manifest consequences deduc'd thence And by this one Declaration so many unnecessary and perhaps hurtful Retainers to Christianity will be at once thrown off that I doubt not but if you consider the Matter aright you will easily discern that by this first Distinction I have much lessen'd the work that is to be done by those that are to follow it SECT II. In the next place among the things that seem not rational in Religion I make a great difference between those in which unenlightned Reason is manifestly a competent Iudge and those which Natural Reason it self may discern to be out of its Sphere You will allow me That Natural Theology is sufficient to evince the Existence of the Deity and we know that many of the old Philosophers that were unassisted by Revelation were by the force of Reason led to discover and confess a God that is a Being supremely perfect under which Notion divers of them expresly represent him Now if there be such a Being 't is but reasonable to conceive that there may be many things relating to his Nature his Will and his management of things that are without the Sphere of meer or unassisted Reason For if his Attributes and Perfections be not fully comprehensible to our Reason we can have but inadequate Conceptions of them and since God is a Being toto Coelo as they speak differing from all other Beings there may be some things in his Nature and in the manner of his Existence which is without all Example or perfect Analogy in inferior Beings For we see that ev'n in Man himself the Coexistence and intimate Union of the Soul and Body that is an Immaterial and a Corporeal substance is without all President or Parallel in Nature And though the truth of this Union may be prov'd yet the manner of it was never yet nor perhaps ever will be in this Life clearly understood to which purpose I shall elsewhere say more Moreover if we suppose God to be Omnipotent that is to be able to do whatever involves no Contradiction that it should be done we must allow him to be able to do many things that no other Agent can afford us any Examples of and some of them perhaps such as we who are but finite and are wont to judge of things by Analogy cannot conceive how they can be perform'd Of the last sort of things may be the recollecting a sufficient quantity of the scatter'd matter of a Dead humane Body and the contriving of it so that whether alone or with some addition of other Particles upon a reconjunction with the Soul it may again constitute a living Man and so effect that Wonder we call the Resurrection Of the latter sort is the Creation of Matter out of nothing and much more the like Production of those Rational and Intelligent Beings Humane Souls For as for Angels good or bad I doubt whether meer Philosophy can evince their Existence though I think it may the possibility thereof And since we allow the Deity a Wisdom equal to this boundless Power 't is but reasonable to conceive that these unlimited Attributes conspiring may produce Contrivances and frame Designs which we Men must be unable at least of our selves sufficiently to understand and to reach to the bottom of And by this way of arguing it may be made to appear That there may be many things relating to the Deity above the reach of unenlightned humane Reason Not that I affirm all these things to be in their own Nature incomprehensible to us though some of them may be so when they are once propos'd but that Reason by its own light could not discover them particularly and therefore it must owe its knowledge of them to Divine Revelation And if God vouchsafes to disclose those things to us since not only he must needs know about his own Nature Attributes c. what we cannot possibly know unless he tells us and since we know that whatever he tells us is infallibly true we have abundant Reason to believe rather what he declares to us concerning Himself and Divine things than what we should conclude or guess about them by Analogy to things of a nature infinitely distant from his or by Maxims fram'd according to the nature of inferior Beings If therefore he clearly reveal to us That there is in the Godhead Three distinct Persons and yet that God is One we that think our selves bound to believe God's Testimony in all other Cases ought sure not to disbelieve it concerning himself but to acknowledge that in an unparallel'd and incomprehensible Being there may be a manner of Existence not to be parallel'd in any other Being though it should never be understood by us Men who cannot clearly comprehend how in our selves two such distant Natures as that of a gross Body and an immaterial Spirit should be united so as to make up one Man In such cases therefore as we are now speaking of there must indeed be something that looks like captivating ones Reason but 't is a submission that Reason it self obliges us to make and he that in such points as these believes rather what the Divine Writings teach him than what he would think if they had never inform'd him does not renounce or inslave his Reason but suffers it to be Pupil to an Omniscient and Infallible Instructer who can teach him such things as neither his own meer Reason nor any others could ever have discovered to him I thought to have here dismiss'd this Proposition but I must not omit to give it a confirmation afforded me by chance or rather Providence For since I writ the last Paragraph resuming a Philosophical Enquiry I met in prosecuting it with a couple of Testimonies of the truth of what I was lately telling you which are given not by Divines or Schoolmen but by a couple of famous Mathematicians that have both led the way to many of the Modern Philosophers to shake off the reverence wont to be born to the Authority of great Names and have advanc'd Reason in a few years more than such as Vaninus and Pomponatius would do in many Ages and have always boldly and sometimes successfully attempted to explain intelligibly those things which others scrupled not either openly or tacitly to confess inexplicable The first of these Testimonies I met with in a little French Treatise put out by some Mathematician who though he conceals his Name appears by his way of writing to be a great Virtuoso and takes upon him to give his Readers in French the new thoughts of Galilaeo by making that the Title of his Book This Writer then speaking of a Paradox which I but recite of Galilaeo's that makes a point equal to a Circle adds Et per consequent l'on peut dire i. e. and consequently one may say that all Circles are equal between themselves since each of them is equal to a point For though the imagination be overpower'd by this Idea or Notion yet
Reason will suffer it self to be persuaded of it I know continues he divers other excellent Persons besides Galilaeo who conclude the same thing by other ways but all are constrain'd to acknowledge that indivisible and infinite are things that do so swallow up the mind of Man that he scarce knows what to pitch on when he contemplates them For it will follow from Galilaeo's Speculation c. which passage I have cited to shew you that Galilaeo is not the only Philosopher and Mathematician who has confess'd his Reason quite passed about the Attributes of what is Infinite The other Testimony I mention'd to you is that of the excellent Des-Cartes in the second Part of his Principles of Philosophy where speaking of the Circle to be made by Matter moving through places still lesser and lesser he has this ingenious acknowledgment Fatendum tamen est sayes he in motu isto aliquid reperiri quod mens quidem nostra percipit esse verum sed tamen quo pacto fiat non comprehendit nempe Divisionem quarundam particularum Materiae in infinitum sive indefinitam atque in tot partes ut nulla cogitatione determinare possimus tam exiguam quin intelligamus ipsam in alias adhuc minores reipsa esse divisam And in the Close of the next Paragraph he gives this for a Reason why though we cannot comprehend this indefinite division yet we ought not to doubt of the truth of it That we discern it to be of that kind of things that cannot be compriz'd by our minds as being but finite If then such bold and piercing Wits and such excellent Mathematicians are forc'd to confess that not only their own Reason but that of Mankind may be passed and non-plus'd about Quantity which is an Object of contemplation Natural nay Mathematical and which is the Subject of the rigid Demonstrations of pure Mathematicks why should we think it unfit to be believ'd and to be acknowledg'd that in the Attributes of God who is essentially an Infinite Being and an Ens singularissimum and in divers other Divine things of which we can have no knowledge without Revelation there should be some things that our Finite understandings cannot especially in this life clearly comprehend SECT III. To this Consideration I shall for Affinities sake subjoin another which I leave to your Liberty to look upon as a distinct one or as an Enlargement and Application of the former I consider then that there is a great difference between a Doctrines being repugnant to the general and well-weigh'd Rules or Dictates of Reason in the forming of which Rules it may be suppos'd to have been duly consider'd and its disagreeing with Axioms at the Establishment whereof the Doctrine in Question was probably never thought on There are several Rules that pass current ev'n among the most Learned Men and which are indeed of very great use when restrain'd to those things whence they took their Rise and others of the like nature which yet ought not to overthrow those Divine Doctrines that seem not consonant to them For the Framers of these Rules having generally built them upon the Observations they had made of Natural and Moral things since as we lately argued Reason it self cannot but acknowledge there are some things out of its Sphere we must not think it impossible that there may be Rules which will hold in all inferior Beings for which they were made and yet not reach to that infinite and most singular Being call'd God and to some Divine matters which were not taken into Consideration when those Rules were fram'd And indeed if we consider God as the Author of the Universe and the free Establisher of the Laws of Motion whose general Concourse is necessary to the Conservation and Efficacy of every particular Physical Agent we cannot but acknowledge that by with-holding his Concourse or changing these Laws of Motion which depend perfectly upon his Will he may invalidate most if not all the Axioms and Theorems of Natural Philosophy These supposing the Course of Nature and especially the Establish'd Laws of Motion among the parts of the Universal Matter as those upon which all the Phaenomena of Nature depend 'T is a Rule in Natural Philosophy that Causae necessariae semper agunt quantum possunt But it will not follow from thence that the Fire must necessarily burn Daniel's three Companions or their Cloaths that were cast by the Babylonian King's Command into the midst of a Burning fiery Furnace when the Author of Nature was pleas'd to withdraw his Concourse to the Operation of the flames or supernaturally to defend against them the Bodies that were exposed to them That Men once truly dead cannot be brought to life again hath been in all Ages the Doctrine of meer Philosophers but though this be true according to the Course of Nature yet it will not follow but that the contrary may be true if God interpose either to recall the departed Soul and reconjoin it to the Body if the Organization of this be not too much vitiated or by so altering the Fabrick of the matter whereof the Carkass consists as to restore it to a fitness for the Exercise of the Functions of Life Agreably to this let me observe to you that though it be unreasonable to believe a Miraculous Effect when attributed onely to a meer Physical Agent yet the same thing may reasonably be believ'd when ascrib'd to God or to Agents assisted with his absolute or supernatural Power That a Man born blind should in a trice recover his sight upon the Application of Clay and Spittle would justly appear incredible if the Cure were ascrib'd to one that acted as a meer Man but it will not follow that it ought to be incredible that the Son of God should work it And the like may be said of all the Miracles perform'd by Christ and those Apostles and other Disciples of his that acted by virtue of a Divine Power and Commission For in all these and the like Cases it suffices not to make ones Belief irrational that the things believ'd are impossible to be true according to the course of Nature but it must be shewn either that they are impossible even to the Power of God to which they are ascrib'd or that the Records we have of them are not sufficient to beget Belief in the nature of a Testimony which latter Objection against these Relations is Forreign to our present Discourse And as the Rules about the power of Agents will not all of them hold in God so I might shew the like if I had time concerning some of his other Attributes Insomuch that ev'n in point of Justice wherein we think we may freeliest make Estimates of what may or may not be done there may be some cases wherein God's supreme Dominion as Maker and Governor of the World places him above some of those Rules I say some for I say not above all those Rules of Justice which oblige all
impart to the Mariners Needle a Property which as far as we know nothing in the whole World that is not Magnetical can communicate or possess and should operate as Men suppose upon it at three or four thousand Leagues distance yet this is believ'd by the Peripateticks themselves upon the Testimony of those Navigators that have fail'd to the East and West-Indies and divers even of the more rigid of the modern Philosophers believe more than this upon the Testimony of Gilbert Cabaeus Kircherus and other Learned Magnetical Writers who have affirmed these things most of which I can also averr to you upon my own knowledge Thus the Habitableness of the Torrid Zone though as I lately noted upon probable grounds deny'd by Aristotle and the generality of Philosophers for many Ages yet not only that but its Populousness is now confidently believed by the Peripatetick Schoolmen themselves who never were there And though Ptolomy and some other eminent Astronomers did with great care and skill and by the help of Geometry as well as Observations frame a Theory of the Planets so plausibly contriv'd that most of the succeeding Mathematicians for 12 or 14 Ages acquiesc'd in it yet almost all the modern Philosophers and Astronomers that have search'd into these matters with a readiness to believe their Eyes and allow their Reason to act freely have been forc'd if not to reject the whole Theory yet at least to alter it quite as to the Number and Order of the Planets though these last nam'd Innovations are sometimes solely and always mainly built upon the Phaenomena discover'd to us by two or three pieces of glass plac'd in a long hollow Cane and honour'd with the name of a Telescope The last of the two things I invited you to consider with me is this That when we are to judge which of two disagreeing Opinions is most Rational i. e. to be judg'd most agreeable to right Reason we ought to give sentence not for that which the Faculty furnish'd only with such and such Notions whether vulgar or borrow'd from this or that Sect of Philosophers would prefer but that which is prefer'd by the Faculty furnish'd either with all the Evidence requisite or advantagious to make it give a right Judgment in the case lying before it or when that cannot be had with the best and fullest Informations that it can procure This is so evident by its own light that your Friend might look upon it as an affront to his Judgment if I should go about solicitously to prove it And therefore I shall only advertise you that provided the Information be such as a man has just cause to believe and perceives that he clearly understands it will not alter the case whether he have it by Reason as that is taken for the Faculty furnish'd but with its inbred Notions and the more common Observations or by some Philosophical Theory or by Experiments purposely devis'd or by Testimony Humane or Divine which last we call Revelation For all these are but differing ways of informing the Understanding and of signifying to it the same thing as the Sight and the Touch may assure a Man that a Body is smooth or rough or in motion or at rest and in some other instances several senses discover to us the same Object which is therefore call'd Objectum Commune and provided these Informations have the conditions lately intimated which way soever the Understanding receives them it may safely reason and build Opinions upon them Astronomers have within these 100 years observ'd that a Star hath appeared among the Fix'd ones for some time and having afterwards disappear'd has yet some years after that shew'd it self again And though as to this surprising Phaenomenon our Experimental Philosophers could have contributed nothing to the producing it and though 't is quite out of all the received Systems of the Heavens that Astronomers have hitherto deliver'd yet the Star it self may be a true Celestial light and may allow us to Philosophize upon it and draw Inferences from the Discoveries it makes us as well as we can from the Phaenomena of those Stars that are not extraordinary and of those Falling Stars that are within our own Ken and Region That the Supernatural things said to be perform'd by Witches and Evil Spirits might if true supply us with Hypotheses and Mediums whereby to constitute and prove Theories as well as the Phaenomena of meer nature seems tacitely indeed but yet sufficiently to be acknowledg'd by those modern Naturalists that care not to take any other way to decline the Consequences that may be drawn from such Relations than sollicitously to shew that the Relations themselves are all as I fear most of them are false and occasion'd by the Credulity or Imposture of Men. But not to do any more than glance at these matters let us proceed upon what is more unquestionable and consider that since ev'n our most Critical Philosophers do admit many of the astonishing Attributes of Magnetick Bodies which themselves never had occasion to see upon the Testimony of Gilbert and others who never were able to give the true causes of them because they look upon those Relators as honest Men and judicious enough not to be impos'd upon as to the matter of Fact Since I say such amazing things are believ'd by such severe Naturalists upon the Authority of Men who did not know the intimate nature of Magnetick Bodies and since these strange Phaenonomena are not only assented to as true by the Philosophers we speak of but many Philosophical consequences are without haesitancy deduc'd from them without any blemish to the judgment of those that give their Assent both to the Things and the Inferences why should it be contrary to Reason to believe the Testimony of God either about his Nature which He can best and He alone can fully know or about the things which either he himself has done as the Creation of the World and of Man or which he means to do as the destroying the World whether the whole World or our great Vortex only I dispute not and the raising both of good and bad Men to life again to receive Rewards and Punishments according to their Demerits For methinks that Apostle argues very well who says If we receive the testimony of men the testimony of God is greater especially about such things concerning his own Nature Will and Purposes as 't is evident that Reason by its own unassisted light cannot give us the knowledge of So that we Christians in assenting to Doctrines upon the account of Revelation need not nor do not reject the Authority of Reason but only appeal from Reason to it self i. e. from Reason as it is more slightly to its Dictates as 't is more fully inform'd Of which two sorts of Dictates there is nothing more rational than to prefer the latter to the former And for my part I am apt to think that if what has been represented in