Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	line_n	point_n	superficies_n	2,462	5	15.6907	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26588	A discourse of wit by David Abercromby ...	Abercromby, David, d. 1701 or 2.	1686 (1686)	Wing A82; ESTC R32691	73,733	250

Christian I could prove to my self and perhaps to others too by a convincing demonstration Yet such is the weakness or rather the darkness of Humane Understanding that the clearest demonstrations of this important Truth are refuted by some one or other whose obstinacy they cannot conquer And Vasques if I misremember not a subtile Romish Divine after a large confutation of whatever had been said before his time in order to prove the Existency of a Soveraign being admits at length but a meer moral demonstration of this Fundamental point though so evident indeed that it cuts away all pretence and excuses to infidelity As to the other mysteries for Instance the Trinity and Gods contingent degrees which our reason reacheth not 't is a piece of madness and folly for us to endeavour their discovery by the light of reason Yet they may be inculcated to the People though infinitely above their comprehensive faculty as being Articles of meer Belief and not at all within the reach of humane Understanding I could not but smile to hear a certain Minister once preach on this Subject because he very confidently assured his Auditory that he would prove the existence of the Trinity with no less evidence than the subtilest Philosopher could demonstrate the being o● God in Nature and his Unity How far he performed this 't is neither worth your while to hear nor mine to relate I shall only say that he shewed himself all along a very ill Philosopher and a worse Divine 3. But what wonder if men are so short sighted in things so far above the reach of their Capacity since they know not the Nature and Natural properties of the most familiar and obvious Objects I do in vain make my Application either to the Old or New Philosophy for the intelligence of the most common things I am for Instance as little satisfied when I am told that whatever I see under so many different figures shapes and sizes is only occasioned by a various Texture and coalition of Corpuscles I am I say as little satisfied with this as with Aristotle's matter and form united together I know not how For to say a thing belongs to this or that Species or kind because it hath a certain texture that we can give no further account of is a Notion almost as obscure unto my dim Understanding as if you had instanced for Answer A matter informed by a certain specifical form On each side you see by the very word certain we insinuate enough our doubtfulness and uncertainty of the thing What more known than the History of the ebbing and flowing of the Sea The dullest Mariner can give you a satisfactory relation thereof but you may expect in vain a rational account of the same from the ablest Phylosopher To attribute with the greatest number of Philosophers this wonderful Phaenomenon to the Stars or more particularly to the Moon is but an ingenuous confession of their ignorance and despair of a better answer For it being certain that when the Moon is in the upper Quadrant of our Meridian the Waters are not only swelled here but likewise in the opposite part of the Earth towards our Antipodes I cannot conceive how the Moon pierceth through such a thick and massie Body as the Earth so as to heighten the Waters beneath I 'm sure she acts not at such a distance either by heat or by light for her heat is not strong and her light is but very weak and neither of them can penetrate above ten foot within the superficies of the Earth Her occult and secret Influences I neither understand nor look upon as an answer capable to satisfie a curious enquirer The movement of the Earth by which some endeavour to give an account of this regular movement we observe in the Seas besides the uncertainty of this principle contributes but little or nothing towards the solution of this insuperable difficulty and Maurus his Angel moving thus orderly this great and vast Body is but a guess and at most but an ill grounded Opinion 4. If we come now ashoar and travel over the habitable Tracts of the Continent what an infinite number of obvious but most hidden Mysteries shall we discover every where I shall offer but two at present to your consideration the Loadstone and Quicksilver or Mercury The former is an unpolish'd piece of Work and looks like an excrementitious part of Nature But Who can give us a tolerable account of its attractive faculty why it draws and holds closely Iron rather than any other Metal why it thrusts from it the Needle with one Pole and attracts it again with the other and why it declines more or less or no at all in several parts of the World c. Philosophers are commendable for doing their utmost endeavours and squeezing their brains to answe● such difficulties but I fear after al● their Sweats and laborious Speculations they shall never satisfie either themselves on this subject or others Mercury is clearer indeed to the Ey● than the Loadstone but as obscur● if not more to our darkned Understanding 'T is the very riddle of Nature Aenigma naturae 't is a Monster compounded of meer contrarieties as being round and sharp cold and in the opinion of some hot too light and heavy moist and dry corruptible and incorruptible alway● the same and yet most changeable invisible and by an easie recovery of it self visible again I ever admired above all this its compactness and close texture for it admits not the Subtilest Air and giving no access to the points of Fire it flyeth from before it 5. But I need not have recourse to the confest Prodigies of Nature to show how far we are from understanding any thing to the bottom The very Sciences themselves are not such to us if narrowly look't into I have reason to examine the Truth of Euclides demonstrations since I see the Impossibility of a common Segment as they speak demonstrated to my Weak Judgement by Proclus and again contradicted with no less evidence by other able Mathematicians To say nothing of the duplication of the Cub the Squaring of the Circle and other Gordian lenots of this Nature I doubted always of the very Foundation of Geometry I mean of the true Notion of a point For when I hear this stranger description Punctum est cujus pars nullae est I begin to wonder what that can be that though not a Spirit has no Imaginable parts and then concluding there 's no such thing in being I take the true Object of Geometry as a Line that is made of Points and a Superficies compounded of Lines to have no other Foundation in Essence or Existency but my own Conceit and Fancy I am moreover so little satisfied with the groundless grounds and Principles of judiciary Astrology that I fancy it the most vain and most uncertain of all Sciences and those that admire it to be none of the judicious sort I confess the Heavens are