observe all the Ceremonies and Formalities of Natural Effects neither did he but by his own immediate Power gave a greater expedition to the first production of things than that which he instituted for the standing fixed and ordinary Method of future production and maturation of things to be generated after their first Origination And as it was impossible without the apposition of a Supernatural Being and Causation that the Matter of things should be created out of nothing or being so created could without the Operation of a Supernatural Intelligent Being raise it self up to the admirable Fabrick wherein it was finally perfected so it is not reasonable to deny to such a Supreme Supernatural and Infinite Power an effectual maturation and compleating of things in those portions and orders of times that best pleased him and which his Wisdom judged most agreeable to his Works and Ends. We find every Command of the Divine Will in the Creation of things answered by an immediate obsequium in the created Matter If He say Let there be Light Let the Waters be gathered into one place Let the Earth bring forth c. the obsequious Matter presently answered the Command with a Fuit ita It was so Not as if there were any
The admirable accommodation of Faculties with subministring Faculties and Organs subservient appropriate and convenient for their exercise For Instance Local Motion is necessary to Mankind and accordingly he is furnished with Animal Spirit Nerves Muscles Tendons and Limbs admirably contrived and destined and fitted to Local Motion The Intellective Faculty is furnished with the organical Fabrick of the Brain and the subordinate Power of Sense Phantasie and Memory to assist it in its exercise while it is in the Body Facultati generativae prolisicae subministrans facultas seminificationis ac organa eidem deservientia appetitus naturalis voluptas quaedam alliciens organa generationi dicata distinctio sexuum sine qua juxta legem in natura post primam humanae naturae formationem insitam hujusmodi speciei propagatio fieri nequivit The Digestive Faculty furnishing the Blood the Blood increasing the Body and supplying the Treasuries of the Spirits the Spirits again supplying and maintaining the Offices of the Faculties So that not only the Blood but the whole Corporeal and Animal Nature is in continued motion and mutual subserviency I might be endless in this Contemplation but because it is evident to any Man that considers and I design a larger discussion of this Business when I come to consider the Parts and Faculties of the Humane Nature I shall not give farther Instances therein And the Use that I make of it is this That although it might be supposed possible that either Chance or Nature might in some simple narrow things produce very curious Appearances as the Configurations of Asterites of Crystals of Salts in their several shapes yet when in such a complicated Nature as Man is consisting of so many various Parts various in their position nature and use there shall be found such an exact adaptation of every thing one to another as to serve the whole and every part this in the primordial Constitution and Formation must needs be the Work of a most wise intelligent powerful Being that operates secundùm intentionem appropriationem intelligentiam 2. Let us come then to those Appendices and relative Respects of other things to the Humane Nature we shall easily find in it this Consideration also the Footsteps and Evidences of an Intelligent Nature in the Constitution of him by that admirable accommodation of things without him of different nature from him to his use and convenience In the Operations or Works of Intelligent Agents we may easily see that according to the degree or perfection of such Intelligence there is variety in their Work or Production An Intelligent Agent that is but of a narrow Intelligence as his Prospect is commonly short and weak so his Work seldom attains more than a narrow and single End But if the Agent be of a large and comprehensive Intelligence and Wisdom his ends are great and most times various and complicated and the same Operation or Work may have divers many 〈◊〉 Ends and Uses Almighty God therefore being of infinite Wisdom and Power foresees and effects great and various Ends in one and the same Work or Operation Take for Instance that goodly Creature the Sun What a complication of excellent Ends and Uses there are in that glorious Body It is the Fountain communicating Light to the Earth the Air and all the Planetary Bodies it is that which derives Heat and is the great Instrument of deriving Fruitfulness and Fertility to the inferior World it distinguisheth Times and Seasons by its Motion it raiseth and digesteth and distributeth the Watry Meteors for the benefit of this inferior World and infinite more advantages of this kind And therefore it is the narrowness of our Understanding that when we see one excellent End or Usefulness in any thing to conclude that God Almighty intended no other And therefore it is too hasty and vain a Conclusion to think that the glorious Bodies of the Celestial Host were made meerly for the service of Man and it is also folly and presumption to conclude that even the things of this inferior World though principally designed for the use of Man were meerly and only destined for the service of Man Almighty God hath the Glory of his own Greatness and the Communication of his own Goodness as the great End of all his Works Yea and we have reason to think that even in these inferior Beings of this lower World which are delivered over to the use and service of Men God Almighty had other Ends that possibly we know not nay possibly in the Effection of the least minute Animal Almighty God intended a Communication of so much of his Goodness and Beneficence to it as might give it a kind of complacency and fruition suitable to the capacity of its Existence though subordinate to other Ends. And yet not only in these inferior Existences of this lower World but even in the Fabrick Order and Oeconomy of the superior World there is to be found an admirable accommodation of them one to another and to this Steward and Tenant of Almighty God of this inferior World called Man 1. If we look upon the Celestial World we have an admirable accommodation thereof to the convenience of Mankind it presents to his View and thereby to his Understanding the most noble Spectacle of the Celestial Bodies their Order Beauty Constancy Motion Light conducting to the knowledge and acknowledgment of the Power Wisdom and Goodness of God it gives him an account of the progress and parts and succession of Time these are advantages that no Irrational Nature can make use of But the Influence of the Heavens are a common Benefit to Man and all Sublunary Natures but yet the inferior World seems in a great measure directed for the benefit of Mankind some in common to him and the Brutes as the Air for Respiration the Fire for Warmth the Water for Drink the Earth for Fruit and Habitation But in this lower World there seems many things directed to the special use of Mankind for besides Domestick Animals especially allowed for his Food there are some that serve for his Employment Motion Exercise and Food as the Tillage and Planting of the Earth for his Food some for his Medicine as Herbs and Gums and Minerals some for his Clothing as the Furrs Wool and Skins of Beasts some for his Habitation as the Timber and Stone some for his Fewel as Wood Coals and Turf some for his Defence and Manufacture as Iron and Steel some for Commerce as the Metals of Silver Gold Copper the very Situation of the Seas the Magnes some for his Ornament as Silk and Jewels some for his Journey and Labour as Horses Oxen Camels some for his Necessity some for his Delight Infinite more Instances may be given whereby it will evidently appear that this lower World is accommodated to the use and convenience of Mankind in a special and remarkable manner whereby it may be evident to any considerate Man that the Formation of the World and
If a Flea or a Fly hath as exact a symmetry organization and diversity of Faculties as an Ostridge or an Elephant the curiosity of the Art is more admirable by the smalness of the Volume And yet these do every day arise spontaneously and it may be propagate their kind after their spontaneous production or it may be have only the existence of a Day neither is it reasonable to think that all these Insects thus spontaneously arising were first produced in the fifth or sixth Day or that the Semina formata of every Worm or Fly that hath arisen this day or yesterday were created in the first Creation of things and lay concealed and unactive for above 5000 Years and yet in these sponte nata we see no necessity nor evidence of any immediate Divine Efficiency for some are every day produced ex putri sine praeexistente semine Why therefore is so much weight laid upon the first Origination of Man or perfect Animals as if it must needs require the immediate interposition of Almighty God when we are content to referr the Origination of Works possibly of as wonderful a fabrication as many at least of perfect Animals to a lower Cause I Answer It is true that there is a great curiosity in the Texture and Faculty of Insects and that there are very many that arise not ex praeexistente semine but either of Vegetables or of that which we usually call Materia putris and it will be too hard a task for any to maintain that all Insects do arise of univocal Seeds derived from their own Species or that all the Species of Insects were created the fifth or sixth Day neither shall I with Scotus affirm that the Forms of such Insects are derived from Heaven and diffused into Matter whereby they mould themselves into their distinct Existences But as the God of Nature gave a seminal prolifick power to perfect Animals and unto Men and did bind and connex this Method of their future Generations unto their Nature without which though they had been constituted otherwise in a most perfect Constitution they could never have multiplied their kind So as to the production of many Insects Almighty God hath given such a prolifick nature to the Earth and Waters in a certain due mixture irradiated and influenced by the Sun to produce divers sorts of Insects by virtue of these two great Benedictions given to the Water Gen. 1.20 and to the Earth Gen. 1.24 as the two great prevailing Elements in spontaneous generations and as by virtue of the Divine Benedictions given to Animals and Men Increase and multiply and replenish the Earth and the Waters Gen. 1.22 28. so by virtue of that first Command to the Waters and Earth Let the Waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind and the cattel and creeping thing and the beast after his kind The spontaneous propagation of Insects by the Earth is by virtue of this Command as effectual and in its kind as natural by virtue of this established Law as the production of Animals per mixtionem though not so perfect And from the Efficacy of this Divine Institution it comes to pass 1. That their Textures and Faculties are curiously disposed for the Elementary Nature in conjunction with the Heavenly Influence doth produce them as Instruments and in the virtue of the first Institution of the Glorious God 2. That though there is a great variety and multiplicity in their Species yet they are not infinite but determinate 3. That according to the variety of Climates and various disposition of Matter Insects are variously produced this Climate produceth that Insect that another doth not and this Herb this Wood this Flesh that Insect that another doth not and the same is observed in Herbs and spontaneous Plants And hence it is that all the Art in the World can never make the meanest Insect out of any other Matter or any otherwise disposed or any otherwise irradiated than what would of it self naturally produce an Insect of that kind But this shall be farther illustrated in the Answer to the next Objection But although it be true that these little Insects discover the wonderful Wisdom and Power of God in their vicarious productions by the commissionated and influenced Elementary Nature yet they come exceedingly short of those perfect Animals who have a nobler and more elaborate production by univocal generation and infinitely short of the excellency of the Humane Nature And therefore there is no parity of Instance in the first formation of an Insect ex non genitis and the first formation of the Humane Nature Every Year gives us Instances of a new spontaneous production of Insects and this by virtue of that primitive commission and vital vigour thereby concredited to the Earth and Waters irradiated by the Sun But never any Age gives so much as a shadow of an Instance of the production of any perfect Animals much less of Man by any such spontaneous Method and that the latter gives a greater and more eminent Specimen of a Divine Power in its primitive formation than the former in its spontaneous production 3. Object It is evident that the malignant Spirits have power to produce Insects as appears by the Magicians producing of Frogs in Aegypt by their Enchantments Exod. 8.7 and therefore the resolution of the spontaneous productions of Insects into the Energy of the Divine Command seems unwarrantable And if he may produce those which are really endued with an Animal Life why not those Animals that have their ordinary production by univocal Generation and why not also Mankind And the Satyrs and Fauns whereof some of the Ancients write seems to be productions out of the common road of humane production I Answer 1. Touching the supposed Fauns and Satyrs they were either Fables or Illusions and no credit to be given to the Histories of them 2. Admitting it should be within the power of good or evil Angels to produce Insects yet it would be no consequence from thence to their efficacy of producing perfect Animals much less Humane Nature which is in another superior rank of Being above the noblest Brutes and excessively above the rank of Insects We might as well conclude because a Man can make a Candle he can make a Star But 3. As to the efficacy of good or evil Angels in effecting of Insects 1. It is of no great difficulty to suppose that good or evil Angels may bring or transport the Semina or Spawn of Insects to other places and possibly thus it might be done by the Egyptian Magicians 2. It is very true that the Angelick Natures have a very great knowledge of Natural Efficacies and Virtues and a great power of transporting uniting and applying Actives to Passives whatsoever therefore is effectible by the most congruous and efficacious application of Actives to Passives is effectible by them And since there are
inferior World and the Animals and Vegetables themselves which deserves to be observed First We may easily observe among the Creatures of this lower World inferior to Man that there are several Ranks of Beings like so many several Provinces but especially the Animal and Vegetable Province Among Animals some are fierce strong and untameable as Lions Tigers Wolves Foxes Dragons Serpents and these stand in need of some coercive power over them that they destroy not the Species of more profitable and yet weaker Animals Again there are some Animals that are more useful and serviceable to Man which are more obnoxious to be preyed upon and depredated and their Species to be utterly destroyed by the invasion of the more fierce voracious and unruly Animals as Sheep Cows and divers others which stand therefore more in need of protection and preservation and those of the more voracious and fierce nature are less subject to be disciplined tamed and brought into subjection the other are by their very nature more domitable domestick and subject to be governed and the like we may observe in many kinds of Fowls as there are Beasts of prey so there are Birds of prey and others more manageable and obnoxious to injury Again if we look into the Vegetable Province some Herbs and Plants are more tender and delicate and stand in continual need of cultivation and their very Seeds stand in need of a more than ordinary care both in reference to their preservation and prosemination without which in a little time their very Species would be lost or at least strangely degenerate such are many sorts of Fruit-Trees Herbs and choice Flowers Again on the other side there are multitudes of spontaneous productions of Vegetables or such as are so hardy and prolifick though less profitable or useful that without a superintendent industry to correct their excess would usurp the whole face of the Earth and make it a Wilderness as some sorts of hardy Trees Weeds Thorns Briars and other more unprofitable excrescences nay the very Superficies of the Earth without a superintendent Cultivation would grow either marshy and boggy by the defluxion of Waters or altogether weedy and over-grown with excessive excrescences And though much of this either infertility or unprofitable excrescence might be the fruit of the Sin of Man yet the Wise God that foresaw this Sin and the Effect thereof was not wanting in providing a fit provisional Remedy against it that so this part of the Work of his Creation might retain its beauty and use And though after the Fall of Man this difficulty of this Employment was greater by reason of the Curse that thereby befell the Earth yet even before the Fall the nature of his Employment was the same He put the Man into the garden of Eden to dress and to keep it Gen. 2. In relation therefore to this inferior World of Brutes and Vegetables the End of Man's Creation was that he should be the Vice-Roy of the great God of Heaven and Earth in this inferior World his Steward Villicus Bayliff or Farmer of this goodly Farm of the lower World and reserved to himself the supreme Dominion and the Tribute of Fidelity Obedience and Gratitude as the greatest Recognition or Rent for the same making his Usufructuary of this inferior World to husband and order it and enjoy the Fruits thereof with sobriety moderation and thankfulness And hereby Man was invested with power authority right dominion trust and care to correct and abridge the excesses and cruelties of the fiercer Animals to give protection and defence to the mansuete and useful to preserve the Species of divers Vegetables to improve them and others to correct the redundance of unprofitable Vegetables to preserve the face of the Earth in beauty usefulness and fruitfulness And surely as it was not below the Wisdom and Goodness of God to create the very Vegetable Nature and render the Earth more beautiful and useful by it so neither was it unbecoming the same Wisdom to ordain and constitute such a subordinate Superintendent over it that might take an immediate care of it And certainly if we observe the special and peculiar accommodation and adaptation of Man to the regiment and ordering of this lower World we shall have reason even without Revelation to conclude that this was one End of the Creation of Man namely To be the Vicegerent of Almighty God in the subordinate Regiment especially of the Animal and Vegetable Provinces 1. The Earth and Vegetables and Animals stand in need of such a Superior Nature to keep them in a competent order an ordinary Observation lets us see how soon those Regions uninhabited by Mankind become rude Forests and Wildernesses how destitute they are of those mansuete Animals being exposed without a protector to be the prey of savage Beasts 2. Man by the advantage of his intellectual sagacity and contrivance is fitted for this Regiment For although there be many Beasts much stronger than he as Lions Tigers Wolves and others yet he is by the advantage of this Faculty enabled to avoid and over-match and subdue them and by the advantage of this Faculty hath power to reclaim those that are reclaimable though of greater strength than himself as Horses Elephants Camels and to protect and provide for the safety and food of those that are either by Art or Nature rendred mansuete as Horses Sheep Oxen and to make them subservient to his ends and uses 3. Though of all other visible Creatures Man seems the least provided with natural offensive Organs yet by the advantage of his intellectual Faculty and that admirable Organum organorum his Hand he is infinitely advantaged with artificial helps to defend himself and subjugate the most contumacious and furious Brute The Lion the Bear the Tiger the Wolf the Horse the Elephant the Bull are furnished with natural offensive and defensive Munition but by the advantage of the Hand Man is able to provide himself more serviceable Artillery as Swords Pikes Arrows Darts Nets Trapps Toyls and to use them with greater security and advantage 4. We may also observe a kind of connatural necessity imposed upon Man to exercise this Oeconomy and Regiment over Animals and Vegetables for his own preservation and defence without the exercise of this Regiment he would be over-run with savage and noxious Animals he would want the speed of the Horse the industry of the Ox the Clothing of the Sheep the Milk of the Cow without this Regiment he would be without Corn to feed him Wine to refresh him Medicine to recover him the Earth would become a barren Forest or Wilderness over-run with Bryars and Thorns And it is observable That as the wise God hath put all things in motion and action the Heavenly Bodies the Elementary Natures the Meteors the Animals so it is his Wisdom to preserve Man also in bodily as well as mental motion and by a kind of necessity driven him from sloth and idleness if
the Seas and established it upon the Floods So that there are greater Store-houses of Water than appear visible to the World If we could suppose that the incumbent Superficies of the Earth should subside and press upon those Store-houses of Water within its bowels it might afford a competent store to drown the Earth without a new Creation 2. Again we may easily compute that the quantity or extension of the Body of the Air even that which is commonly called the Atmosphere which at the lowest account extends seven Miles in height might by condensation into Water afford a competent store for the drowning of the World and yet be again rarified into the same dimension and consistence which before it obtained for there is that vicinity of Nature between those two Elements that we daily see considerable proportions of the one by condensation changed into the other 3. When we consider those immense Inundations that are Annually and with some constant equality occasioned by great Rains as for Instance in the River Nilus which by the Annual Rains in Ethiopia is raised almost every Year twenty Cubits and overflows a considerable part of Egypt yearly between the Months of June and October and the like Inundations yearly hapning by Periodical Showers in the great River of America called Orenoque between May and September whereby it riseth upright above 30 Foot so that many of the Islands and Plains at other times inhabited are 20 Foot yearly at that time under Water And when we see that even the Ocean it self in its daily Tides especially those that happen about the Equinoxes caused as the Copernicans say by the Intersections of the Annual and Diurnal Motions of the Earth we need not have recourse to a new Creation of Waters to perform this Office of the Divine Providence and Justice He might by a stronger elevation of Vapours or by an extraordinary motion of the Seas perform his purpose which though probably it might not at the same time drown Asia and America yet by the successive peragration of these Waters they might drown the whole Earth as the Inundation of Nilus by the Showers of Ethiopia make the Flood there a Month sooner than it happens in Egypt 2. As to the Second Objection I do confess it to be most true that the Universal Deluge was a Judgment upon the Old World for their intolerable degeneration from their Duty to God But I do not think that was the only Reason thereof for the Infinite Power of God might have destroyed those Evil Men by a Pestilence as well as by a Flood without detriment to the harmless Brutes or Birds But as God Almighty is of Infinite Wisdom so it is the high Prerogative of that Wisdom to have variety of Excellent Ends in the same Action I do really think that this Universal Deluge was not only an act of his Vengeance upon Evil Men but possibly an act of Goodness and Bounty to the very Constitution of this Inferior World though the particulars thereof be hid from us And if as some would have it it should be coextended only to the places that were then inhabited and so the Flood particular yet most certain it would be even in such a particular Flood many great Spots of Ground would be necessarily drowned where never any Men were or inhabited 3. And it seems it is too hastily concluded That in the Period of 1656 or as the Septuagint whom he follows 2256 Years between the Creation and the Flood that only Palestine Syria or Mesopotamia were inhabited For considering the longevity of Mens Lives in that Period a small skill in Arithmetical Calculation will render the Number of coexisting Inhabitants of the Earth more than six times as many as would have hapned in 5000 Years when Mens Ages were abridged to that ordinary dimension which now they have and the strait bounds of Syria and Mesopotamia would not have held one fortieth part of the Inhabitants all Europe Asia and Africa were not more than sufficient for them So that as the World grew full of Sin so it grew full of Men and Beasts and stood in need of a Deluge to make room for its future Inhabitants And this is as much as I shall say in this place for the Vindication of the Possibility and Reasonableness of the Universality of that Deluge recorded by Moses And if any shall doubt of the Capacity of the Ark of Noah for the Reception of Brutes Birds and the Family of Noah with the necessary Provisions of Livelihood for them let him but consult Mr. Poole's Synopsis and he will find that which may reasonably satisfie him touching it And now I shall briefly consider the Method and Means and Manner of the Peopling of America and storing that vast Countrey with Men and Beasts and Birds so far forth as we may reasonably conjecture And herein I must confess that I only make an Abstract or brief Collection of what hath been done to my hands by those that had better Opportunities and Abilities to do it as namely Grotius Laetius Breerwood Hornius Josephus Acosta Mr. John Webb Martinius and others who have professedly written De origine gentium Americanarum First therefore I shall consider the Manner of Traduction of Men into America Secondly The Manner of Traduction of Brutes into America Touching the Traduction of Mankind into America I do suppose these things following 1. That the Origination of the common Parents of the Humane Nature hapned in some part of Asia 2. That though the Origination of the common Parents of Mankind were in Asia yet some of their Descendents did come into America 3. That such Migration into America by the Descendents from Adam was not only possibly but fairly probable notwithstanding all the objected Difficulties 4. That the Migrations of the Descendents of Adam and Noah into America was successive and interpolated 5. That although we cannot certainly define the Time or Manner of all these Migrations yet many of them were long since or as we may reasonably conjecture some Thousands of Years since but yet after the Universal Deluge The Means of Transmigration of the Children or Descendents of Adam and Noah from Asia into America must be either by Land or by Sea or by both and if by Sea then it must be designed and ex proposito or casually I think it probable it may be all of these ways but especially by Sea Touching the Transmigration by Land it seems very difficult because though it may be possible that there may be some junctures between the North Continent of America and some part of Tartary Russia or Muscovy yet none are known unless the Frozen Seas in those Parts might be a means to transport Men thither which is difficult to suppose those Parts being unpassable by reason of the great Snows that happen so far Northward though some have thought that Groenland is one Continent with America and that in its farthest North-east extent it is joyned to
and like itself which could not be such if Mankind had any other Method of Origination than now it hath And in Natural Appearances Causes and Effects they thought it not becoming the Genius or Spirit of a Philosopher to call in any other Assistant or Producent than what was and is the ordinary Rule Course and Law of Nature as they now find it And by this means they thought that they proceeded consonantly both to Nature and to themselves 2. Because that among those ancient Philosophers that either supposed the Origination of Mankind to be either casual as Epicurus Democritus c. or to be natural from the Earth and conjunction of the Influences of Heavenly Bodies in some Periodical Aspects or partly natural and partly fortuitous or at least spontaneous as Insects arise I say in and among these various Suppositions of an Origination of Mankind yea and perfect Animals ex non genitis they found so much incertainty improbability and repugnancy that they threw them all aside together also with the Beginning or Origination of Mankind and took up that more compendious and more sutable as they thought to the Laws which they observed in Nature and concluded That the Generations of Mankind and of perfect Animals were without beginning but always obtained in the same manner as now they are Of this Opinion was Ocellus Lucaenus and likewise Aristotle though in some places he seems to be doubtful and although Plato in his Timaeus seems to assert an Origination of Mankind yet in some other places his Expressions are doubtful and therefore Censorinus in his golden Book de Die Natali reckons as well Plato as Aristotle Ocellus Lucanus Architas Tarentinus Xenocrates Dicearchus Pythagoras Theophrastus to be Assertors of the Eternity of Mankind And this Opinion I have examined in the Chapters of the Second Section of this Book and offered Reasons Physical Metaphysical and Moral against it The last Moral Reason which I offered was The received Opinion of Mankind asserting the Origination of Man and that as well of the common sort of People as of the Tribe of the Learned Philosophers The former I dispatched in the last Chapter but the Suffrage of the Gens literata I reserved to this Section because thereby at once I may with the same labour shew the Opinions of Learned Men among the Heathen asserting the Origination of Mankind and what their several Sentiments were concerning the manner of it And therefore I shall be constrained herein to mention the Opinions of some of those Learned Philosophers above-mention and to add some others of the contrary Perswasion which out-ballance the former 2. The second general Opinion was of those Learned Philosophers that held an Origination of Mankind ex non genitis and the Reason moving them to this Perswasion was not only the great Tradition that obtained generally in favour of it and the great reasonableness of the Supposition it self but also the many absurd Consequences and indeed irreconcilable Contradictions that they found in the Hypothesis of an Eternal Succession of Humane Generations without beginning Insomuch that the Assertors themselves of Eternal Generations were doubtful of the truth of their own Perswasions as will hereafter appear And those of this latter sort were even Epicurus himself Anaximander Empedocles Parmenides and Zeno Citicus the great Founder of the Sect of the Stoicks with those that followed or favoured it But above all the great Law-giver Moses who was divinely inspired and yet if he had not that advantage of Divine Infallibility but stood barely upon the great credibility both of his Person his Learning and the Hypothesis it self which he delivered he hath as great a weight even upon a natural moral and rational account as any or all the rest put together But because I intend a particular Explication of the Hypothesis Mosaica I shall not mingle this among the other Opinions but reserve it for the next Section The Heathen Philosophers that held the Origination of Mankind ex non genitis have these things in general wherein they agree one with another and with the Truth it self and some things wherein they differ among themselves and in some things from the Truth 1. They herein agree both among themselves and with the Truth and with that excellent and divine Relation of Moses Gen. 1. That Mankind is not Eternal but had a Beginning ex non genitis 2. They herein also agree among themselves and with the Truth That it is most absolutely necessary if Mankind had a Beginning or Origination it must needs be in a differing kind and manner from that common course whereby Mankind is now propagated This is asserted by those that hold the Origination of Mankind by the Efficiency of Almighty God consonant to the Mosaical Hypothesis either immediately or partly by the Instrumentality of Angels as Zeno Citicus Plato and others it is also asserted by them that hold the Origination of Mankind to be at first fortuitous as Epicurus and Democritus And therefore as to these Perswasions and Suppositions it is not only necessary that they should suppose a differing manner of the first Origination of Mankind from what now obtains but it is consonant also to their Principles and the grounds of their Supposition that it must be so This is also asserted by those that suppose the Origination of Mankind to be purely natural and according to the constituted Rule of Nature But yet this Supposition though most necessarily true where an Origination ex non genitis is once supposed yet it seems less sutable to the Principles of those Men that assert such a natural Production of Mankind as is by them asserted because they mancipating all Productions and Effects to the Laws of Nature and governing their thoughts and taking their measures barely by it have no reason to think or believe any other Method of Production of Mankind to have at any time been any otherwise than as they see it now to be which as is before shewn was the reason why Aristotle inclined to the Opinion of the Eternity of Humane Generations because Nature is presumed to be consonant to it self and always to have been what once it was 3. But in the Explication of the Cause and Manner of this Origination of Mankind therein they differed very much among themselves This difference consisted principally in two great Considerations 1. In the true stating of the efficient Cause of this Origination of Mankind 2. In the Manner Method and Order of such Origination As to the difference touching the Cause of such Origination and the nature of that Cause thereof 1. Some assigned a bare fortuitous Cause of the first Origination of Mankind as Epicurus and his Explicator Lucretius for although in some places they are driven to assert some determinate Semina of Mankind and perfect Animals to avoid that indefinite and unlimited excursion of Atoms yet they that suppose these Semina do suppose a fortuitous Coalition of Atoms to the
Constitution of these Semina and so upon the whole account it is fortuitous 2. Some assign a natural determined Cause of the first production of Mankind namely the due preparation of the fat and slimy Earth after a long incubation of Waters and some admirable Conjunction of 〈◊〉 the Heavenly and Planetary Bodies in some certain Period of Time at a long distance from us which as naturally and necessarily produced the first Couples of Mankind and likewise of other perfect Animals as necessarily and naturally as the return of the Vernal Sun produceth divers sorts of Insects which though they are called sponte orientia yet they arise meerly from a Connexion of Natural Causes and the various Ferments and Dispositions of the Elementary and Positions and Influxions of the Heavenly Bodies Thus some of the Ancients and also Avicen Cardanus Caesalpinus Berogardus 3. Some of the Ancients that most truly assign the Origination of Mankind to the most High Intelligent Powerful Beneficent Being viz. Almighty God and the Beneplacitum and Fiat of his Omnipotent Will as Zeno Citicus And thus their differences arose touching the Cause of this Origination As to the second namely the different Manner of the Origination of Mankind Censorinus ubi supra Euseb praepar Evang. lib. 1. cap. 7 8 9. and others give it as followeth 1. The Opinion of Anaximander Videri sibi ex aqua terráque calefactos exortos esse sive pisces sive piscibus simillima animalia in his homines crevisse foetúsque ad pubertatem intus retentos tum demum ruptis illis viros mulierésque qui jam se alere possent processisse 2. The Opinion of Empedocles and Parmenides Primò membra singula ex terra quasi praegnante edita deinde coisse effecisse solidi hominis materiam igni simul humori permixtam 3. The Opinion of Democritus and Epicurus Ex aqua limóque primùm homines procreatos viz. uteros limo calefacto radicibus terrae cohaerentes primùm increvisse infantibus ex se editis ingenitum lactis humorem natura ministrante praebuisse quos ita educatos adultos genus hominum propagasse 4. The Opinion of Zeno Citicus the Founder of the Stoical Sect Principium humano generi ex novo mundo constitutum putavit primósque homines ex solo adminiculo divini ignis id est Dei providentia genitos Ovid though he were a wanton Poet and his Metamorphosis full of Fictions yet in the Description of the Creation he hath out-done many of the more serious Philosophers and I believe was not only acquainted with the Mosaical History but with most of those Writings that were extant in that time containing the Origination of the World and Mankind though he mingle his own Fancies with what he so learned He gives us an account of the Origination of Man Lib. 2 Fab. 2. and of other Animals Ibid. Fab. 8. Of the former Natus homo est sive hunc divino semine fecit Ille Opifex rerum mundi melioris origo Sive recens tellus seductaque nuper ab alto Aethere cognati retinebat semina eoeli Quam natus Iapeto mistam fluvialibus undis Finxit in effigiem moderantum cunct a deorum Touching the latter the Origination of other Animals after the Deluge he gives an elegant Description and from the Instance of the Productions after the Inundation of Nilus Ex eodem corpore sapè Altera pars vivit rudis est pars altera tellus So after the Flood by the moisture of the Ground and heat of the Sun Tellus Intulenta recenti Solibus aethereis altóque recanduit aestu Reddidit innumeras species As to the Origination of brute Animals he seems to ascribe the same in effect as happens in the equivocal production of Insects But as to the Origination of Man he seems to agree with the Stoicks but gives thereof a fuller Explication namely 1. That it was a Seminal Production and not so fortuitous as that of Animals 2. That these Semina humanae naturae were either the immediate Productions of the great Opifex rerum or at least were left in the Earth by the Celestial Nature while it stood mingled therewith in massa Chaotica By which means it seems he thought not that the production of Mankind was by a gradual process and maturation in the Earth and from it like the ordinary course of the Formative process in utero matris in the ordinary course of Generation but by a shorter and more compendious Method For according to the ancient Mythology Japetus signified the Heaven and Japeti satus or Prometheus the Son of the Heaven the Divine Providence which Almighty God exercised by the instrumentality of the Heavenly Motions And the Ancients attributed the Formation or Configuration of the humane Body in its first original to this Divine Providence whereby those Seminal Particles before described being taken and included in convenient Elementary Matter the whole Composition was by the Divine Providence moulded up into the humane Shape and Consistency in its first Origination This was that Notion that divers of the Ancients and Ovid out of them had concerning the first Origination of Mankind vide Caelium Rhodogin l. 7. cap. 19 20. and seems to have some analogy with that Hypothesis of Plato in his Timaeus hereafter mentioned Thus we have an account of the Opinions 1. Of the Pythagorean Philosophers 2. Of the old Academicks 3. Of the Peripateticks all seeming to agree in the Supposition of the Eternity of the World 4. Of the Epicureans under which I include that of Anaximander and Empedocles differing only in the modus 5. Of the Stoicks which give a true Account both of the Origination of Mankind and of the Manner of it where I have been the longer because it is a Key to all that follows and gives us a Scheme of it These several Opinions and the Authors and Assertors thereof I shall here farther illustrate and examin 1. Touching the Opinion of the Pythagoreans because we have nothing extant of his writing I can say little more touching his Opinion though some suppose he was not of Opinion that the World or Mankind was Eternal 2. Touching Plato it is true he seems very various and Poetical in his writing and by reason of the Method of his Discourses by way of Dialogues it is hard to determin what his Opinion was concerning the Eternity of the World or of the Generations of Mankind In the beginning of his third Book de Legibus but especially in the middle of his sixth under the Persons of Atheniensis hospes and Clinias he intimates his Opinion of the Eternity of the World and Mankind Athen. Scire omnes oportet hominum generationem vel nullum prorsus unquam initium habuisse neque terminum habiturum sed fuisse omninò semper fore aut si coepit inaestimabili ante nos temporis magnitudine incepisse Clin. Plané And again in his Menexemus under