yet a strong and noble sense of the supreme Being as may even by his adversaries be collected from hence that he never durst adventure on a Desinition nay not so much as a Description of its Nature For though he spun out his speculations of Immateriall substances the onely and proper theme of a Metaphysitian into a long but knotty and unequall thread of 14 Books yet in the 13 first of all those he seems little better then wholly silent in all things that immediately concern Theology and in some few Chapters onely of the last affords us a sparing and timerous discourse of the Proprieties or Attributes of the First Mover Now the pride and ambition of his wit would never have suffered his pen to have skip't over that subject which being the most abstruse sublime and excellent must by consequence have adferred the most of glory and renown unto his memory had he not been fully convicted from within of the immense chasme or gulph that lay between the utmost extent of his own finite reason and the incomprehensibility of the Essence of God This his evasion or rather supersession some have been pleased to urge against his honour as an argument of his Ignorance in nations supernaturall but in my construction t is the clearest demonstration of the Modesty and strength of his Judgment For whoever shall duely consider how impossible it must be for humanity dull grosse and narrow humanity to behold Invisibility derive Independency calculate Eternity circumscribe Incircumscription limit Omnipotence understand Omniscience c. and how dangerous a phrensie that brain must be disordered withall that attempts to describe what he doth not cannot know will soon be satisfied that Amazement and pious silence is the best Lecture man can read on that immense subject of which when we have said all we can we have said nothing if we look forward upon that inexhaustible abyss of excellencies which must remain unspoken of and indeed uncomptehended that a professed Nescience in this particular is the complement or zenith of all other Science which the minde of man is capable of in this life and that Aristotle may better pretend to the title of the divine Philosopher for writing so little of the Deity then Plato for writing so much to no purpose the latter speaking little in much the former all that can be thought in saying nothing And how far the ancient Hebrews whose frequent visions Article 3. The Hebrews Intimated so much in the immoderate veneration enjoyned toward his Name Jchovah of Gods reflexive glories transmitted to them in the necessary allay of sensible natures as of the pillar of a Cloud by day the pillar of Fire by night of Smoak Thunder and Lightning on mount Sinai at the promulgation of the decalogue c. might have encouraged them to pretend a nearer acquaintance with Divinity then any other nation of the World were from daring to conceive any positive Adumbration of his Essence sufficiently appears from that high veneration their law enjoyned towards his very Name Jehovah Which was never to be pronounced by any but the High Priest in any place but the Sanctum Sanctorum at any time but on the Festival of annual expiation and in any case but that of generall benediction when the Mercy and goodness of God were to be derived down upon the people by the holy mediation of the anointed successors of Aaron under penalty of no lesse then death and particularly that cruel kinde of death appointed for the punishment of Blasphemy as stands recorded in their Talmud in the sad case of Teradions son Nor can the more illuminated Christian though the superexcellence Article 3. The clearer sighted Christian also can perceive no more of the Divine nature then what is shadowed in its Attributes of his faith justly entitle him to this dignity above all other darker Religions that he hath the true knowledge of God i. e. that he apprehends him under that Idea which he hath been pleased to afford of himself in the sacred mysteries of the Gospell as of a Trinity of Persons in an Vnity of Substance c. most judiciously and piously collected and knit together in that admirable Anacephalaeosis or summary of the Christian doctrine called the Creed of Athanasius raise the eye of his understanding so high as to look directly upon the Quiddity or pure Essence of him whose dwelling is in light inaccessible and invisible but must think it happiness great enough for the entrancement of his soul humbly and awefully to speculate him in the shadow of his Attributes and those onely which mortality is qualified to understand This being duly perpended our Reader needs no other advertisement Article 4. And therefore the Author restrains the readers expectation onely to a demonstration of the Existence of God in this Chapter subnecting a short scheme of his present designe and Method that in this Demonstration of the existence of God from the Idea of him engraven by his own hand on the minde of man he is not to expect any bold and vain attempt of the description of the Formality or simple Quiddity of that supreme Being which is the Fountain of all other Essences and Soul of all other Causes and it remains onely on our part that we tender him an account both of our designe or scope and of the method our pen observes in the pursuance thereof Though we are fully perswaded with Plato Lib. 10. de lâ—gib p. 871. upon the conviction of those innate dictates which the reason of every man whispers in the â—ares of his conscience which proved the louder thunder of the two and spoke more terror to the miscreant Emperor that time never produced such a prodigy as an Absolute Atheist i. e. such a fool as durst indubitate the existence of a Grand-father Principle or first Intelligence from whom as from the main spring in a Watch or other Automatous Engine all motion is derived and which constantly animates the great machine of the World yet have we too much ground to suspect that the accursed sperme of the Giants is not yet extinct that every age can furnish us with a precedent of Theomachy nor need we look beyond our own Annals for a second to Caligula or want a parallel for Epiourus Who though they profest the necessity of a Deity yet sottishly ran into delusions equivalent to the downright denyall thereof and sinned as high as blasphemy in their endevours to cut off those two cardinall and inseparable Attributes of the supreme Essence viz. Omnipotence and Omniscient-omnipresence or Active-ubiquity not allowing the Creation of the World out of nothing to the one nor the conservation or Government of the same to the other And having made reflexious upon the unsuccesfull progress many have made in their enterprises of confuting this sort of implicite Atheisme by the perswasion of Scripture only we became of opinion that to enter the lists with a Lucian or Lucretius and
consist in his appropinquation to God and we never come so neer him in this remote vale of tears as when we go out of our selves to relieve the necessities lighten the oppressions and prevent or repair the ruines of others For Charity is the only excellence wherein we may in some sort rival our maker and were but our Wills constantly fixt upon the practise of this virtue and our Abilities of doing good but half so infinite as our Wills for the wings of our Vnderstanding are indeed but short but those of our Will are long and have a liberty to sly at all as shall be singularly proved in convenient place we might anticipate no small part of the joys of heaven while we sojourne upon earth and should need no other Heraldry to testifie our selves the off-spring of Divinity Now if it be so intense a delight to the mind of man which is but a beam deradiated from that immense Sun of Charity to do good ought we to think it a trouble to God who is most intelligent and so best knows the necessities of all things most beneficent and so most ready to relieve them most rich and so not obnoxious to impoverishment by the continual profusion of his favours to be a general benefactor by his Providence To conclude if the visible and perishable Sun can with uncessant Article 4. The same illustrated by a second comparison liberality diffuse his consolatory and all-impregnating streams of light heat and influence on all parts of the sensible or adspectable World and so concurre to the generation vitality growth perfection and conservation of all sublunary Natures and this without labour lassation or exhaustion Why should not the Invisible Vnperishable and Infinite Sun of which the other is but a dark and contracted shadow be allowed to have his Wisdome Power and Goodness which Trinity of Attributes make the unity of Providence as I have formerly hinted in all places and at all times diffused in their operations over all his Works with the same facility And as it can be no Interturbation to the serene Felicity so Article 5. Thâ—t the administration of petty occurrences can be no indignity or dâ—sâ—aragement to the sacred Majesty of God but on the contrary absolutely essentiall to him firmly evicted from the universality of his Cognition and Presence neither can it be a Dishonour or disparagement to the superexcellent Majesty of God to transmit the rayes of his Providence to the most minute and seemingly most trivial and contemptible transactions on this great exchange of the world And therefore Pliny who said necesse est ut Deus tam tristi tamque multiplici ministerio poliuatur might with less absurdity have affirmed that the Sun doth an action much below the dignity of so glorious a creature and must have the purity of his light suffer diminution and contamination when it projects its radiant beams upon sordid and putrid bodies when it cooperates to the production of Toads Serpents worms and other the like base vermin and when it promotes the fertility of noxious and deleterious weeds as well as wholsome and medical plants For those things which appear vile despicable and ugly to the queazy judgment of man are not so really to Nature since she knowes no deformity and therefore all her pieces must be amiable not really so to the eyes of the Author of Nature since he hath thought good to configurate them according to the most exact ideas in his own wise intellect and therefore Beauty is best defined by the confirmity every thing holds to its primitive exemplar in the Intellect of its Creator not so to themselves since they have obtained a perfection congruous to their species and enjoy an absolute pulchritude respective to their distinct kinde and therefore no Animal is so insensible of the perfection of its Forme as to desire either to lose or exchange it Again those Actions which seem various cary the face of multiplicity and fill up whole sheets in the diary of man stand but for an unit in the Arithmetick of Nature and make but a monosyllable in the book of Fate it being the natural prerogative of Ubiquitary Omnipotence to doe all things at once Consider we with what ease and quiet the pale and feeble Soul of a Tree can at once provide for the Vegetation as well of each leafe and blossome as of the trunck and root and cook the insipid juice of the earth into an Aliment convenieÌ„t to the conservation and growth of each single fiber and filament both of the cortex or bark and of the inteâ—ior and medullary substance in a word transfuse a vital influence through each indivisible particle of that great mass of which it is composed Consider we how easily the more luminous and energetical Soul of an Elephant can at one and the same time in one and the same blast or deradiation of virtue administer its nourishing influx to each particle of that vast body and omitts not to take care of every single haire among so many myriads as cloth the skin in its common doale or distribution of Vitality And when we have thus gently informed our selves that t is as easie to the weak and evanid soul of a Plant which the best Physiology defines to be nothing but a certain modification of matter volatilized or a contexture of smooth globular equal and so of calefactive Atoms woven by the seminal virtue or plastick Faculty of that particular species and soon dissolved again upon a variation of figure and situation of those insensible particles of which it is composed to make provision for the livelyhood sustentation of all parts in that mass as for any one of them that t is as genuine and familiar to the Soul of an Animal which is also a Corporeal substance or the more spiritual part of the bloud subtiliated by vital heat traduced from its genitor to animate and govern all parts of its body as any one we cannot but acknowledge that the Procuration and Administration of all the affairs of the world is as facil and natural to the Providence of God who is the Soul of all Souls and the life of Spirits as to take the care of any one individual Nature If the oversight and regency of but half so many different operations as that immaterial Empress which keeps her invisible Court somewhere within us doth every minute even when we are fast lockt in the narcotick armes of Morpheus and all our thoughts keep holy day order and effect while she maintains the oeconomy of the body were charged upon the hands of our understanding but for one houre without question the burden would prove insupportable nor could either the skill or strength of our limited reason in any measure responsible suffice to the due administration of so large a Province When therefore to fathom the depth of that immense natural prudence and soveraign virtue wherewith the soul of man is richly
De Fluxibus Lapsus graves Nuperriméque Calculum foetum Suum O abdita praeclarior Gemniâ Liber Donasse luce publicum gaudet bonum Jam nunc ad altiora surgit Numinis Assertor est Vindexque providentiae Fortuna Fati vis Voluntas Libera Summi docentur obsequi Dictis Dei Deo favente Cuncta Vocum Copiam Lectissimarum mirer an Rerum magis Utramque miror pariter atque exosculor Utramque pronus veneror longè sequor O Autor annumerande Charltonis Tuis Gassende Chartes Magne Sennerte Angliae Et ipse vivas Libri vivant diu Et Artium de Te optimae certent diu Homines priori Opere devinctos habes Nunc Maximum Tibi obligavisti DEUM Clemens Barksdallus THE CONTENTS SERIES AND ORDER OF THE WHOLE BOOK CHAP. I. The Existence of God demonstrated page 1. SECT I. ARTIC 1. ARistotle the most Knowing and curious Ethnick did yet by his silence in the cardinal point of Theology proclaim the impossibility of mans full understanding the simple and perfect Essence of God p. 1. 2. The Hebrews intimated so much in the immoderate Veneration enjoyned towards his Name Jehovah p. 3. 3. The clearer sighted Christian also can perceive no more of the Divine Nature then what is shadowed in its Attributes ibid. 4. And therefore the Author restrains the Readers expectation only to a Demonstration of the Existence of God in this chap. subnecting a short scheme of his praesent Design and Method p. 4. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THe Mind of man can have no cognition of the Nature of its Objects but by the mediation of their proper Ideas p. 5. 2. Those Ideas are 1 Innate 2 Adventitious 3 Imaginary p. 6. 3. A strict enquiry whether the Ideas of objects existent without our selves hold an exact simlitude to their Natures ibid. 4. A second Disquisition whether any of those things whose Ideas are found in the mind of man have any existence without it p. 8. 5. A firm induction that its impossible for any Idea to import or comprehend more of perfection then its prototype or Cause p. 10. 6. And therefore if any Idea contain more of perfection then can be sound in our minds â— certainly our minds cannot be the Efficient of that Idea ibid. 7. The diversity of Ideas respective to the diversity of Entities ibid. 8. The possible originals of each sort severely examined and all sound desumable from our selves the Idea of God only excepted p. 11. 9. The Idea of God here described cannot be either formally or materially false but the most clear distinct and true of all others p. 13. 10. A declarement of the impossibility of the divine Ideas desumption either from our selves p. 15. 11. Or from some other cause less perfect then God p. 18. 12. Or from our Parents p. 19. 13. The concernment of all or a conclusion that the Idea of the divine nature is innate and congenial to the mind of man p. 20. 14. An abstract or Anacephalaeosis of the whole demonstration p. 21. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe importance of the term Cogitation p. 21. 2. Of an Idea ibid. 3. Of the objective reality of an Idea p. 22. 4. Of the â—oâ—mal and eminent being of Attributes in the objects of Ideas ibid. â— Of a substance ibid. 6. Of the word Mind ibid. 7. Of a Body p. 23. 8. Of the real distinction of two substances ibid. 9. Of the substance supremely perfect ibid. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. OBject 1. That the mind of man being sinite cannot extend to the clear and distinct intellection of an Infinite quatenus an Insinite and the Solution thereof by three distinctions p. 23. 2. Object 2. That the Idea of the divine nature resident in the mind os man is a meer Ens rationis and the Solut p. 27. 3. Object 3. That an effect may have more os reality or persâ—ction thâ—n its Cause and the Solut p. 27. 4. Object 4. That the existence of such an excellent Idea as hath been described of the Divine Nature doth not necessitate the existence of an Entity in all points respondent or superior thereto because of the possible composing such an Idea out of our collections from sensible objects p. 29. And the ample Solut p. 31. 5. Object 5. That the Idea conceived of God is capable of Augmentation and diminution and the clear Solut p. 32. 6. Many scruples concerning the finality manner and form of the Idea imprcst as also concernining the seeming Heterogeneity or Alterily between the essence of the mind and that of the Idea particularly satisfied p. 33. CHAP. II. That God created the world ex nihilo proved by Arguments Apodictical page 39. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe insâ—parability or rather identity of God and Creator b. 39. 2. The two respects which inclined the Author to amore a mâ—le comprobâ—tion of the first Article of our Christian creed together with a dielenchical explosion of that antiquatated delusion that the Vniverse was autocthenous in its original or constructed meerly by Chance ibid. 3. The summary of Empedocles Leucippus Epicurns Democritus c. doctrineâ— of the worlds spontaneous result from a Chaos of Atoms p. 40. 4. A Digression winnowing the Chaffe from the Wheat concealed in the former theory of Epicurns and by the Corollary of some castigations restrictions and additions declaring the great advantages that this Hypothesis of Atoms hath beyond any other concerning the Material Principle of all Bodies as yet excogitated p. 43. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THe conceit of the Worlds fortuitous production disparaged by a praepollency even of Pagan Auctority that profoundly asserted the contrary viz. of 2. Thales Milesius p. 47 48. 3. Anaxagoras ibid. 4. Pythagoras and Plato ibid. 5. The Stoicks p. 49. 6. Aristotle ibid. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe pretext of Fortune destroyed by the constancy of Nature in her act of specification i. e. the restraint and determination of the semnalties of Animals to the procreation of their like in specie and the Atheists objection of fiequent Anomalous and Heteroplasmical or monstrous Productions dissolved p. 53. 2. The necessity of the Worlds Creation by an Agent infinite in Science and Power proclaimed by the constant Vniformity of Nature in her perpectuation of Vegetables p. 56. 3. The Sun convincively demonstrates the infinite wisdome of its Creator by 3. Arguments viz. 1. The universal convenience of its situation in its proper orb p. 57. 2. The appointment of its continual Circ umgyration p. 58. 3. The contrivement of its oblique motion along the line Ecliptick p. 59. 4. The impresses of an infinite Intelligence plainly legible in the fronts even of Subterraneous Inanimates p. 60. 5. The impossibility of the worlds Creation by any Agent but God illustrated both by the Magnitude and Pulchritude thereof and the Epicureans dream of a motive faculty eternally inherent in Atoms derided p. 61. 6. The Epicureans grand Argument of the possibility of the consiguration of the Vniverse by a casual and spontaneous
disposition of Atoms from the frequent actuall production of an Iusect by the same means or principles countermined by an inversion or Argument à majori ad minus p. 65. 7. An exception against the seeming disparity betwixt their inserence and ours prevented and the invalidity of theirs though their own hypothesis were conceded in terminis declared by an adaequate similitude p. 67. 8. The conclusion of this section or the aequipondium of the praecedent reasons if perpended in the mass and conjunctively to the most perfect demonstration p. 68. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. THat Antique absurd expostulation who◠Instruments Auxiliants materials predisposed God made use of in his act of Fabrication of the Vniverse copiously satisfied and the energie of the Divine Will commonstrated superior to the indigence of either p. 69. 2. A second immodest interrogation wherefore God so long deferred the creation resolved with a detection of the unreasonableness of undecent curiosity p. 73. CHAP. III. Why God Created the World Page 77. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe improbability of the worlds creation by God insinuated by the Atheists from his defect of any possible Motive scope or final cause p. 71. 2. Their first Argument that the divine Nature is above the capacity of either emolument or delectation from the Vniverse p 78. 3. The satisfactory resutation thereof and Gods glory manifested to have been his prime and principal end p. 79. SECT II. ARTIC 1. THeir second Argument that God had no especial regard to the benefit of Man and the Fortification thereof by 8 reasons p. 82. 2. The total redargution thereof by a commonstrance that the benefit and felicity of man was Gods secondary end and the impossibility of satisfaction to the first end by any creature but man concluded from his 1. Rationality p. 86. 2. Sermocination p. 88. 3. Lucretius his 8. reasons subverted particularly p. 90. CHAP. IV. The General Providence of God Demonstrated page 94. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe Authors reasons for his praesent adherence to the common discrimination of Providence from Creation p. 94. 2. The Definition and received Division of divine Providence p. 95. 3. A short list of the principal ethnick Physiologists who in order to their propagation of Atheism have attempted the eradication of this magisterial verity of divine Providence and a gentle cure of S. Hieroms wound caused by his venial lapse from the same ibid. 4. The Atheists first Argument against universal Providence with the absurd and malicious comment of Lucretius thereupon p. 97. 5. Their second Argument and its convenient dissection into two parts viz. 1. The irregularity of contingencies p. 99. 2. The unequal or unjust distribution of good and evil p. 101. SECT II. ARTIC 1. That the Notion of General Providence is Proleptical inferred from the umversality of its recepeption p. 102. 2. From the misplaced devotion of Idolaters ibid. 3. From the confession of most Philosophers of the highest forme as of 1. Ecphantus p. 103 2. Plato ibid. 3. Aristotle ibid. 4. The Stoicks p. 104. 5. The Academicks and Scepticks ibid. 4. A review of the induction and the Argument found to be Apodictical on one side and on the other only perswasive p. 105. SECT III. ARTIC 1. GOds General Providence demonstrated by the Idea of his Nature reflected on our thoughts p. 107. 2. The same particularly supported by that trinity of Attributes viz. his 1. Infinite Wisdome p. 109. 2. Infinite Power ibid. 3. Infinite Goodness p. 110. 3. The necessity of the worlds gubernation by the indefinent influence of Gods general Providence demonstrated from the consideration of the absolute and total dependence of all Second Causes upon the First p. 111. 4. The vastity of the world the infinite variety of its parts and the irreconcileable discord of many natures demonstrate as much p. 113. 5. Vnder what restriction we are to understand that tropology of some Hermetical Philosophers Deum esse Animam Mundi p. 114. 6. The Atheists subterfuges of Nature and Fortune praecluded p. 116. SECT IV. ARTIC 1. THe Atheists first Antiprovidential Argument refuted by the Perfection of the Divine Nature and their absurdity in commensurating the excellencies of God by the infinitely inferior Faculties of man detected ibid. 2. Divinity demonstrated superior to the circumscription both of Time and Place p. 118. 3. That the procuration of all the infinitely various actions of second causes in the World cannot be any interturbation of Gods serene felicity proved by an Argument à minori p. 119. 4. The same illustrated by a second comparison p. 120. 5. That the administration of petty occurrences can be no indignity or disparagement to the sacred Majesty of God but on the Contrary absolutely essential to him firmly evicted from the universality of his Cognition and Presence p. 121. SECT V. ARTIC 1. THe first division of the Atheists second objection viz. that the apparent irregularity of events doth justisie their non-praedestination or meer Contingency strongly convelled and that to the praeordination of Divinity nothing can be casual clearly commonstrated p. 124. 2. The Authors Antithesis that all Natural Agents are under the strict laws of their distinct species p. 129. 3. A second Counterposition that those laws were instituted and sancited by an infinite wisdome ibid. 4. A third that the legislator hath reserved to himself a praerogative power to alter transcend invert or repeal the laws of Nature ibid. 5. The verity of the first and second Positions amply demonstrated p. 130. 6. The verity of the third Position demonstrated p. 136. 7. A farther confirmation of the same by an Argument from the miraculous operations of God in praeterito p. 137. 8. That there was an universal Deluge p. 138. 9. The Cessation of Satans Oracles after the advent of the Word of Truth proved authentiquely ibid. 10. That there was a prodigious Eclips of the Sun at the passion of our Saviour p. 140. 11. A Demonstration of the impossibility of the Catholique Deluges proceeding from Causes Natural p. 141. 12. That the Cessation of Pagan Oracles upon the incarnation of God was an effect meerly fupernatural comprobated uncontrollably p. 146. 13. That the Eclips of the Sun at the death of Christ was purely Metaphysical irrefutably demonstrated p. 149. 14. The Adaequatien of all to the verification of the Authors third Position p. 152. SECT VI. ARTIC 1. LUcretius his blasphemy that mans ignorance of the energy of Natural Causes is the sole basis of the opinion of an Universal Providence p. 152. 2. The redargution thereof p. 153. 3. Magnanimity the proper effect of Religion p. 154. 4. The opinion of a General Providence consistent with Physiology p. 155. 5. Lucretius his scruples concerning the seemingly temerarious effects of the Thunderbolt singularly resolved ibid. CHAP. V. The especial Providence of God Demonstrated page 157. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe introduction intimating the neer cognation betwixt this present and the precedent Theme and the necessity of the Authors
beginning at the Atheists Objections p. 157. 2. The first objection desumed from the Apathie of the Divine Nature p. 158. 3. The same excogitated by Epicurus and promoted by Lucretius ibid. 4. The second objection extorted from mans being obnoxious to the hostility of many other Natures p. 159. 5. The last objection of the Adversity of the Pious and Prosperity of the Impious in this life p. 160. 6. The sporadical diffusion thereof upon Ethnicks Hebrews and Christians and the probability of their opinion who hold the book of Job to be a Treatise concerning the same subject insinuated p. 16â— SECT II. ARTIC 1. THat man is the sole object of Gods special Providence argued from hence that he is the principal object of his extrinsecal love and that inferred from hence 1 that God hath impressed upon the mind of man a greater knowledge of his Divinity then upon any other Creature Angels only excluded 2 that man is only qualified to speculate admire and laud the pulchritude of Nature p. 166. 2. That the soul of man contains a proleptical notion of Gods special Providence p. 170. 3. That this proleptical notion is the basis of Religion ibid. 4. That Man brings into the world with him an irresistible propension to Religion p. 172. 5. An objection that the Calaici were absolute Atheists refuted p. 173. 6. A second objection that the Massagetae and Scythians were devoyd of all Religion prevented ibid. 7. That it is not in the power of man totally to cradicate this plant of Religion or notion of special Providence Divine out of his mind evinced from hence that the most contumatious Atheists have at some time or other acknowledged it as p. 174. 8. Pharaoh ibid. 9. Herod Agrippa p. 175. 10. Antiochus Epiphanes ibid. 11. Maximinus p. 176. 12. Julian Apostata p. 177. 13. Tullus Hostilius ibid. 14. Bion Borysthenites p. 178. 15. The possibility of the obscuration of the impress of special Providence Divine pro tempore conceded and the impossibility of the total Deletion thereof briefly proved p. 179. 16. The reduction of all to a concise and memorable demonstration that the occurrences of every mans life are the consignations of special Providence p. 180. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe Atheists first objection confuted and the Divine Nature demonstrated both irascible and placable anthropopathically p. 180. 2. The Atheists scruple of Gods inaudition of the prayers of good men or not concession of their petitions satisfied p. 183. 3. The Atheists second Argument against Speciall Providence divine dissolved and the necessity of Objects hostile and deleterious to the life of man demonstrated p. 184. 4. The same illustrated by a correspondent simile p. 185. 5. The Atheists last and grand objection of the prosperity of the Vitious and adversity of the Virtuous redargued and the nature of the Goods of Fortune profounded p. 186. 6. The Reason wherefore Divine Providence confers Good things on Evil men p. 189. 7. Those apparent Evils which Providence Divine consignes to Virtuous men anatomized and found to be real Goods intrinsecally p. 190 8. The Authors Sanctuary wherein he secured his mind from discontent in all those stormes of Calamities which our late Civil war showred upon him p. 191. 9. Virtue a meer Chimera without the occursion of those things which Sensuality calls Evil. p. 192. 10. The Sense no competent Criterion of the Good or Evil of the mind ibid. 11. The Atheists objection that God ought in justice always to preserve Good men from suffering Evil expunged p. 195. 12. The Summum bonum of this life consistent in a full conformity of our wills to the Divine will p. 196. 13. An excellent meditation of Marcus Antoninus concerning the Good and Evil occurrent to man in this life ibid. CHAP. VI. The Mobility of the Term of mans Life asserted page 199. SECT I. ARTIC 1. THe Assinity of this Theorem to the precedent intimated and the necessary division thereof into a specifical and individual consideration p. 199. 2. The reasons of the Authors concise tractation of the first part p. 200. 3. The moderation of Death by Special Providence Divine argued from the impossibility of the moderation thereof by any other power ibid. 4. The same demonstrated from the necessary dependence of all natural motion in its beginning continuation and period on the will of the First Mover p. 202. SECT II. ARTIC 1. A Transient discovery of the almost insuperable Difficulties to be encountred in the worthy and satisfactory solution of this problem whether the Term of mans life be Moveable or Fatal premised by way of Apology for the Authors unequal judgement and his purpose of taking a middle way between the absolute Fatality of the Soick and the meer Fortune of the Epicurean p. 204. 2. Two praevious considerables necessary to the right understanding and consequent discussion of the question p. 207. 3. The necessary relation of all Causes both of life and death to three General heads viz. Necessary Fortuitous Supernatural supports the discrimination of the Term of life into Supernatural Natural and Accidentary and the impertinency of the consideration of the Supernatural Term to the present scope p. 207. 4. The proper import of the Natural Term oâ— mans life and also of the Accidental p. 209. 5. The result of our acceptation of the Term of life in the first signification ibid. 6. The consequence of our understanding the Term of life in the second signification p. 210. 7. The Fixation of the Term of life acceptable in a double interest viz. 1 in respect to some Absolute Divine Decree precedent even to Gods Prescience of all Secondary or instrumental Causes 2 to some Hypothetical Divine Decree whose mutability is suspended on the liberty of mans Will And the indifferency of either branch of the distinction to our instant design p. 211. 8. Three different opinions vulgarly extracted from the precedent Distinction p. 212. 9. The convenient reduction of them to two only ibid. 10. The First opinion declared and the principal Abettors thereof mentioned p. 213 11. The Stoical Fate and the Calvinists Predestination fully defined p. 215. 12. A full and clear discrimination of the Stoical from the Theological Fate ibid. 13. A list of the execrable Absurdities impendent on the opinion of Absolute Fatality so accepted as the Stoick proposeth it p. 217. SECT III. ARTIC 1. THe Authors adhaesion to the Second opinion justified by two important reasons p. 219. 2. The great obscurity and small validity of some Texts of holy writ alledged by the Defendants of Fatality to warrant their opinion detected p. 220. 3. The Natural Causes proxime of the Longitude and Brevity of mans life and the Authors private conjecture of the cause of Longevity in the first age of the world p. 221. 4. The injustice of our Adversaries title of patronage from the forementioned text of Job further manifested p. 222. 5. Seven testimonies out of holy writ supporting the mobility of the
to my self this verity That God doth exist For though the Idea of a substance be included in me for this cause that I am a substance yet it doth not necessarily follow that therefore I can have the Idea of an infinite substance since I am my self but finite unless that Idea first proceed from some substance really infinite Nor am I obliged to think that I doe not conceive an infinite by a true Idea â—ut as most schoolmen will have it by the Negation of a finite as I understand Rest and Darkness by the negation of Motion and Light for on the contrarie I perspicuously understand that there is more of Reality in an infinite substance then in a finite and by consequence that the perception of an infinite essence the Deity is elder then and so precedent unto the perception of a finite essence my self For I demand of the whole world by what means possible I should come to understand that I doubt desire c. i. e. that something is wanting to my nature which I finde requisite to make it perfect if there were in me no Idea of a more perfect being by comparing whose perfections to my own deficiencies I am brought to an assured knowledge of the imperfection and so the subordination and dependence of my own being Nor can it be objected that the Idea which I conceive of God is materially false and therefore possible to be desumed from nothing as those Ideas of Heat and Cold formerly examined for on the contrary in this interest that t is transcendently clear and distinct and comprehends more of objective reality then any other Idea which the minde of man can either conceive or create no one is more true per se nor in which less suspicion of falshood can be detected This Idea I say of the supreme Being perfect and infinite is most true for though it might be imagined possible that there is no such entity existent as my Idea represents yet cannot it be imagined that the Idea of this Ens summum can exhibit unto me nothing real as may the Ideas of Heat Cold c. Moreover I am confirmed that this Idea of God is of all others the most clear and distinct for whatever of reality verity and perfection I clearly and distinctly perceive in all other Ideas is radically concentred in this one as in the Archtype or universal fountain Nor can this my beleif be staggered by this weak objection that I cannot comprehend an infinite or that besides these Attributes mentioned in the description of this superexcellent Idea there are myriads of other Excellencies in God which are too resplendent and remote to be gazed upon by the weak and purblind eye of mans understanding and too numerous to fall under the short Arithmetick of reason much less to be epitomized or decyphered in the unequall landskip of my cogitations for I know full well that it is of the nature of an Infinite not to be comprehended by me that am finite that it is sufficient for me to understand only so much and to judge all those things which I perceive to contain or import any perfection and perchance innumerable other dignities of which I am yet ignorant to be in God either formally or eminently So the Idea which I conceive of him is of all others to which my intellect can extend its power of apprehension the most perspicuous and distinct Notwithstanding that I may leave no doubt to eclipse the splendor of Article 10. A declarement of the impossibility of the divine Ideas desumption either from our selves this assertion I permit my thoughts to run into this expostulation Perhaps I have not the just dimensions of my own essence that I am a far greater and more perfect something then hitherto I have perceived my self to be and that all those excellencies which I speculate in the Idea of God are in some measure potentially in my nature though hitherto they have laine dormant in Capacity only and have not been deduced into act for I already finde my Cognition much encreased nor can I discover any impediment wherefore it may not be every day more and more enlarged even to infinity nor also my cognition being so advanced why I may not at length by the benefit and advantage thereof aspire and arise to all those perfections of God nor finally why this capacity of arriving at all those perfections may not suffice upon the stock of its own single power to the production of their true and adequate Idea And I am answered from my domestick oracle the Light of Nature that not one of those illations can stand For first though it be true that my knowledge may by degrees be very much multiplyed and that many things are in potentia in me which are not yet awaked into their proper operations yet not one of all those properly belong to the Idea of God in which there is nothing at all Potential for this very condition to be capable of augmentation by degrees is an undeniable argument of imperfection Secondly though my cognition should be more and more augmented nevertheless I understand that it could never be actually infinite because it could never be raised to such an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or zenith as to be above all possibility of farther access but my Idea of the divine nature represents him actually infinite so that nothing is wanting nothing can be added to the perfection of his nature And lastly I perceive that the objective esse of an Idea cannot be produced by a bare potential esse which to speak like a metaphysician and properly is a meer nothing but only by an Actual or Formal Now albeit there is not one among all these notions which to my retired and circumspect consideration doth nor appear a most serene noble and illustrious truth demonstrable by the light of Nature yet since when with more loose and unattentive thoughts I examine them and when the grosser images of corporeal and sensible natures benight the opticks of my reason I cannot so easily make it out why the Idea of a being more noble and perfect then my own must of necessity proceed from some such other being which is really more perfect for this respect I say I lead on my mind to a further enquiry viz. Whether or no I who have this Idea could have an existence if there were no such Ens as my Idea adumbrates really existent To particular from what original should my being descend either from my selfe or my Parents or some other essences of perfection infinitely inferior to that of God for no phansie can be so wild as to feigne any thing more perfect then nay not equally perfect with him Now had I received my being from my selfe undoubtedly I should not then have been subject to those frailties of Dubitation and Desideration nor would any thing have been wanting to my nature for at the same instant when I gave to my self a being assuredly
the immediate hand of any such Supreme nature really existent in which all those Attributes are Formally inherent and coessential By no means For though I may in some latitude allow my Parents to be the causes of my generation yet cannot I think them to be the cause of my Conservation since they cannot conserve themselves nor have they made me what I am i. e. constituted me to be Res cogitans an Entitie whose nature is to think but onely as subordinate and instrumental causes have contributed certain requisite dispositions or qualifications to that matter in which I understand my self i. e. my mind or rational soul which in this discourse I constantly take for the whole of my self to be enshrined And upon the credit of this consideration there can be no difficulty taken up to countermand the certitude of my assertion but I may safely conclude that from this position I am existent and my minde contains a certain Idea of a most perfect being i. e. of God it is most genuinly and most evidently demonstrated that God is also Existent Having sufficiently assured my self that this Idea which I have of the Supreme Being or most and only perfect Ens is too excellent Article 13. The concernment of all or a conclusion that the Idea of the divine nature is innate and congenial to the mind of man to be desumed from my self from my Parents or from other Causes which import not so much of Reality Formal and Eminent as the Idea imports of objective it remains only that I explore how and when I received this Idea from God For I never drew it in through the windowes of my senses nor was it ever obtruded upon me without either my expectation or notice as frequently the Ideas of sensible objects are when those objects offer themselves to the external organs of the senses nor was it ever modelled or coyned by me in the laboratory of my Imagination since it is not in my power either to detract any thing from or superadd any thing unto it Wherefore it must be primitively implanted in and congenial to my very Essence no otherwise then as the Idea of my self is implanted or essentially impressed upon my self And surely to a sober and well ordered consideration it can seem no wonder that God when he was pleased to create me hath imprinted this Idea of himself upon my Soul that it might remain as an indelible Mark or Signature whereupon when I reflect my cogitations I should instantly know and acknowledge my self to be the work of his almighty hand Nor is it necessary that this Mark or Impress should be a thing plainly distinct from the work it self from my Essence but upon this one ground that God hath created me t is very credible that he created me in some degree or respect after the Similitude and image of himself and that this Similitude wherein the Idea of God is included may be understood by me by the operation or information of the same Faculty by which I am impower'd to understand my self i. e. that when I convert the eye of my Soul my reason inwards upon my self I doe not only clearly perceive my self to be an Entity incompleat dependent on some Superior principle and indefinitely aspiring â—o greater and better things but at the same instant I understand also that Superior Principle upon which I depend to possess all those greater accomplishments not indefinitely and in potentia only but even infinitely and actually and so to be God And so all the nerves of the Argument may be twisted together Article 14. An abstract or Anacephalaeosis of the whole demonstration into this short though never-to-be-bâ—oken Cord that I cannot but acknowledge it an absolute impossibility that I should exist being of such a nature as I am i. e. having the Idea of God imprinted upon my mind unless God also did really exist that very God I mean whose Idea is in me i. e. an infinite essence actually possessing all perfections which though I cannot comprehend yet in some degree I can with humility and veneration speculate through the perspective of profound and abstracted Cogitation SECT III. NOw in consideration that many of those Metaphysical Terms and singular expressions which I have been forced to make use of in the precedent demonstration of the Existence of God may be conceived either too difficult for the unriper sort of heads or at least ambiguous and therefore subject to perversion as not being sufficiently adequate and restrained to those notions to which I have applied them I have thought it requisite to subjoyn the particular Explanation or proper definition of each that I could beleive subject to obscurity or exception In the word Cogitation I comprehend whatsoever is so contained in us that we are immediately conscious thereof Thus all Article 1. The importance of the term Cogitation the operations of the Will Intellect Imagination and Senses fall under this one notion of Cogitations and the particle immediately I have annexed to exclude all those things that are consequent to these operations as motion voluntary hath Cogitation for its original but is it self plainly distinct from cogitation â—y an Idea I understand that forme of any Cogitation by the immediate perception whereof I come to be fully conscious Article 2. Of an Idea of that particular cogitation so that I can express no one thing in words when I understand what I speak but from thence it is made evident unto me that I have in me the particular Idea of that thing which I signifie by those words And so I doe not call only those Images depicted or engraven on my Pharisie Ideas yea in this discourse I doe not allow them to be Ideas as they are depicted in my Phansy corporeal i. e. in any parcel of my brain but only as they serve as certain characters to informe my minde when converted upon that part of my brain where my phansie is seated By the objective reality of an Idea I intend the Entity of that thing represented by that Idea And according to the same intention Article 3. Of the objective reality of an Idea we may say the Perfection objective or Artisice objective c. For whatever things we perceive as in the objects of Ideas the same things in every particular are objectively included in the Ideas of those objects The same things are said to be Formally in the objects of Ideas Article 4. Of the Formal and eminent being of Attributes in the objects of of Ideas when they are truly such in them as we perceive them to be or when our Ideas expresly respond to their nature and Eminently when they are not indeed Talia but Tanta equivalent insomuch that they may be their convenient substitutes or serve in their rooms A Substance signifies any thing wherein as in subjecto is immediately Article 5. Of a substance inherent any Quality or Attribute whose Idea is in us or
the long and wary speculation of them such happy persons shall assuredly find in him more satisfactory ample and easie matter of clear and distinct cognition then in all the world beside Thirdly I discriminate an Intellection Adequate from an Intellection Gradual or conforme to the slender capacity of man 3. For the First t were madness beyond the power of Hellebor for any man to dream that he could understand an Infinite Conceptu adaequato by a comprehension fully as large and exactly proportionate unto that Infinite nay it may be a very hard question whether the armes of our understanding be long enough to commensurate the full nature of any Finite object though nere so small by an Idea exactly respondent and equal in all points for the other every sober man is able to find within himself that the wings of his mind are not so clipt as that it cannot aspire to the Gradual cognition of an Infinite finita ad modulum humani ingenii accommodata cognitione If any shall pervert this Distinction to so sinister a latitude as to retort that when I confess my understanding too shallow and dark to comprehend an infinite Conceptu adaequato I doe at the same time implicitely concede that I can know no more then a part of an infinite and indeed the least part which can be said to carry the representation of an infinite no more then the effigies of one single hair to represent the whole body of a man I shall smoothly rejoyne that to affirme that if we fully comprehend any thing that thing must be infinite is a plain and obvious contradiction in terminis since the Idea of an infinite if true cannot be comprehended Incomprehensibility being the formal attribute of an infinite and yet nevertheless it is evident that the Idea which we have of an infinite doth resemble not only some one particular part but even really and truly the whole thereof eo modo quo repraesentari debet per humanam ideam though doubtless a far more accurate and distinct i. e. perfect Idea may be allowed to be in the more luminous and clear intellect of God of Angels or other natures more intelligent then man Thus we doubt not but a Clown who never heard of Euclid or learned one Axiome in Geometry may notwithstanding have in his mind the Idea of a whole Triangle when he is once instructed that a Triangle is a Figure comprehended in three lines though he remain ignorant of many other things which a learned Geometrician knowes intelligible in that Figure and insatiately speculates in the Idea thereof for as to understand a figure included in three lines is sufficient to acquire the Idea of a whole Triangle so also to understand a thing not to be comprehended or terminated by any limits or ends is sufficient to the acquisition of a true and entire Idea of the whole infinite This Idea you have of God is no more then Ens rationis a Article 2. Object 2. That the Idea of the divine nature resident in the mind of man is a meer Ens rationis and the Solut. meer figment or Chimaera that hath no existence at all but in your intellect and therefore hath no more of perfection or reality objective then your own mind that framed it Ens rationis hath a double signification 1. it imports a meer abstracted Notion devoid of all reality or a pure Non-entity 2. it signifies every operation of the intellect or more plainly Ens a ratione profectum in which acceptation the whole World may be properly styled Ens rationis divinae or an entity created by a simple and pure act of the divine intellect Now in this last sense only can I allow that transcendent Idea of God to be Ens rationis a clear and distinct representation of the most perfect Being engraven by his own finger upon my understanding and to that unprevaricate judgment that shall maturely perpend the contents and logical connexion of our precedent meditation it will plainly appear that we intend such a Perfection or reality objective in this Idea which no less then that Artifice objective which is in the Idea of any engine most ingeniously fabricated requires a Cause wherein all that is really and formally contained which is included in the Idea only objectively and at second hand or by reflexion Though we grant your Thesis that this Idea hath more of Perfection or objective reality then your Mind yet cannot Article 3. Object 3. That an effect may have more of reality or perfection then its Cause and the your Assumption stand that therefore your Mind cannot be the Author of this Idea since an Effect may have a degree of Perfection or reality which neither is nor ever was in the Cause thereof To instance common observation teacheth that Flies Frogs c. insects as also some Plants are generated by the Sun rain and earth mutually cooperating by a kind of seminal confermentation or fertile putrefaction and yet in neither of those causes will any man allow so high a Perfection as that of Vitality Ergo c. My Inference is founded on the rock of reason and therefore Solut. too impregnable to be demolished by so feeble a battery For first it is indubitate that there can be no Perfection in Animals devoyd of reason which is not also in bodies devoyd of Animation or if there were that Perfection must be extradvenient or derived unto them from some forreign principle nor are the Sun rain and earth the Adequate Causes of Insects or Animals whose produâ—â—ion is spontaneous and without other seminalitie then that analogous sperme of corruption and it sounds discordant in the harmonious ears of logick for any man only because he is ignorant of any other Cause that may conduce to the generaâ—ion of an insect i. e. hath so many degrees of perfection as as an Insect hath therefore to stagger the truth of an Axiome ratified by the Light of Nature For Quod nihil sit in effectu quod non vel simili vel eminentiori aliquo modo praeextiterit in causa is a First notion at which no man can quarel but he must implicitely abjure his own reason nor doth the ancient and vulgar maxime à nihilo nihil sieri differ from it but only in terminis because if it be conceded that any thing is found in the effect which cannot be found in its cause it must also be conceded that this something was made by nothing nor am I convinced why nothing may not be the cause of something but only from this evidence to the contrary that in such a cause there would not be the same nor any thing equivalent unto that which is in the effect Secondly that my Mind cannot be the Efficient cause of this transcendent Idea needs neither declarement nor support other then this canonical position that whatsoever reality or perfection is only objectively in our Ideas must be either formally or
at least eminently in their prototypes or originals and upon this one pin hangs all the certification or assurance that any man can have of the real existence of any other thing in the world the supreme Being only excepted besides himself for from what hint could we have suspected that such or such things are existent without the orb of our own nature but only from this that their Idea or representations have been conveyed into our minds by the organs of our senses And that we have a certain Idea or umbrage of the most potent and most perfect Being as also that the Reality objective of this Idea is so excellent as that it cannot be discovered to be in us either Formally or Eminently will be so clear serene and orthodox a truth as to be sworne to by any who with thoughts sufficiently constant and attentive for it is a chief Postulate or requisite condition on the behalfe of any man that intends his own satisfactâ—on in this abstruse particular ut diu multumque in natura Ent is summe perfecti contemplanda immoretur shall be pleased to consort their meditations with mine upon this excellent and most necessary subject For t is not in the power of my pen to obtrude that notion upon any man the admission and retention whereof immediately depend upon his own cogitation I mean an assurance of the certitude of this demonstration when he is resolved not to be divorced from that uncomely grandmother of Error Prejudice nor to open the ears of his beleif to the most prevalent charms of argument or taste those limpid streams which slow from the fount of all our knowledge the Light of Nature Whereas upon a profound and calme consideration of all and Article 4. Object 4. That the existence of such an excellent Idea as hath been dâ—scribed of the Divine Nature doth not necessitate the existence of an Entity in all points respondent or superior thereto because of the possible composing such an Idea out of our collections from sâ—nsible objects and the ample each of those Attributes enumerated in your description of that excellent Idea which you pretend to have of God as that he is a substance infinite independent superlatively both intelligent and potent by which your self and all the world was created c. we find it not demonstratively necessary that the Idea of such an Ens wherein all those perfections are concentred and united should be implanted in your mind immediately by that Ens we conclude that it may be framed and composed of your several Collections from other external objects To descend to particulars 1. When by the word God you understand a Substance Reason not any Idea assures you that God doth exist Substance and Existence being twins that cannot live but conjoyned hand in hand 2. From the notion Infinite i. e. something that you cannot comprehend nor imagine any limits or extremes therein so as that your thoughts can ever arrive at a Ne ulâ—ra there ariseth unto your mind an Idea not of an Infinity divine but of the termination or circumscription of your finite nature 3. Independent sounds no more then this that you cannot conceive or imagine any cause or original of God from whence t is manifest that from the terme Independent you can collect no other Idea but the memory of your own Ideas which had their several originations at such and such times and therefore are dependent Wherefore to say that God is independent is nothing more then that God is in the number of those things of which you can imagine no original or Cause as also to say that God is infinite is all one in the import with this that God is in the catalogue of those things wherein your thoughts can discover no end limitation or circumscription And thus every Idea of God is excluded for what Idea can there be without either original or termination 4. Superlatively Intelligent here we desire to be informed by what kind of Idea you understand the Intellection of God 5. Most potent here also we require by what Idea you can understand potency which imports things in futuro only and therefore not existent undoubtedly we ascend to the cognition of power by the steps of Memory and reflexion upon former actions progressing by the conduct of Ratiocination thus thus he hath done ergo he had power thus to doe ergo being still the same he hath power to doe the like again in the future Now all these are Ideas which may be extracted from external objects 6. Creator of all things we can pourtray to our selves a certain resemblance of a Creation by drawing the reflexions of those things we have seen with our eyes as when we imagine a man beginning and growing as it were from a point to that figure and magnitude which he hath in his full stature or virility nor are we perswaded that any man can have other Idea then this at the word Creator but yet that we can imagine the world to be created is no obliging argument to prove the creation And therefore though it had been demonstrated by you that something Infinite Independent c. doth exist yet could it be no genuine inference that therefore a Creator doth exist unless you shall adventure to undertake the justification of this argument something is existent which we beleive to have created all things beside it self ergo the world was once created by that something In fine when you affirme that the Idea of God as also of your own Soul is implantate in and congenial to your Essence we desire to be instructed whether the souls of men when they sleep most profoundly and without dreams exercise their faculty of Cogitation or more plainly whether they think if no then at such times they have no Ideas and therefore no Idea can be innate or congenial for what ever is innate is always present To the first part of this objection I answer in general that no one of those Attributes which belong to my Idea of the supreme Solut. Being can possibly be desumed from External objects as from an original or primitive exemplar because in God we can find nothing which holds any analogy or similitude to those things that are in Corporeal Entities but whatsoever we contemplate in our Ideas that is dissimilar or disproportionate to corporeal natures that must proceed not from them but from the cause of that diversity in our cogitation And here I demand how any man can deduce the Idea of the Intellection of God from corporeal objects but what kind of Idea I have thereof I fully explain when I say that by an Idea I intimate all that which is the forme of any perception and who is there that doth not perceive the Philosopher calls it a reflex act of the intellect that he doth understand the nature of this or that object upon which his cogitations is acting and by consequence who hath not an Idea of his own
Intellection which by indefinite extending of it he forms to an Idea of the divine Intellection and so of all other of his Attributes To the other part I return in breif that whereas I have made use of the Idea of God which is impressed upon the mind of man as an invincible argument to demonstrate the existence of God and that in this Idea so immense a Potency is included that we may understand it to be repugnant to reason if God doth exist that any thing besides him in the world can exist unless it be created by him and dependent upon him it cannot but appear a direct and just induction that the whole world or all things else which are in being besides God were created by him To untie the last knot concerning the eclipse of this Idea of God in our midnight sleeps when all our Faculties disappear it is required only that I advertise the Reader that when I affirme that there is a certain Idea of God innate and congenial to us I doe not mean that this Idea is always obversant or constantly held forth to the eyes of our mind for in that sense no Idea can be innate but only that we have within us a certain Faculty or Power istam ideam eliciendi of extracting it or that by the dignity of our Essence we are empower'd to speculate that Impress or Signature of the Deity when we convert our cogitations attentively upon it Though we should applaud your superstructure that the Idea of God is not to be desumed from any other cause but himself Article 5. Object 5. That the Idea conceived of God is capable of Augmentation and diminution and the clear yet can we not but suspect the stability of your Corner-stone or capital reason thereof viz. that nothing can be superadded unto nothing detracted from that Idea And toward the subversion of it we need adferre no greater an engine then our friendly advice that you would consider how smal a garden-plot of science well manured may in process of time be enlarged into a spacious campania that t is not impossible for you to be informed either by men more learned then your self or by the extraordinary revelation of Angels or some other communication from other natures more intelligent then man of many more perfections or Attributes in God then you have hitherto discovered that God himself may be pleased by the irradiations of his sacred Spirit so to illuminate your intellect even in this life of ignorance as to afford you a brightet reflex of his glories and so augment your knowledge of his excellencies that your Soul when she shall have the dark curtain of flesh withdrawn by the rough hand of death and be advanced to the Beatifical vision shall know so much more of Divinity then what you can apprehend now that in comparison thereof your present Idea of it may well be accompted imperfect and therefore capable of addition that in your infancy you perceived no such Idea at all at least it was not so accurate and perfect as at this day when it hath received the accesses of your more learned speculations in short that as you have not attained a full cognition of the perfections of inferior essences nor can ever hope for it at once but must ascend by the successive gradations of new discoveries so can you not acquire a full cognition of the Perfections of the supreme Ens at once but may have your Idea of him made more and more perfect every day by new additions When you reprehend this tenent of mine that the Idea of God engraven on the mind of man is uncapable either of Addition Solut. or Substraction you seem to have no regard to that Rule amongst Philosophers Essentias rerum esse indivisibiles For an Idea represents the Essence of a thing to which if ought be added or from which if ought be substracted instantly it becomes the Idea of another thing And by reason of their ignorance of this truth the Heathen not conceiving aright of the true God fell into the wofull delusion of framing to themselves the Ideas of false ones and chiefly that of Pandora 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in whom all the endowments or excellencies of all other gods were concentred But when once we have conceived the Idea of the true God however more and more perfections may be revealed unto us which were not formerly known to be in him yet neverthelesse is not the Idea of him therefore Augmented but onely made more distinct and express in regard all those Accomplishments ought to be comprised in the same Idea first conceived insomuch as it is supposed to have been true from the very first conception Thus the Idea of a Triangle receives no inlargement when severall proprieties are discovered to be therein which were at first unknown Nor is our Idea of the Divine Nature formed by us in parcels or by sensible additions out of the various perfections or endowments of the Creatures amassed together and multiplyed up to the rate of supernaturall but springs up to us in a moment perfect and entire from this one root that we understand him to be an infinite Ens so perfect as to be above all amplification or accesse of more perfection Article 6. Many scruples concerning the finality manner and form of the Idea imprest as also concerning the seeming Heâ—erogencity or Alterity between the essence of the mind and that of the Idea particularly satisfied Hitherto you have well calmed all those tumults of Doubts which arose within us upon the Lecture of your Demonstration of the Existence of God but yet there remain some few though considerable scruples the full and clear solution whereof is required from you before you can with reason expect to bring us over to your side If the Idea of God be imprest upon you as a mark or signature set by an Artificer upon the work of his hands what is the Modus of that impression What the Form of that mark by what means can you discern it if it be not a thing distinct from the work it self from your rational Soul or Mind is your Soul then the Idea is your Mind nought else but Modus cogitandi a certain manner of thinking can your mind be both the signature impressed and the subjectum impressionis or matter upon which it is impre'st Credible it is say you that you are made after the similitude of God True by a religious Faith elemented in us by the doctrine of Holy Writ but how can you make it out from Natural Reason vnlesse you adventure to make God Hominiforme like to man And wherein can that similitude or typicall analogie consist Dare you being a grosse Corporeal Ens poor despicable Dust and Ashes presume to resemble your self to that Eternal Incorporeal Immense most Perfect most Glorious and what is of most weight in this particular Invisible and Incomprehensible Essence Have you beheld him face to
face Nay with Moses in the cleft of the rock have you seen so much as his back parts so that you are able to describe his aspect and make good the Comparison But you averre that t is credible for this reason Quia creavit now we retort upon you that t is therefore incredible since there is no necessity that the Work should be like its Maker unlesse in the point of Generation where the Production receives a communication of the same nature that is in the Productor but you were not Generated by God nor because he was your Efficient can you safely inferre that therefore you are participant of his Nature but you were onely created fashioned by him according to the exemplar or Idea which was in the Divine Intellect from all eternity So it remains that you have no more justifiable pretence to affirm that you are like him then an Engine hath to be thought to bear the image of the Engineer then a house hath to be conceived like to the Mason or Carpenter that built it Further not to supersede a jot of your own sense which may conduce to the illustration of your Position you subjoyn that you plainly perceive the similitude twixt God and Man when you understand your self to be an Ens incompleat dependent upon some superiour Principle and indefinitely aspiring to greater and better things now in our judgement this is an undeniable argument of a vast disparity and Dissimilitude since God on the contrary is most complete most independent most self-sufficient as being Maximus Optimus In very sooth a Comparison 'twixt Light and Darkness 'twixt Heaven and Hell 'twixt Good and Evil 'twixt a Spirit and a Body 'twixt Something and Nothing may be better endured as importing infinitely less of Absurdity infinitely less of Impossibility In fine it cannot sound lesse then a Miracle that other men should not understand the same that you doe and chiefly when there is no reason alleadged why we may not beleive that God hath impressed the Effigies of his Essence upon others as well as upon you We profess this one argument convinceth us that the Idea of God is not imprest upon the mind of man immediately by himself as a signature or Characterism to confesse our Creation viz. that if it were the Impress would be one and the same in all men that all men would then conceive God under the same Form and Idea would allow him the same Attributes would have the same thoughts of him in all points But that all Nations Ages Religions nay and Persons have had various and distinct Ideas of the Divine Nature is so manifest upon the oath of Experience that we may well here be silent as to any other attestation When you require me to prove that the Idea of God is imprest upon the mind of man as a Mark or Signature set by the Maker upon the Work of his hands and what is the Manner of that Impression or what the Form of that Mark I appeal to the decision of any sober Arbiter whether it be not the same thing as if when I had surveyed an excellent Picture and deprehended so much rare art and exquisite skill therein that I could not judge it to be drawn by any hand but that incomparable one of Apelles I should affirm that this inimitable Artifice or perfection never to be paralleled was a certain Mark or note of Distinction set by Apelles to all his pieces whereby they may be discerned from the ruder draughts of other pencils and you should notwithstanding press me to tell you what 's the Form of that Mark or Manner of that Signal Doubtless such a Question deserves no other answer but a smile Again to pursue the same adequate Simile put the case that I should averre that the singular Art and unrivald skill whereby as an infallible sign the Pictures of Apelles are distinct from the courser paintings of all others in the World is nothing really distinct from the Pictures themselves and that you should cavill at my assertion and by irregular Logick inferre that therefore those Pictures are nought else but the Artifice or Skill in an abstracted acception and so are composed of no matter Ergo they are onely Modi pingendi certain manners of painting c. Would not your argument be equally both as just and acute as when you shall thus reason If there be no distinction between the Idea of God engraven on your Mind and your mind the subject to recipient of this engravement then is your Mind the Idea and your self nothing but Modus cogitandi then are you both the Mark imprest and the subject of the Impression I profess sincerely after a due perpension I cannot determine which of the two Inductions carries the greater weight in the impartial balance of right reason sure I am that the Analogie stands fair and even in all points Nor can your Contradiction of that vetust and almost Catholick Article Hominem esse Dei Charagma that man is made after the Image of God founded upon a collection of those various particulars whereby the Humane Nature is discrepant from the Divine be found more Dialecticall or perswasory then this feeble because preposterous Enunciation If any Picture drawn by Apelles did ever exactly resemble Alexander then was Alexander in all parts exactly like that Picture but the Picture was made up of severall different ingredients or materials as divers Colours oyle wood vernish c. and Alexander composed of skin flesh bones hair c. Ergo no picture was ever like Alexander the Disparity between his nature and the nature of a Picture being so great as never to be reconciled in a full analogie For every temperate brain knows full well that it is not required to the Formality of an Image or Pourtracture to be the same in all points with the Antitype or Original but onely that it resemble in some and we all submit to this Manifest that that most perfect Faculty so I speak as not being ignorant that all the Attributes of God are in him Actually but wanting a word more significant and convenient to this notion of cogitation which we understand to be in God is in some sort fitly represented by that imperfect one which is in Man Further I cannot but point obliquely at your imprudence in chosing rather to compare the Creation of Man by God with the Mechanick operation of a Mason or Carpenter then with the Generation of a Parent since no pretext of reason can justifie that unmannerly Conserence For though those three manners of acting Creation Generation Fabrefaction stand a whole Genus wide of each from other and can never be brought neerer then the swords point yet to argue from a Production Natural to a Divine is by a whole climate a neerer way then from an Artificial Again to leave no point of a scruple unresolved though I have long since assented that the resemblance betwixt God and Man is not so
impossible Materia Prima of Aristotle then the Substantial Principle of Plato the Hyle of the Stoicks or indeed then any other imaginable Praeexistent in the immense space And after a mature confronting collation and comparative perpension of the most general conveniences and congruities of all we have found that from the ground-work of Atoms we are able to make out what is Material what Corporeal what Great what Little what Rare Dense c. but from the others we could never deduce the formal attributes of a body or substance while the original of all things is determined absolutely devoyd both of Quantity and Quality Actual and amounts to no higher a degree of reality then a meer Privation which a righteous enquiry will soon reduce to nothing Nor is that affrighting Dissiculty in the Theory of Atoms which the eye of every Pedantick Sophister first glances upon at the very mention thereof more then this shadow of a scruple viz. how so vast a mass as this Giant the Universe could be made up of such minute particles as Atoms which every man understands to be much below the perception of sense and never to be fathomed but by the subtile arms of the Intellect For I dare entrust the solution of it to any moderate judgement that shall take the pleasure to conceive this Analytick Scale or degradation of Magnitude Let us grant the globe of Earth which seems to contain most of corporeity to be but one part of the Universe composed of many such masses congested and the law of consequence will compell us to concede that the globe of the earth may be coagmentated of many smaller masses piled one upon another or of mountains as Atlas Caucasus c. cemented together that those Mountains may result from an aggregation of rocks those rocks from an accumulation of stones those stones from a conflux and ferrumination of grains of sand that sand from a lesser assembly of dust that dust from a minor collection of Atoms This granted let us have recourse to that famous Demonstration of the glorious Archimed in Aren whereby it is evicted that twenty five Cyphers or Arithmetical notes set in successive order 100000 c. do exhibite the full number of those Granules of sand which suffice to make up the vast bulk of the World according to the vulgarly received magnitude thereof though each of those granules be determined so exiguous that one grain of Popie seed may contain ten thousand of them I say according to the Magnitude vulgarly received for if with Aristarchus whose opinion Copernicus in the last age revived you shall goe higher and enlarge the extension of the world yet according to the Algebra of Archimed will no more then sixty four Cyphers be required to calculate the number of grains of sand of the same dimensions with the former which equal the almost incredible vastity of the Universe Now if you please to goe lower in the quantity of those minute grains and sink them down even to the tenuity of an Atom imagine that each of those small particles is composed of ten hundred thousand Atoms and advance this number by multiplying it into 64 and even then will the number of those particles be exprest by no more then 70. Lower yet if you think your last division went not so far as insectility dichotomize those minute particles each into ten hundred millions and then upon a just Multiplication made the number provenient shall not exceed the reach of 76 Cyphers Nay drive the matter so far that your thoughts may even lose themselves in the pursuit and you shall still deprehend how easily you may be supplyed with Cyphers enough to fulfill the number of all those Atoms which are necessary to the amassment of a bulk equal to this of the World There is yet a fourth incongruity in this doctrine of Epicurus worthy our explosion viz. That Atoms had from all eternity a faculty of Motion or impetuous tendency inherent in them and received not the same from any forreign principle or impression extradvenient But yet can I meet with no impediment that may hinder me from conceiving that Atoms are perpetually active and moveable by the agitation of that internal tendency or virtual impression which the Father of Nature conferred upon them in the first moment of their miraculous production ex nihilo And truly thus refined the Hypothesis of Atoms is less guilty of either inconvenience or incertitude then any other concerning the fâ—rst material principle nay it hath thus much more of congruity and satisfaction then all the rest that it fitly declares the radical Cause of all Motion activity or energie in second Causes or natures once removed from the Primus Motor God which can by no means be commonstrated from any other supposition with the like constancy correspondence and perspicuity especially if we look upon that Form which the Schools commonly conclude on as the main spring in all motion or efficient of all activity For whatever of real Entity they allow to be therein they desume from no other origine but the simple and naked Matter and yet by unpardonable incircumspection or forgetfulness they make that Matter absolutely idle and devoid of all Motive or active virtue Nor did Plato himself miss this consideration but seems to have held the lamp to posterity in this particular for though he restrains not his notion to the word Atoms yet from his description of an Exiguity Quam intellectus non sensus capiat and from the immediate subjunction of De multitudine illarum déque motionibus alii sque facultatibus congruum prorsus erat Deum providere quatenus natura necessitati obediens ultrò obsecundaret c. in Timaeo t is a lawful conjecture that he pointed directly upon the sense These short Animadversions premised that we may as well supply the Defects as correct the depravities of this opinion of Epicurus suppose we in short that God in the first act of his Wisdome and Power out of the Tohu or nothing created such a proportionate congeries or just mass of Atoms as was necessary to the constitution of the Universe suppose we also that all those Atoms in the instant of their creation received immediately from God a faculty of self-motion and consequently of concurring crowding justling repelling resilition exsilition and reciprocal complectence concatenation revinction c. according to the respective preordination in the Divine Intellect and then will all the subsequent operations of nature remain so clear and easie that a meer Ethnick by the guidance of those two lamps Sense and Ratiocination may progress to a physical theory of them and thereby salve all the Phaenomena's with less apostasie from first Principles proposed then by any other hypothesis yet excogitated A meer Ethnick I say for we who have devolved unto us the inestimable blessing of Moses history of the Creation have far other thoughts of that method or order wherein the World was founded and finished
lines pages sheets should attain to that admirable Form which they now hold by a meer fortuitous assembly and not by the certain and predestinate ordination of some supremely-intelligent Cause These reasons though not woven into that strict method which Article 8. The conclusion of this section or the aequipondium of the precedeÌ„t reasons if perpended in the mass and conjunctively to the most perfect demonstration is required to fulfill the web of perfect demonstrations doe yet seem strong enough in their single inferences undeniably to conclude the Creation of the Vniverse out of no praeexistence by the sole and immediate Fiat of the same Essence and if judiciously twisted together into one Syndrome or complex Argument must oblige as firmly since they clearly evince the first Article of the Christians Creed as an uncontrollable verity which none but such degenerate miscreants in whom the Light of Nature is wholly extinct or such as are desperatly resolved to shut the eye of their minde against the splendor of that infallible Criterion can longer doubt of And therefore having determined neither to scandal the intellectuals of my Reader either by indubitating his facile perception of the force of those proofs already urged or multiplying others in order to the illustration of that truth to which he hath formerly submitted his plenary assent nor unfruitfully to spend that time and paper which I have devoted to the explanation and ratification of other necessary points on a work of supererogation I shall onely fringe this exercise with that pertinent and emphatical passage of Lactantius De Opif. Dei cap. 6. Tanta ergo qui videat talia potest existimare nulla effecta esse consilio nulla providentia nulla ratione divina sed ex Atomis subtilibus exiguis concreta esse tanta miracula nonne prodigio simile est aut natum esse hominem qui haec diceret ut Leucippum aut extitisse qui crederet ut Democritum qui auditor ejus fuit vel Epicurum in quem vanitas omnis de Leucippi sonte prostuxit and so proceed to the satisfaction of two collateral Scruples SECT IV. Scruple 1. THe Curiosity of some whether more insolent or vain is Article 1. That Antique absurd expostulation what Instruments Auxiliants materials predisposd God made use of in his act of Fabrication of the Universe copâ—ously satisfied and the energie of the divine Will commonstrated superior to the indigence of either hard to determine hath been so audacious as to adventure upon this Quere If God made the world pray what instruments tools mechanick engines what assistants did he make use of in the work The Satisfaction This is no green impiety unless it hath lately budded forth again amongst those Human-devils the Ranters the report of whose prodigious blasphemies hath sometimes transported me to a hatred at least a contempt of my self for being in the same rank of reatures and made me wish for a second deluge but almost half as old as Time and may be traced as high as the Epoche of the Grecian learning witness those many secret convulsions of it by Plato both in his Parmenides and Tâ—mâ—us while he frequently affirmes the divine Nature to be Inorganical and the immediate operations of the universal cause to be above the necessity of Corporeal means witness also Cicero most of whose streams came out of the Grecian fountain who in 1. De Nat. Deor. introducing the Atheist Vellejus disputing against Plato and the Stoicks who held the divine essence to be the Author of the Universe proposeth the scruple at large in these Words Quibus enim oculis intueri potuit vester Plato fabrâ—cam illam tanti operis qua construi à Deo at que aedificari muâ—dum facit quae molitio quae ferramenta qui vectes quae machinae qui ministri tanti muneris fuerunt c. That boldness is the daughter of ignorance is herein plainly verified for had these unhappy Pagans understood any thing of the majestick essence of divinity or but apprehended the vast disparity between the efficiency of the Highest and that of all other Subordinate causes t is more then probable they had not been so sawcy with his imperial Attribute Omnipotence nor run into that common mistake of flesh and bloud of measuring the ways of God by the ways of man True t is that man hath need of instruments to the performance of any peice of Art nor can the Geometrician draw his lines without a rule or describe a circle without the help of his compass the Carpenter work without his Axe Saw and other tools the Smith without his fire hammer anvill c. all which the wit of man sharpned by necessity hath invented to compensate the insufficiency of his naked hands made by nature either too soft too weak or too obtuse for those difficult uses But yet what can impede our assurance of the eternal existence of a more Noble Essicient whose Will is infinite Power and that Power infinite Activity whose single Let it be done is both Cause and Means and whose simple act of Volition not onely the Efficient but also the Instrument Do not we observe that I may extract an Argument from the evidence of sense how in the twinckling of a lovers eye that comely Arch of colours the Rain-bow is painted on the clouds and yet without either hand compass or pencill doe we not behold whole mountains of ponderous Clouds piled one upon another and yet neither vessels to lave up nor engines to sustain that sea of water And cannot these familiar observations instruct us with more knowledge then to doubt the fabrication of the world without corporeal organs Why is our reason so immodest as to inquire into the ability of the First cause when alas it is not large enough to comprehend the efficacy of the weakest Secondary if the meanest and most ordinary effect of Nature imports so much stupendious industry as transcends the narrow capacity of man what audacious ignorance is it in him to question the eâ—ergie of that Principle that made Nature her self and prescribed her rules to act by from which she cannot vary without a miraculous dispensation We are willing forsooth to profess that we cannot understand by what artifice the delicate body of a Pismire is configurated animated and impowered for the noble actions of sense and voluntary motion nay for ought we know to the contrary for that more noble and elaborate office of discourse also and yet when we come to contemplate the more magnificent form of the Vniverse shall we degenerate into such impertinent Ideots as to debate the Mathematick energie of its Creator and demand how he could operate without Engines to transport adfer and winde up the materials with scaffolds to advance the roof or servants to assist in several offices requisite Assuredly as the frame of that slender Animal doth confess a certain Faculty by which it was modelled delineated and compacted though the reason
rule to all other his actions And truely if Princes ground many of their designeâ— upon profound reasons of State the knowledge whereof is never diffused among their subjects but lockt up in the cabinet of their own heart why may not God who is all Counsel and Prudence be afforded the prerogative of having some weighty respects that moved him to create the World then when he did rather then either sooner or later Which respects for ought we can explore is Mercy in him to conceal from us sure I am t is a pride not much beneath if not equal to that of Lucifer in us to dare to enquire T is a confest truth that no man can know the thoughts of another who is constant to his resolve to reserve them sealed up within his own breast and can any man be so incurably over-run with the itch of vanity when he despaires of pretending certainly to divine the cogitations of his familiar friend whose inclinations he hath so frequently read in the book of his conversation yet to arrogate to himself an ability of searching into the abscondite counsels of him whom neither Minde nor Sense can touch Wherefore t is our duty to reclaim our wild curiosities to set bounds to our inquisitions and gratefully sate our boulimie of science with this wholsome morsel that from hence that the World was once created we may safely inferre that the Creator was pleased to declare himself so Potent that no impediment could intervene betwixt his eternal decree and the opportune execution thereof so Free as to be above the impulsion or constraint of any necessity so Wise as to prevent all temerity and collusion of Fortune so Good that the prescience of mans future ingratitude and so the infertility of his masterpeice could not dehort him from fulfilling his purpose of conferring that inestimable blessing of Existence both upon him and all things else for his sake As for the last clause of this foolish demand An vigilarit tanto aeternitatis spatio an verò dormierit mundi opifex Whether God continued vigilant or dormant from eternity untill he set about the fabrick of this vast All This includes a manifest incongruity and speaks a contradiction loud enough to answer and refute it self For those two terms Sleep and Divinity stand at open defiance and placed in one notion reciprocally deny each other the one importing an Affection of a Body or the effect of the Concidence or Augustation of the ventricles of the brain and slender conduits of the nerves in an Animal caused either by a deficiency or quiet of the spirits inservient to the Animal Faculties and causing a temporary and periodical cessation from the offices of sense and Arbitrary motion the other expressing an Eternal simple Essence neither opprest with corporeity nor therefore subject to defatigation upon any exolution or wast of spirits and consequently not capable of sleep However to manifest the extreme stupidity of their reply viz. that if he were perpetually awake yet we must grant him to have been constantly idle before he began his work of Creation I shall vouchsafe them that judicious rejoynder of many Fathers whose studies were also not rarely infested with these vermine that in all that precedent tract of eternity mortality will excuse the necessary solecisme he was fully imployed in the most blissfull contemplation of himself Which is an operation most easie most quiet most pleasant as all Philosophers who ever have by the steps of abstracted meditation advanced their minds so high as token that perfection of beatitude have observed CHAP. III. Why God Created the World SECT I. THat every Action presupposeth an end or scope is Canonical and hence is it customary amongst Article 1. The improbability of the worlds creation by God insinuated by the Atheists from his defect of any possible Motive scope or final cause men by so much the more hardly to beleive that such or such a considerable Action was done by such or such a Person by how much the less either of probable Pleasure or Emolument may appear to have invited him to that enterprise Nor was Velleius a stranger to this rule for fighting the unjust quarrel of that usurpress Fortune and having at first invaded Providence Divine with direct and down-right blowes unsuccesfully he at last contrives to wound it with oblique thrusts and attempts to stab the opinion of the Worlds Creation by God by striking at the End or more plainly by cutting off all possibility of either Pleasure or Profit to accrew to him thereby And in pursuance of this stratagem he endevours to prove 1. Conditum non fuisse mundum Dei causa that the World was not created for Gods sake i. e. that he is no more concerned in the construction of it then if it had never been altered from its Chaos 2 neque hominum gratia nor for the behoof of man i. e. that man hath no juster plea to the Royalty of the World then the meanest Animal nor did Nature look with a more amorous and indulgent aspect upon him then upon any other of her productions The First position he essays to illustrate and inferre by a Socratical Article 2. Their first Argument that the divine Nature is above the capacity of either emolument or delâ—ctation from the Universe way of argumentation or by circumventing our judgements with a chain of Interogatories all whose links are dependent each upon other though by a connexion so subtile as to be imperceptible to the incircumspect the Abstract whereof as taken by Cicero 1. De Natur. Deorum lies in these words Quid autem erat quod concupisceret Deus mundum signis luminibus tanquam Aedilis ornare Si ut Deus melius habitaret antea videlicet tempore infinito in tenebris tanquam in gurgustio habitaverat post autem varietaté ne eum delectari putamus qua Coelum Terras exornatas videmus quae ista potest esse oblectatio Deo quae si esset non ea tamdiu carere potuisset What politique respect put God upon the servile office of an Aedile What motive prevailed with him to trim the Universe with gawdy Asterisms and imbellish the azure roof thereof with variety of refulgent studs if to better his habitation t is a signe that forever before he was but ill accommodated with a dark and narrow mansion But afterwards can we conceive that he entertained and solaced himself with that variety of beauteous forms wherewith we observe both stories of this great Palace to be adorned What delight is that wherewith divinity can be affected if any such there be why would he so long deny himself the fruition of it Nor did Velleius want a second to joyne with him in this bloudy design for the assassination of that sacred Truth That God made the World chiefly for his own Glory for that witty villain Lucretius and the finest wits if not maturely pruned and kept under by the severe
gentle enforcement of a stable beleif The Act of Conservation of all things in their originary stations and the perpetual obedience of all second Causes in their several Article 2. The Definition and received Division of divine Provldence motions to the laws of his will that elemented them hath ever been called Providence divine which derived high enough seems to import the constant operation of an infinite Wisdom and infinite Power combined in the effusion of an infinite Goodness This Providence for to that Appellation as most antient most common and therefore most familiar I shall adhere most Clerks have branched into General whereby the government of the whole Universe is administred and Particular or special whereby God doth take special care of mankind and regulate the affairs of his master-peice Now according to this necessary Division must I range my forces into two Files and draw up one to defeat those Atheists who have proclaimed open hostility against the First and the other to subdue those that have declared against the Second The Colonell to that black regiment that fought against the Article 3. A short list of the principal ethnick Physiologists who in order to theiâ— propagation of Atheism have attempted the eradication of this magisterial verity of divine Providence a gentle cure of S. Hieroms wound caused by his venial lapse from the same opinion of the government of the World by the Sceptre of Divine Monarchy is generally accounted Epicurus but in the authentique records of Stobaeus Ecl. Phys 25. we may finde him to have been no more then Captain-lievtenant to Leucippus who of all the Graecian Philosophers whose doctrines have escaped the spunge of oblivion was the first that appeared in the field against universal Providence and not long after surrendred the staffe to Democritus the elder whose immediate successor was Heraclitus as we are told by Nemesius De nat Homin 13. But whoever led up the van was closely followed by many both of the same and succeeding ages the most eminent whereof were Dicaearchus Cicero 4. Academ Strato Idem de Divinat 2. Ennius Idem de Nat. Deor. 3. Lucretius Libro ejus 2. Velleius Cicero de Nat. Deor. 1. Lucian in bis Accus who like a facetious villain personates Jupiter complaining of the oppression of overmuch business nay the devout Father S. Hieron in Comment in Abac. seems to have espoused the quarrel though doubtless upon another interest His words I shall faithfully transcribe for two important reasons First because I would not appear to have fixt a scandal upon so venerable a Pillar of our Church who otherwise hath deserved so amply of the Christian faith that the consideration of the transcendent merits of his pious labours had once almost perswaded me to beleive the possibility of justification by works Secondly to deliver his memory from the imputation of impiety for it may be naturally collected from the syntax and scope of his discourse that it was a noble esteem which he had of the majesty of the Divine Nature whom he thought too fully taken up with the blisfull contemplation of his own perfections in truth the only Felicity God can be capable of to be concerned in ordering the trifling occurrences of the world and not any conceit of the insufficiency of omnipotence that cast him upon this rock Caeterum absurdum est says he ad hoc Dei deducere majestatem ut sciat per momenta singula quot nascantur culices quotve moriantur quot cimicum pulicum muscarum sit in terra multitudo quanti pisces in aqua natent qui de minoribus majorâ—m praedae cedere debeant Non simus tam fatui Adulatores Dei ut dum potentiam ejus ad ima detrahimus in nosipsos injuriosi simus eandem rationabilium quam irationabilium Providentiam esse dicentes So that his diminution of the universality of Providence may seem the pardonable effect of immoderate devotion and but a high strained description of the glory of that essence which in strict truth can be concerned in nothing but it self and must then appear to be undervalued when most magnified by the extension of its influence to petty and trivial mutations and conceived to act a part in the interludes of Flies order the militia of Pismires and decree what and how many Gnats shall be devoured by swallowes in a summers day But as for Epicurus and the rest of that miscreant crew t is more then probable that a quite different interest inveigled them into this dangerous error For first their own writings bare record that they made it the grand scope of their studies to promote Atheisme by plotting how to undermine the received beleif of an omnipotent eternal Being to murder the immortality of the Soul the basis of all religion and deride the Compensation of good and evil actions after death In particular Epicurus did not blush to profess that the chief end at which his Physiology was collineated was this ut mens ex perspectis causis conquiescat neque aliam eamque divinam subesse causam suspicando felicitatem interturbet And Secondly the grounds upon which they erected this detestable negation of universal Providence may sufficiently satisfie a heedfull enquirer that not any intense honour or veneration of the most perfect and happy nature transported their minds to this height of delusion but rather a confiâ—med infidelity of the infinity of his Wisdome and Power which is affirmed by us that maintain the diffusion of Providence over all and descry the finger of Divinity in the smallest actions of inferior causes though ne're so contemptible in the eyes of Humane reason But a more ample knowledge of this doth offer it self to our thoughts in the particular examination of their Arguments to which we therefore immediately address The First Argument they drew from the apparent incompatibility of business and happiness or more plainly from the vast Article 4. The Atheists first Argument against universal Providence with the absurd and malicious comment of Lucretius thereupon disparity between the blisfull condition or contemplative quiet of the supreme Nature and the trouble or disturbance for so their ignorance unfitly apprehended it that must arise from the oversight and managery of such infinite variety of Actions as are every minute performed within the immense Amphitheatre of the World For Epicurus indiscreetly attempting to take the altitude of the Divine Intellect by the unequal Jacobs-staffe of the Humane rashly inferred that it could not be extended below the sphear of its own mansion and that no Intelligence could be so large as not to be overwhelmed by that Ocean of Cares that must flow from the multitude and diversity of continual emergencies here below This he contracted into that sentence Quod est beatum immortale neque sibi habet neque alteri exhibet negotium which so pleased him that he reputed it a Cornerstone in the fabrick of science and enacted it
Innocent and not the Guilty 2. To batter Sancta Deûm delubra the Temples of the Gods themselves more frequently then common buildings 3. To be idly spent at random upon the sea and void Campanias and so seems not to have been the Artillery of Divine Vengeance prepared for the punishment of impious mortals 4. To be generated like other meteors by natural Causes being a fulphureous exhalation compacted in the clouds and thence darted ala volec or at a venture on whatever is situate in the level of its projection it appears an absurdity of timerous superstition to beleive that every single occurrence is praeordained by Wisdom or that all extemporary Accidents have their praescripts in the book of Fate And these are the Goliah objections or nerves of the Atheists Remonstrance against Vniversal Providence which though many of the Fathers and particularly S. Clement in 5. Strom. have decreed to be filed amongst those impious questions that deserve no answer but a whip like the doubts of a Mahometan in point of faith yet since promise hath made it my duty to endevour the demonstration of the Attributes of the divine nature such at least as occurre to the contemplation of a meer Philosopher who hath wholly referred himself to the Testimonies of the Light of Nature by the conviction of Reason alone I am confident so clearly and fully to confute that no man who hath not stubbornly put out the eye of his soul shall in the future remain a Sceptick as to this particular SECT II. The Vindication FIrst I plead the general consent of all Nations and Ages in Article 1. That the Notion of general Providence is Proleptical inferred from the universality of its reception the acknowledgement of Providence for according to the Logical Canons even of Epicurus apud Gassend in Animadvers in Canonic Epicuri any motion that is held in common and by long prescription grown into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Anticipation ought not to be doubted of as being its own Criterion and from which there lies no farther Appeal Now that all Nations have met in one Chorus to proclaim the Article 2. From the misplaced devotion of Idolaters universal and absolute soveraignâ—y of Providence cannot be obscure to any that have but with half an eye glanced on the Records of Antient and Customes of Present or but considered that even the Idolatry of the most stupid and barbarous people that ever lived doth plainly commonstrate that they paid both their sacrifices and orizons as homage to some Power which held the rains of second Causes and could dispose them to the production of good or evil events according to his own beneplacets and therefore not only in publique Calamities as War Pestilence Famine c. but also in the private distresses of each Family and Person they immediately addressed themselves to the Sanctuary of their devotions hoping by that means to appease the anger of that slexible hand that had the arbitrary donation of happiness and misery That all Philosophers also who being generally reputed wise Article 3. From the confession of most Philosophers of the bighest form as of men and all their very Tenets exemplary could not but draw whole shoals of under-heads into the stream of their opinions gave in their votes on the side of Providence cannot cost much oyle to illustrate it being obvious first that Ecphantus with most of that elder sect who gave in their names 1. Ecphantus to the doctrine of Atoms did yet establish the necessary concession of some universal Moderator and unanimously referred the ordination of all contingents as well frequent as rare auspicious and inauspicious popular and domestique to the arbitrary disposal of one common Pâ—lot who sate at the helme of this great vessel the Universe Leg. Stobaeum in Ecl. Phys Secondly that those also who held the World to be Non-principiate or to have been so old as never to have been young 2. Plato did yet notwithstanding condemn the delirium of Fortune and concluded the gubernation of all upon the supreme Intelligence For Plato seems so strongly convicted and his reason so violently ravished into the armes of Divine Providence that though he inclined to the eternity of the World he yet conceded the production thereof in time as a necessary Hypothesis or foundation whereon he might the more firmely crect his superstructure of that magisterial Truth which otherwise would have been impossible to be made out viz. The universal Administration of Providence And thus much he frequently declared in Lib. de Legibus in Epinomide in Timaeo more expresly out of which meditation Plutarch De procreat Anim. ex Timaeo de Fato collected his tripartite distinction of Providence Prima enim says he suprema est Primi Dei intelligentia sive mavis voluntas benefica erga res omnes qua primum singulae divinae res omninò optimè ac pulcherrimò ordinatae sunt secunda secundorum deorum per coelum incedentium qua res mortales ordinatè siunt singulorum generum constantia atque salus procuratur Tertia non ineptè dieitur Providentia Procuratio Geniorum qui circa terram collocati humanarum actionum custodes atque inspectores sunt And Aristotle who was much more bold and plain in his assertion of the Worlds eternity though in Metaphys 12. 3. Aristotle cap. 9. he pretends an unwillingness to have the majestick sanctity of the supreme Nature disparaged by being debased to the oversight of petit and inconsiderable affairs transacted heer below and therefore limited his jurisdiction to the coelestial orbs yet was he forced to confess the impossibility of the worlds subsistence in the due harmony and requisite order of all its motions without the constant regulation thereof by Providence as Laertius Theodoretus Stobaeus and other of his most judicious Expositors have assured us And upon this consideration was it that the good Father Origen allowed him to have been one degree less impious then Epicurus Nay Cicero 2. de Natur. deorum makes him upon second thoughts to have professed a recantation by allowing the ubiquity of the divine Wisdome and extending the arme of Providence which he had formerly shortned and terminated in the lowest sphear even to the meanest of sublunary passages introducing him disguised doubtless to prevent the dishonour of unconstancy to his own principles under a third person telling a story of some Qui post aevum transactum in locis subterraneis repente emersi intuitique hunc ordinem rerum ipsum sine numine esse non posse arbitrarentur Thirdly that the Stoicks albeit upon that vulgar presumption that to assign the procuration of all minute and trivial occurences 4. The Stoicks to that Nature which is all Felicity and Quiet was implicitly to infringe the right hand of its divinity they abridged its empire and limited its influence to the more weighty and popular actions of mankind only were howsoever zealous
hold the same place in the world as a Pilot in a ship a Charioter in his Chariot a Chantor in a Chorus a Father in a family a Monarch in a Kingdome or a General in an Army For as the first preserves from shipwrack the second from deviation and subversion the third from discord the fourth from poverty and desolation the fifth from divisions and the last from confusion so doth the wise oversight of God regulate the efficiencies of all Natural Agents with such admirable politie that the whole is preserved in safety in the direct road that leadeth to the general end in harmony in prosperity in union in perfect order To draw a line yet more parallel we every day observe in the sad experiments of death what a leaden and unweildly mass of clay the body becomes so soon as its sprightly Tenant the Soul hath surrendred to corruption and it needs not much proof that the Soul of this gigantik body the Universe is God therefore when this soul shall withdraw and cease its Animation must that body fall by its own weight and suffer dissolution Not that therefore in strictness of sense or without the latitude of a metaphor God is a Soul and the World his Body but because the informing and actuating Presence of God is as absolutely necessary to the vitality of the World and the moderation of all its parts in the due execution of their distinct offices as the Presence of a soul to the animation of a body and the regulation of all its members in the requisite administrations of their several functions And upon this ground our zeal ought not to distast that Figurative Article 5. Uâ—dâ—r what restriction we are to understand that tropology of some Hermetical Philosophâ—rs Deum esse Animam Mundâ— expression of those mystical and symbolical Philosophâ—rs who call God the Soul of the World nor be captious at that rhetorique which hath comparatively styled him the Pilot Emperour and General of Nature since t is the most mannerly language mortality can invent for the explanation of his Government nor is it probable that those profound speculators who first adopted those modest metaphors to shadow the unutterable infinity of his Wisdome and Power were ignorant that there ought still this difference to be allowed that though a Pilot is not ubiquitary in all parts of his ship nor an Emperour actually omnipresent in all places of his dominions nor a General locally present in all quarters and stations of his Army yet God is intimately omnipresent in every particle of the world So that what is uncertainly said of the Soul Tota in toto tota in qualibet parte may be most certainly said of God Totus in toto and totus in qualibet parte In fine as the inspection and consideration of the World hath formerly replenished us with irrefutable Arguments of its Creation by God so also may it evince the constant Conservation of it by the influence of his Providence For whoever though a meer Pagan whose brain never received the impression of either of those two notions Creator and Providence shall speculate the world in an Engyscope or magnifying Glass i. e. shal look upon it in the distinction of its several orders of natures observe the commodious disposition of parts so vast in quantity so infinite in diversity so symmetrical in proportions so exquisite in pulchritude shall contemplate the comeliness splendor constancy conversions revolutions vicissitudes and harmony of celestial bodies shall thence descend to sublunary and with sober admiration consider the necessary difference of seasons the certain-uncertain succession of contrary tempests the inexhaustible treasury of Jewels Metals and other wealthy Minerals concreted in the fertile womb of the earth the numerous usefull and elegant stock of vegetables the swarms of various Animals and in each of these the multitude symmetry connexion and destination of organs I say whoever shall with attentive thoughts perpend the excellencies of these unimitable Artifices for all things are Artificiall Nature being the Art of God cannot unless he contradict the testimony of his own Conscience and invalidate the evidence of that authentique Criterion the Light of Nature but be satisfied that as nothing less then an infinite Power and Wisdome could contrive and finish so nothing less then the uncessant vigilancy and moderation of an infinite Providence can conserve and regulate them in order to the mutual benefit each of other and all conspiring though in their contentions to the promotion of the common interest If any shall yet stand out and object that what I call Providence Article 6. The Atheists subterfuges of Nature and Fortune praecluded is no other but Nature nicknamed all those setled motions and regular effects in the world being but the necessary products of its establisht laws and unalterable method yet since they all declare an Infinite intelligence in that Nature which could decree those perfect constitutions and so strictly oblige all things to observe them in order to a general and particular good he must at last by compulsion discover Divinity disguised under the vizard of Nature by whose counsel and directions all things operate Nor can any man with more hopes of safety recurre to Fortune or affirme that there is no Praeordination of contingencies but that all events are the inconsiderate and extemporary results of Chance since we have lately beheld the ruines of that Sanctuary nor dare I be so uncharitable as to presume that the reason of any thing praetending to humanity can be so infatuted with the stupid idolatry of that Fairy Queen as to expect a farther resutation of that delirium SECT IV. HAving with perspicuity equal to the highest expectation demonstrated the necessity of Vniversal Providence from the nature both of the Agent and Patient God and the World it remains only that we withdraw that curtain of objections wherewith the Impiety of its adversaries hath darkned the prospect of less ocular discerners and terminated the vision of those whose opticks have not been strong enough to transfix it The first we may remember was that vanity of Epicurus that the condition of a blissful and immortal Nature such was his Article 1. The Atheists first Antiprovidential Argument refuted by the Perfection of the Divine Nature and their absurdity in commensurating the excellenties of God by the infinitely inferlor Faculties of man detected character of Divinity is inconsistent with the necessary perturbations and perplexities of business But alas how grosly must he delude himself who fathoms the extent of an Infinite by the unequal geometry of a Finite and limits incomprehensible Omniety to the narrow circumscriptions of Humanity which in comparison is but one remove from Nullity Had God indeed been as he conceived him of Humane figure it had been no error in the Court of Reason to have concluded him not much superior in the capacity of his Intellect but when the Divine Nature as himself acknowledged must
omnipotent Agent which is the soul of all energy and the highest link in the Chain of Causes dishonours it even to the most odious shame of Atheisme which is the greatest ignorance Nor is it Religion that makes men Cowards for the best way Article 3. Magnanimity the proper effect of Religion to harden the Spirit of man is first to soften it with the Fear of God and the noblest Tincture of magnanimity is extracted out of an humble apprehension and fiduciary acknowledgement of an all observant Deity This the wise Father well understood when refuting that impious error of the Poet Primus in orbe Deos secit timor he writ this golden Aphorisme Qui Deum non agnosciâ— is non Dominum excutit superbum sed aversatur optimum Parentem cujus respectu Animus sit non formidine humilis sed reverentia fiduciâ—e plenus Again when we ascribe the Monarchy of the World to one supreme Cause we do not derogate a jot from the Power of second Article 4. The opinion of a General Providence consistent with Physiology Causes but rather confirme and subscribe the Charter of their deputations since we thereby inferre an assurance that those Causes are really such as he was pleased to constitute them that their activities are but emauations of his omnipotence and their effects the appointments of his Wisdome And upon this meditation is it that when we observe unfrequent wildfires in the Clouds shaggy Meteors in the acr Trepidations in the earth and other the like admirable effects resulting from the concourse and conspiracy of potent Natural agents we doe not instantly quench our wonder and check our curiosity by ascribing the production of them to God so as if he were the sole and immediate Author of them and that no other Natural Cause intervened betwixt his Volition and their Contingency but by supposing him to be the First and General Cause aswell of that particular one as of all others in the World and that besides the First there is required a Second Particular one whose indagation will fully compensate the sweat and oyle of our study and which we must not deny though we cannot discover but acknowledge it to be ae Natural one however to obscure for the invention of our perspicacity To conclude out of this one Fountain may be derived streams Article 5. Lucretius his scruples concerning the seemingly temerarious effects of the Thunderbolt singularly resolved enough to rince away all those feculent Scruples which the polluted wit of Lucretius hath scraped off the Thunderbolt to obstruct the current of Providence For the Principles of that affrighting Meteor are comprehended under that series of Natural Causes which God permits to act their appointed parts on the theatre of this sublunary Globe nor doth he force them from the ordinary road of their essential and proper Activities upon any extra ordinary or new way of violence and therefore t is as natural an event if this Granado of the clouds fall on the head of an Innocent as if it fell on the head of the most guilty person as regular for it to strike the sacred batlements of a Temple as to light upon an unhallowed roof and as consonant to the rules of its projection or explosion to be shot point blanck at any mark on land as to be discharged at randome on the Sea But here some have by way of objection enquired Why did not God that he might leave nothing to Chance at his first institution of the Laws of Nature ordain such a series of Causes both for the Generation and Explosion of the Thunderbolt and limit their operations to such a certainty of events as that it should never come to pass that this Fireball should destroy the Good and miss the Impious This itch of ignorant and therefore bold curiosity may easily be mortified by applying this euporiston or obvious solution that the ends or designes of Particular Providence in these or the like occurrences are full of Prudence as to the intention of God though full of obscurity as to the investigation of our unequal Vnderstandings and therefore for us when we cannot find out these imperceptible ends therefore to conclude that those Accidents are meer accidents and have no ends at all is not to palliate but aggravate our ignorance since t is a rash and open delusion of the judgment of man to presume that he is acquainted with the secret Counsels of God a madness beyond the severity of Bethlem for mortality to pretend ability to read those Arcana Imperii or mystical decrees of Fate written in invisible Hieroglyphicks which are to hard for the intuition of Angels CHAP. V. The especial Providence of God Demonstrated SECT I. HAving sayled over the immens Ocean of Gods General Article 1. The introduction intimating the neer cognation betwixt this present and the precedent Theme and the necessity of the Authors beginning at the Atheists Objections Providence by the direction of our own congenial Cynosure the Light of Nature our next voyage ought to be up the channel of his Particular or Special which being the golden River that constantly invirons the Microcosme or Isle of Man and imports all the advantages and mutations of Happiness and Misery that occurre to humanity during the trade of life is that point we have thus long coasted about to discover But before we put into the mouth of this Euphrates Ab 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quod agrum laetum foecundumque reddat we conceive it necessary first to sound and send out our Pilot Reason to detect those Shelves and Rocks cast up by the common Adversary of mankind upon which many weak vessels have founderd sprung dangerous leaks of Atheisme and so sunk down right into that Barathrum of sorrow which knowes no exhaustion and admits of no regression The First of those we finde to be that contraprovidential Argument of that Secretary of Hell Epicurus Quod beatum est Article 2. The first objection desumed from the Apathie of the Divine Nature ac immortale id neque ira neque gratia tangi that those Passions of Anger and Love are inconsistent with the constant and immutable condition of that Nature whose simple essence is compounded of Immortality and Beatitude and therefore as Business and Cares must destroy the Tranquillity so the affections of Indignation and Placability must subvert the Constancy or eternal Sameness of divinity and upon inference that neither our most servent Impieties can accend nor our penitential Tears extinguish the Wrath of God That this poysonous Grape grew upon that wild Vine Epicurus Article 3. The same excogitated by Epicurus and promoted by Lucretius that we may not seem to belie the Devill is not only colligible from its stinking odour and assinity of taste that it bears to that detestable design of his in Epist ad Herodotum to erase out of the mind of man all the impressions of Religion by the induction
to ensnare the judgments of more decisive and penetrating heads proceeds to reduce it to more closeness and strength by superadding these sophistical knots Aut Deus vult tollere mala non potest aut potest non vult aut neque vult neque potest aut vult potest Si vult non potest imbecillis est ideoque non Deus si potest non vult invidus est quod aeque alienum à Deo si neque vult neque potest invidus imbecillis est ideoque neque Deus si vult potest quodsolum Deo convenit unde ergo mala aut cur illa non tollit Either God is willing to amove those evils from good men but cannot or can and will not or neither can nor will or both will and can If he hath a will but not a power then is he impotent and so no God If he hath a power but not a will then is he malevolent and envious and so no God for malice and weakness are equally incompetent to the divine Nature If he want both will and Power then is he both malevolent and impotent and by consequence no God If he want neither as he must not if he be God whence come those evils or why doth he not amove them And too far did this designe of his succeed for the contagion Article 6. The sporadical diffusion thereof upon Ethnicks Hebrews and Christians and the probability of their opinion who hold the book of Job to be a Treatise concerning the same subject insinuated of this pestiferous error became so Epidemical as that it diffused itself not only upon his school and there corrupted the brains of Philosophers but dilated even to the infection of the more remote and grosser mindes of Women and Poets both which Imitation makes easily subject to any impression of falshood that lived many ages after him For Women witness that relation assured by the records of Atheneus lib. 13. of one Danae daughter to Leontius of the Epicurean sect who being on her way towards the place appointed for her execution in the bitterness of her spirit ejaculated this desperate blasphemy Non injuriâ Deos à multis contemni nam quodmeum maritum servavi hanc mihi gratiam rependunt Dii Laodice autem quod maritum suum interfecerit maximo in honore est With very good reason are the Gods contemned by many for that I have faithfully preserved my husband from an immature death do the Gods thus ungratefully gratifie me with this my own unjust and violent one but Laodice because she hath persidiously destroyed hers doth now live slourish and hath her guilty head incircled with a wreath of the most refulgent honours Whether the crime for which she was sentenced might deserve so severe a doom as death I dare not determine our Author being not positive nor open in that particular but this I am sure of that she suffered justly and therefore though I cannot acquit her Iudges I may her Executioners For Poets witness that confession of Ovid. Cum rapiant mala Fata bonos ignoscite fasso Sollicitor nullos esse putare Deos. When I see Good men by ill Fates to fall Forgive't I think there are no Gods at all Nay the sober Claudian prosesseth that the Felicity of the most impious and unjust and the smart Afflictions of the Pious and just persons here on earth had often staggered his confidence of Divine Providence and more then inclined him to become an Apostate from all Religion and declare himself on the side of Epicurus Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem Lib. 1. in Rufinum subinit Curarent superi terras an nullus inesset Rector incerto fluerent mortalia casu Sedcum res hominum tanta caligine volvi Adspicerem laetosque diu florere nocentes Vexarique pios rursus labefacta cadebat Religio causaeque viam non sponte sequebar Alterius vacuo quae currere semina motu Adsirmat magnumque novas per I nane figuras Fortuna non arte regi quae Numina sensu Ambiguo vel nulla putat vel nescia nostri Oft hath my dubious mind seem'd well assur'd That Gods above th' affairs on earth procur'd That one wise Rector all events did guide Nor Good nor Ill from Fortunes wheel could slide But when I saw the Chaos of mens Fates The Guilty slourish long in smooth estates And Innocence afflicted was the heart Of my Religion stab'd forc'd to take part With the adverse opinion which concludes That an immense Vacuity includes The Principles of all in that vast range Fortune not Art doth their old Figures change Gods there are none or such as doe not know What parts self-ruling Mortals act below Concerning this eminent Poet Claudian there hath been old hacking and slashing among Antiquaries whether he lived in the owle light of Paganisme or the illuminating day of Christianisme S t. Augustine P. Orosius and Paul the Diacon the two former whereof flourished not long after he was withered describing him to be à Christi nomine alienus and paganus pervicacissimus and Franc. Petrarcha and Landinus having adopted him for a Proselyte and affirming himself to be not only Christianae pietati addictus but also to have bin the composer of this devout Epigram Christe potens rerum redeuntis conditor aevi Vox summi sensusque Dei quem fundit ab alta Mente Pater c. But if he were a Christian yet could he not want the excuse of very holy Precedents even of that profession who had frequently stumbled at the same stone For the Royall Hebrew whose Muse was the Holy Ghost though a man after Gods own heart a Christian by the baptisme of his prophetique faith and one who had frequently instructed his harp to echo forth Panegyricks of the speciall Providence of the great preserver of men had yet his confidence sometimes damp't and judgement eclipsed by the same fogg of error exhaled from his experience of the prosperity of Libertines Nor was the shock of this temptation easily withstood by so strong a Champion for it made him reel again as he thus confesseth My feet were almost gone my steps had welnigh slipt For I was envious at the prosperity of the wicked They are not in trouble neither are they plagued like other men Their eyes stand out with fatnesse they have more then their heart could wish They are corrupt and speak wickedly concerning oppression they speak loftily They set their mouth against the heavens and their tongue walketh through the earth Behold these are the ungodly who prosper in the world they increase in riches Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocency For all the day long have I bin plagued and chastened every morning c. Psalm 73. To which we may annex that blunt and emphatical lesson of Jesus ben Syrach Ecclesiastic 2. My son if thou come to serve the Lord
prepare thy soul for temptation the concernment of which every man understands to be this The more righteous the more afflicted Here also is a convenient place for their opinion who affirme the Book of Job to have bin intended as no history though they conced him to have bin no faigned person from Ezek. 14. 14. and James 5. 2. but a real example of both Fortunes in an exceeding measure but a grave Treatise concerning this subject viz. the prosperity of the impious and constant adversity of the pious comprehending the arguments of both the Opponent and Defendant of Divine Providence Which is grounded upon strong probability since as S t. Ierom hath observed and attested in the original Hebrew from the beginning of the book to the 3 verse of the 3 chapter where the complaint of Iob begins all is written in Prose and thenceforward during the whole dispute to the 6 th verse of the last chapter all in Hexameter verse where the composer again let loose his pen into prose whereby it is manifest that the Prose was destined for a Prologue and an Epilogue to the contest in verse Now every man knows the sorrows and sickness of Iob to have bin too intense and urgent to endure the calme and leasure requiring humor of Poetry either in himself or his friends and therefore must the book be composed by some Person not molested with either of those two impediments but of serene thoughts and acquainted with the antient custome of disposing their Moral Philosophy into verse And there are instances enough to illustrate both the contumacy and large diffusion of this objection I might have sayd more then enough the strongest and most military Faith among us though assisted by the most evident and firm reason being hardly able justly to boast an absolute conquest of and constant immunity from the sharpe clandestine assaults of the same scruple and so no man needing other example to evince the frequent prevalency of it but what his retired meditations may find alleaged in the inventory of his own frailties lapses and temptations all which are punctually and orderly registred by that recorder of his soul which the Divine call's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Conscience especially in these evil times wherein Piety Wisedom Iustice Temperance Fortitude Innocence and all other Graces and Virtues are deposed and onely their Contrarics advanced in a word wherein nothing can make a man temporally miserable but the severe profession of Goodness SECT II. THat God extends the right hand of his Providence upon the Article 1. That man is the sole object of Gods special Providence aâ—gued from hence that he is the principal object of his â—xtrinsâ—cal 〈◊〉 and that inferred â—â—om hence 1 that God hath impressed upon the mind of man a greater knowledg of his Divinity then upon any other Creature Angels only excluded 2 that man is only qualisied to speculate admire and laud the pulchritude of Nature head of man the Heir of all his blessings though the youngest of his Creatures ordering the occurrences of his life nay the manner and moment of his death by a paternal and special care more excellent then that whereby he is pleased to regulate and dispose the operations of all other Entities in the Republique of the World is amply manifest from hence Quod majorem sui hominibus quam caeteris rebus not itiam impressit that he hath impressed upon the mind of man a knowledg of his Divinity more cleare and distinct then upon any created natures beside Angelical and intuitively intellectual spirits only excepted For though all the works of God carry in the front of their distinct Forms some certain Signatures or Characters that undeniably attest their Creation by an Efficient infinite in Power and Wisedom and in that respect may be properly enough said to shew forth the glory of their Maker and though all Animals do by a kind of tacit homage confess their origination from and constant dependence on one Eternal and Omnipotent Cause yet are they induced excited or rather impelled thereunto instinctu solum quodam caeco only by a blind and confused instinct of which themselves have no possible notion But as for the Favorite man he holds a clear and distinct idea of the Nature of God as hath formerly bin demonstrated and hath therefore a Logical assured and express cognition of his Creator and Conservator and that so radically united or identified to his essence that it can be no Paradox to averr that this science is part of his soul though that be a simple pure homogeneal and so indivisible substance nay some modern Enquirers into the nature of the soul have described it to be Actus simplex Cognitionis omnium quae cognosci possint a simple Act or present Cognition of all things intelligible i. e. of God and consequently t is not in the power of the most desperate and obdurate Atheist to erase this idea out of his mind no more then to change meliorate or adnihilate his essence or prevent the stroke of Death Now what could be the Motive that induced God to ennoble man by the prerogative of this excellent Idea or representation of himself other then the reflex act of his own infinite Goodness which in the language of mortality is Free Love that flowed in a fuller and richer stream upon man then upon all the World beside And what can be the End of this implantate and coessential Knowledg in man other then this that he should constantly contemplate admire and laud the Perfections of the Donor thereof and more particularly that concerned Attribute which moved him to the free Donation namely his immense Beneficence This being conceded it remains a plain and perpendicular Inference that since between God and man there is a greater relation or Communion so the learned Gassendus calls it in Animadvers in lib. 10. Diogen Laert de physiolog Epicuri pag. 744. then betwixt God and any other of his Creatures therefore also must there be a greater measure of Providence in God for man then for any other it being necessary that the Providence of God should hold exact proportion and be aequilibrated to his Love This necessity of a parity or aequipondium betwixt Love and Providence Divine may be conveniently exemplified in our selves for by how much the more we love our Friends Wives or Children by so much the more carefull and provident are we for their conservation and welfare Again our own Experience is both argument and testimony sufficient that the perscrutation of the mysteries of Nature and the contemplation of sublime and celestial objects is proper only to man no other Animal being constituted in a capacity to rival him in those noble operations And if so undoubtedly he must violently stisle tho conviction of his experience in this particular who dares deny that those heavenly beauties and all the peices of Nature beside were created principally for the use of man insomuch as
barbarous education may for a while retard or the rankness of those Weeds of Sensuality the Honours and Delights of this World conceal the germination of it yet will it at some time or other early or late and always in the Winter of Calamity shoot up and bud forth into an absolute Demonstration of the dependence of our Happiness and Misery on the Will of the Supreme Being and if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or full Perswasion of an Especial Providence as a relative Attribute of the Supreme Being whereby all the various Occurrences of every individual mans life are predetermined and disposed bee the Seed from whence this Plant of Religion hath its root both which Propositions we conceive sufficiently proved then doe not I see how the subtilest Wit can evade the rigour of the Inference or Conclusion viz. That all the affaires of man are regulated by the Special Providence of God SECT III. THus far have we Demostrated the Necessity of Gods Special Article 1. The Atheists first objection confuted and the Divine Nature demonstrated both Irascible and placable anthropo pathically Providence and our next business is to remove those Rocks cast up by the Pioners of Satan to obstruct the Current of mans cleare and full beleif thereof As for the First Deum neque ira neque gratia tangi this may without much difficulty be dejected by answering that it can no way infringe the Immutability or constant Sameness of the Divine Nature to affirme it to be capable of Anger and Placability provided that we understand neither of these as a Passion but as the Schoolemen precisely speak in effectu exequutionem potius quà m in Affectu perturbationem rather an execution in Effect then a Perturbation in Affect As for Anger if a Wise-man can so conserve the serenity and tranquillity of his mind as to chastise or severely punish his disobedient servant without any passion or internal commotion at all 't is very hard if God the Fountain of Wisdome cannot be admitted to conserve the constant and immutable peace or calme of his Beatitude when he punisheth the improbous actions of men For Justice is a virtue which to speak strictly cannot frown which abhor's the society of a Passion and only actuates the mind into a noble and commendable Zeal not an illiberall or rough Perturbation And upon the consideration of this was it that the first Preservers of Equity knowing it not to be impossible for the breast of a Magistrate to be inflamed beyond this moderate heat into an excess of Indignation against a Malefactor therefore wisely provided that the Judge should square his Sentence by the direct and impartial rule of the Law which some Civilians have therefore wittily defined to be Ira sedata Anger without Choler Indignation refracted or the sword of Vengeance put in the hand of Mercy As for the Contrary to Anger viz. Grace or Placability why this also may not be adscribed to God as fully consistent to the Eternal plenitude and immu tability of the Divine Beatitude I cannot understand provided that we accept it absque gestiente laetitia and as an effect infinitely remote from that kind of Passionate Joy which tickles the heart of man into a suddain paroxysme of delight upon the apprehension of a gratefull and pleasing Object either in the anticipation of Hope or actual fruition The Reason is the immense Goodness of his Nature which being in perpetual Effusion without possibility of exhaustion or an Ocean that replenisheth all things with Amability yet suffers no diminution of its own fulness doth more then incline him to be pleased with or accept of as gratefull that in man which is originally but an Extract of his own Delightfulness or himself gratefully returned to himself by reflexion from us This the Schoolemen most judiciously pondered when they establisht as Canonical Deum exercere gratiam ea naturae sinceritate qua Bonus est Nor are we to deny this Placency or Delight to God since it is so far from infringing this constant and equall tenor of his essential Felicity that in some sort it mainly conduceth to the Conservation thereof insomuch as to be uncessantly exercised in a liberal Benefaction to other Natures is to doe what is most consentaneous and genuine to the swindge or Verticity of his own and so to do all men doubtless will allow to be the highest and most permanent Delight in the World Nor is it a legal process in the common Pleas of Reason to argue thus God hath left us to act our own parts in the world therefore he takes no farther care of us and therefore all the Occurrences of our lives are either the necessary subsequents or collaterall Adjuncts of our own either natural or moral Actions for though it be most true that he hath endowed us with an absolute Freedom of our Wills an evidence of his exceeding Grace and Benignity and that indeed which supports the necessity of our Rationality for if our Wills were subject to compulsion undoubtedly we should have little or no use at all of our Reason since then our Objects would be both judged of and elected to our hands and so permitted us the enjoyment of our own intire liberty yet hath he out of a compassionate prenotion of the Deceptibility of our judgement prescribed us rules whereby our Vnderstanding may be directed in the selection of Good and devitation of evill To speak more expresly he hath set on our right hand real and true Good on our left only specious and apparent the Election of either is dependent on our Will our Will is guided by our Iudgement and our Iudgement is the Determination or resolve of our Intellect for without dispute though common Physiology hath founded this Liberty on the indifferency of the Will yet is it radicated in the indifferency of the Intellect or Cognoscent Faculty primarily and in the Will only secondarily insomuch as that ever follows the manuduction of the Intellect but yet that he might in a manner direct us in our choyce he hath annexed Happiness as a reward to invite us to the one and Misery as a punishment to deter us from the other and therefore t is manifest that God wills the felicity of all men more then themselves can desire it And hence comes it to be a truth that on one side Fortune respectu nostri frequently puts in for a share in the playing of our Cards but yet still the Special Providence of God supervises her hand and manageth the whole game and on the other that our own Prudence doth many times conduce to our winning of the stake but yet still 't was the Goodness of God that gave us that Prudence and takes great delight to see us use it as we ought to do to our own advantage Doth he so sayth the Atheist how comes it about then that Article 2. The Atheists scruple of Gods inaudition of the prayers of good men or not concession
alteration is not only above the hopes of man whose virtuous endeavours piety and prayers must therefore prove as fruitless and ineffectual towards the Aversion as vitiosities impiety and profaneness towards the Attraction or Acceleration of any misfortune predecreed but even of God himself whom though they allow to have bin the Author of that sempiternal and irrepealable law of Destiny yet they deny him to have reserved to himself the prerogative of exemption from the obligation thereof This was the Creed of Philetas when he sayd ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mortales superat quodcunque necesse est Vi solida quia nec superos reveretur in almis Qui Coeli spatiis degunt sine luctibus aevum Of that old Poet quoted by Cicero de Fato who sayd quod fore paratum est id summum exuperat Jovem and of that renowned Captain Hector when being importuned by his wife not to hazard himself in a salley upon the Graecian trenches he conjured her fond fears into a resolved confidenco that no sword could reach his heart but that of Fate by this spell Parce precor nimio misera indulgere dolori Nam quis me Fat is invitis mittet ad Orcum Nullum equidem vitasse hominum dico ultima Fata Prithee forbeare thy needless grief and know No hand can send me to the shades below Without the Fates assent I hold it true What Fate hath destin'd no man can eschew As also of those Military men mentioned by P. Gregorius Tholosanus lib. 21. de republ cap. 8. whose minds being seasoned with the same perswasion that the manner and moment of every mans Death is appointed by the immutable law of Fate and his lot inscribed in invisible Characters on his forehead became of so hard a temper as to be wholly insensible of the threats of that terrible Giant Danger nor did they account it other then a vanity resulting from the cowardize of Ignorance to provide against the blows of War either by caution or defensive armes urging the examples of many valiant Soldiers who have bin observed to have confronted whole showers of levelled bullets shot from the neer engines of the advancing Foe without a wound and yet at last have fallen by some petite and unexpected peble thrown from the sure sling of Destiny even then when they seemed immured in the secure Cittadel of Peace and thought their triumphant Lawrels armour of proof even against thunder Occidis Argivae quem non potuere phalanges Sternere nec Priami regnorum eversor Achilles Hic tibi mortis erant metae c. Virg. 12. Aeneid But alas 't is not the Academy of the Stoicks alone that affords patronage to this Error of Absolute Fatality nor the Camp that only contends for the propagation thereof nor the politick institutions of that Secretary of Hell Mahomet in his absurd Alcoran cap. 6. that only countenance the diffusion thereof in these our days for even the Schools of Christianity in some parts have advanced the reputation thereof to so unreasonable and dangerous a height as to make it an Article of Faith if not absolutely necessary yet at least collaterally conductive to Salvation and this by Auctority of the Councel of Dort which ratified the doctrine of their Apostle Calvir concerning Absolute Predestination and enjoyned the publick Assertion thereof to most of their Divines of the last reformation I sayd the Doctrine of Calvin concerning Absolute Predestination Article 11. The Stoical Fate and the Calvinists Predestination fully defined thereby though tacitly intimating my knowledge of the no small Disparity between the Fate of the Stoicks and that propugned by many Christian Divines The one being as Chrysippus hath defined it Sempiterna indeclinabilis series rerum catena quae seipsam velvit perpetuò implicat per aeternos consequentiae ordines ex quibus connexa est A sempiternal and indeclinable series syntax or chaine of Causes whose turnings convolutions and perpetual implications are dependent on it self by those eternal orders of consequence of which it is made up and connected the other as the best of School men hath defined it Pendens à Divino Consilio series ordoque caussarum a series or successive complexion and order of Causes dependent on the Will of God From the just Collation of which two Definitions our first thoughts may collect that the Difference between the Stoical and Theological Fate may be thus stated The Former in some things excludes Divinity from that Article 12. A full and câ—â—ar discrimination of the Stoical from the Theological Fate round or Circle of Causes reserring all events as well general as particular to the meer subsequence of Naturall Actives operating upon capable Passives subordinately connected unto and so by successive influx necessarily disposing each other to the production of those particular Effects to the Causation whereof their Natural Faculties were at first determinately accommodated and in others includes Divinity within it i. e. confines his Power and Will to that rigid and infringible Law of Necessity excogitated by his Wisdom from all eternity and established by his Decrce at the inauguration of Nature to Existence The Later makes the Will of God to be the first link in the chaâ—n of Causes and so superior to the restriction of natural necessity dependent thereon The Stoick being a declared Enemy to the Arbitrary Prerogative of God adligeth the Energie of the First and Infinite Cause to the capacity of Secondary and Finite and upon consequence doth acknowledge neither the Liberty of his Will nor the Absoluteness of his Power or Omnipotency But on the Contrary the Christian look's up to heaven as the Councel-house where the Instruments opportunity place and success of every Action receive their Specification to this or that determinate purpose to the Arbitrary Resolve of God as the Definite Sentence or Injunction and on all Second Causes but as subordinate and subalternally instrumental to the punctual execution and accomplishment of the same and upon legal consequence concludes that the Divine Will is absolutely Free knowing no circumscription but that of the Divine Wisdome that the meer Fiat of that Councel is the Director and Spring in the Enginâ— of the World and that the Author of Nature hath reserved to himself the Privilege of adding unto detracting from intending remitting inverting transcending or adnulling the fundamental Constitutions of Nature and so breaking that Concatenation of Causalities or the Chain of Fate at pleasure The Heathen absurdly dream't that all effects are inevitably produced by the conspiracy and coefficiency of natural Causes respectively qualified or that all Accidents spring up from the proper tendency of their particular Efficients without the influence direction or moderation of any other Virtue besides their own native and Congenial Faculties The more intelligent Christian proves that all natural Causes doe not produce their respective Effects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ex
inevitabili necessitate by the absolute and never-failing power of their Essential Qualities or inherent endowments but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quatenus fieri licuit or according to the possibility of their Concingency and therefore though he confesseth that all Events are foreknown and preordained in the eternal Councel of God yet he stands assured as well upon the ground of Reason as Faith that the precise and opportune contingency of every individual Event proceeds from the insluence of this Providence which disposeth and conjoyneth some certain convenient Causes to the production of this or that determinate Effect in some sort respecting the last of Ends his own Glory To conclude the Stoick hath clip't the immense and towering wings of mans Will and allows it no wider range then what the line of Fate affords while the sublimer Christian scornes to stoop to the Lure of any Necessity besides the special Decrees of the Divine Councel not conceiving his will subject to the inclination much less the compulsion of any force below that of him who conferred that infinite liberty upon it For he indeed holds the rains of our Wills and can bend them yet non coactione violenta sed leni suavique influxu not by violent Coaction but gentle and sweet Invitation as the School-men distinguish Now if we consider Fate in the notion of the Stoicks 't will Article 13. A list of the execrable Absurdities impendent on the opinion of Ablute Fatality so accepted as the Stoick proposeth it be no easy wonder if any man though his reason be never so much hoodwinckt with the veile of Prejudice shall not at first glance discover it to be an opinion Blasphemous in respect to God insomuch as it strikes at no less then the cardinal and inseparable Attribute of his Nature Omnipotence by coercing his infinite and arbitrary Activity with the definite laws of second Causes and denying him the prerogative of absolute superiority to his mechanique Vicegerent or rather Instrument Nature and inrespect of man intolerably Absurd since it subverts the Liberty of all humane actions and leaves nothing in the power of mans Will either to elect or avoide For whoever conced's that the mind of man is subject to the compulsive regiment of Fatal Necessity and so that all the actions of our lives are but the accomplishments of so many ineluctable immoveable and inevitable Decrees from the birth of time enrolled in the Ephimerides of Destiny must also concede upon clear inference that our Creator endowed us with the Semi-divine Faculty of Rationality either to no purpose at all or at best to facilitate our betraying our selves into the snares of ruine and misery beyond possibility of reparation or redemption Must induce that the Will being deposed from her arbitrary throne the judgement seate of Reason must fall to the ground nor can there be any room left for Consultation to sit and determine the debates of the Soul concerning the good or Evil of her objects since notwithstanding all our most profound serious and prudent Deliberation the success of our actions as well as the results of our councels would then be no other but what hath bin resolved on and predecreed by Fate and then to conceive our selves obnoxious to punishment for incurring those sins which are imposed upon our wills by a necessity beyond our controll is an open derogation to the equity and Justice of the Divine Nature and to ascribe our Evil to that which is by essence superlatively Good That Prudence is miserable Folly the study of Wisdome laborious Vanity and all our ancient Lawmakers either ridiculous Fools or detestable Tyrants since they prescribe and enjoyne those things which either we must have done had not they injoyned them or are restrained from doing in spite of our own conformable inclinations by the contrary impulsion or seduction of Destiny And finally that all Divine and Human Exhortation to Good and Dehortation from evil are unnecessary and supersluous Thus shall Virtue and Vice vanish into meer and empty notions and Religion become what Libertines would have it a mysterious and well contrived invention to support temporall Greatness and fright vulgar minds into a tame submission to the arbitrary dictates of their imperious Lords nor shall there be a Heaven to compensate suffering Piety or a Hell for the punition of Villainy because as the Good man could not but live honestly and religiously whether he would or no so must it not be in the power of the Wicked man to abstain from doing Evil. Thus shall Love and Hatred the two most usefull Affections of our Souls be robbed of their proper Objects Amiable and Detestable nor shall Justice find convenient subjects whereon to place Laudation and Vituperation since Praise only belongs to those who have chosen to do Good when 't was in their power to have done Evil and Dispraise is the due guerdon of those who choose to do Evil when t was in their power to have done Good And thus shall all our Prayers be fruitless our vowes hopeless our Sacrifices unprofitable and all other acts of Devotion desperate Vanity The least of which and of a myriade of other equivalent Absurdities Incongruities and oblique or appendent and inferrible Blasphemies shooting up from this one poysonous root of Absolute Fatality is more then enough inconsistent to the fundamentals both of Reason and Religion to deterr even Heathens from approaching much more embracing and defending it But as for Theological Fate or Predestination if accepted in the legitimate sense of the Primitive Church and not in that rigorous and inflexible notion of the German Calvinist I conceive it fully concordant not only to many Texts of Sacred writ but even conciliable to mans Free will notwithstanding the apparent repugnancy betwixt them as I shall endevour to prove singularly in an ensuing chapter SECT III. AS for the Second Opinion viz. that the Term of mans Life Article 1. The Authors adhesion to the Second opinion justified by two important reasons is not fixt beyond possibility of either Anticipation or Postposition this I profess my judgement inclines me to prefer as that which seem's to be drawn in the directest line from the point of Truth and that for two mighty Reasons First because there are very few places or testimonies of Scripture which may be thought to advantage the doctrine 1. of Absolute Fatality but on the contrary very many allegable in defence of this Secondly because those Texts which make for this have 2. their importance so perpendicular that nothing but a violent perversion can wrest so perspicuous that nothing but obscure interpretations can darken so soft and easy that nothing but over nice and unnatural Exceptions can harden it And Justice will frown on that stupid partiality that shall prefer paucity to multitude obscurity to clarity and difficult to genuine and familiar solutions To explain and justify this by Instance the Hercules or Article 2. The great
combustible body to Fire may be sayd to be the Cause of its combustion in this respect only that it was Conditio sine qua non or if that Admotion had not praeceded the combustion had not succeded so also cannot that Concurse of Causes from which any Fortuitous Event doth result unexpectedly be sayd to be the Cause thereof in any other respect but this that it was Conditio sine qua non i. e. if that Concurse of Causes had not praeceded that Event had not succeded though not one of those Causes in the single energy of its nature nor all in confederacy ever any way intended it the Analogy betwixt these two cases standing faire and full in all points Again forasmuch as this indeliberate Syndrome or Combination of Causes is always uncertain and various the Causes being Article 5. Epicurus commended for illustrating the instability and uncertainty of Fortune neither elected nor connected nor managed by any Providence of their own we cannot in justice but applaud the wary judgment of Epicurus in this that he called Fortune 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Cause instable in Persons Times and Manners which is aequivalent to this that since she is a Cause of uncertain and indeterminate insluence none but Fools can hope that this Chamaeleon should constantly appear in the same colours or wear the same Countenance Nor is he less to be commended for his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Article 6. Her Indivinity manifested how she came by her Deification Cave ne habeas Fortunam Deam apud Diogen Laert. Epist 3. Epicuro conscripta endeavours to degrade Fortune from her imaginary Divinity and deride the egregious folly of her solemne Worship for so great is the imbecillity of vulgar minds that what they doe not well comprehend they not only immoderately admire but superstitiously revere as somthing wholly Divine and as farr above Nature as it seems above their Capacity and undoubtedly mans Ignorance of the praevious Conspiracy of Accidentaly concurrent Causes from which any Event extraordinary and superintentional doth emerge first praevailed upon him to invest Fortune in such a specious disguise under which he might with less dishonour to his ownâ— Intellectuals advance her to the reputation of a Deity and adore her T is more then probable that men did not at her first Canonization either much care for or enquire into the condition and extent of her Power and evident that when she began to be cryed up for producing strange Effects in the transactions of the world and by a kind of impervestigable superintendency to dispose the activity of Natural Causes to the induction of Events above or beside their proper and Customary Destinations then began the Vulgar to think themselves concerned in the conciliation of her favour and early atonement of her displeasure and so by those to whom she seemed friendly and prosperous was she accounted a Good and Propitious Numen and to those to whom she appeared Inclement and Adverse an Evil and Malevolent one And hence the Error like Rivers still enlarging were stately and magnificent Temples erected for her popular and solemne Adoration and several Inscriptions respective to that particular Attribute which her fond Votaries conceived most eminent in her or most advantagious to themselves ingraven in capital letters on their Porches such as ' 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of which I have seen at the house of that ingenious Benefactor to Antiquaries Mr Vernon in Essex with no small cost and difficulty digged up in a field neer Smyrna and together with many other very antique Monuments brought by him into England Malae Fortunae Averruncae Blandae Calvae Vitreae Equestri Fallaci Aureae c. a large catalogue of which Appellations we may read in Pliny lib. 2 cap. 7. Plutarch lib. de Fortuna Romanorum and Natalis Comes lib. 4. Mytholog cap. 9. This Pliny with some indignation at the ridiculous delirium of the world in the Deification of this Non-entity takes ample notice of in these words Toto mundo locis omnibus omnibusque horis omnium vocibus Fortuna sola invocatur una nominatur una accusatur una cogitatur sola laudatur sola arguitur cum convitiis colitur volubilis à plerisque verò caeca etiam existimata vaga inconstans incerta varia indignorum fautrix huic omnia expensa huic omnia feruntur accepta in tota ratione mortalium sola utramque paginam facit adeoque obnoxiae sumus sortis ut Sors ipsa pro Deo sit qua Deus probatur incertus We are not ignorant nor in duety to the praeservation of their memories from ingratefull Detraction ought we to conceal Article 7. All sober Philosophers vindicated from the guilt of ascâ—ibing Divinity to Fortune how difficult it is for any man to impeach any one Philosopher among those many whose Names or Writings have hitherto escaped the jawes of Oblivion of this absurd Delusion of ascribing Divinity to Fortune For though Plato de legibus lib. 4. hath this saying Deum omnia ac secundum Deum Fortunam Tempus omnia gubernare Aristotle 2 Phys 4. affirmes that some there were who held Fortunam esse causam quidem sed humanae menti obscuram Stobaeus Ecles Physic tells us of others Qui partem aliquam Fortunae ex eo esse Divinam censerent quo quidam temere agentes optatum finem consequerentur caeteros verò prudentia utentes optata dâ—stituerent who opinioned that Fortune was in some part Divine for this reason that some men who enterprized their designes rashly and inconsiderately did not withstanding accomplish them successfully and happily attain their ends while others who grounded theirs upon the most apparent probability and managed the means conducing to their procuration with great prudence and circumspection were however fooled in their attempts crost in their hopes and frustrated of their purposes by the suddain intervention of some occult impediment which as no Forecast could discover so no Caution praevent yet cannot all this be justly interpreted any other then their wary and tacite Confession of their Ignorance of the cryptick ways and imperceptible Ends of Providence Divine nor did these great Book-men speak other then the Dialect of the Illiterate and conforme their Expressions to the customary notion of the Multitude when they referred to Fortune those Contingents which to the jndgement of Reason seemed to want a Natural Series of Causes proper for their induction being as it were obtruded upon man by a power Supernatural i. e. so far above the praecaution of his Prudence as the investigation of his Sapience And though some few perhaps whose Curiosity was weak but Superstition strong may be found to have contributed toward the propagation of this Error yet cannot that in reason be extended to the attainder of the major and more judicious number of Philosophers who upon the strictest examination of their Reliques must be found guilty of no more then
omnino Deus regit moderatur CHAP. IX Of Fate SECT I. T IS not unknown to the meanest in the Commonweale Article 1. The convenient reduction of all opinions concerning the essence of Fate to 2. General Heads of Learning that no less then an Age can suffice to the observant lecture of that Vatican of Books composed by Philosophers of all times concerning this perplexing Theorem there being more Discourses abating those which the kindness of Time hath substracted now extant thereupon then any other subject that ever exercised the cogitations and pens of Scholars as must be acknowledged by any who hath surveyd the singular Iatrophilological Treatise of that judicious Parisian Gabriel Naudaeâ—â— de Fato Vitae Termino But yet such hath bin the singular fortune of Fate that it hath obtained an exemption from that general Experiment Tot sententiae quot Authores there being found upon a just audit of them all fewer Opinions then Books concerning it nay what is one degree of wonder higher a diligent scrutiny may soon explore that they all fall under the comprehension of only Two Catholique Heads some understanding Fate to be Aliquid Divinum a certain power Divine and the rest Aliquid merè Naturale a certain Constitution merely Natural In the Classis of those who have conceived Fate to be a Divine Power the highest seat belongs to the Platonist and Stoick according to whose doctrine methodized and summaried by Plutarch lib. de Fato we may consider it in a twofold Notion First 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Substantia as a Substance In which sense Article 2 What the Platonist and Stoick meant by Fate considered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a substance it is accepted for God Himself or that sempiternal Reason or establish't method according to whose tenor He hath praeordained and disposed All things in the World and so connected Causes to Causes that all Events whatever Arbitrary and Fortuitous individually depend upon and indeclinably result from that subalternate Series or Complication of Essicients For thus Plato in Timaeo one while affirmes that Fate is ipsa Anima Mundi the very Soul of the Universe and another while Naturae Vniversi aeterna ratio ac lex the eternal reason and law of Nature and thus also both Zeno and Chrysippus are cited by Plutarch in 1. placit 28. as defining Fate to be Vis spiritualis ac Ratio ordinis universa gubernans a Spiritual Power and constitution governing All things according to an order eternally praecogitate and praedecreed And all the rest of the Stoical Family as well generally quoted by Diogenes Laertius as Panaetius and Possidonius at least if He be the true Father of that Book de Mundo vulgarly conscribed to Aristotle out of which the text is extracted quoted by Stobaeus Ecl. Physic have unanimously held that Fate was the same with God Jupiter and the Vniversal Mens To whom we may justly associate Seneca also who in 4. de Benefic 2. Natural Quaest 45. sayth in downright terms si Fatum Jovem dixeris non mentieris if you please to assert that Jupiter and Fate are one and the same thing you shall speak the truth Hence comes it that though Poets sometimes refer all events to the procuration of Jupiter and sometimes again to Fate yet may not the nicest Critick impeach them of Inconstancy or Contradiction since those Terms differ only in the sound not in the notion as signifying one and the same Eternal Principle disposing the virtues and conspirations of all second Causes to the opportune effecting of Events designed by it self and so made indeclinable Thus Homer introducing Agamemnon as pleading his excuse fot being instrumental to a misfortune makes him incriminate upon Fate and Jupiter at once in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Non Ego Causa Verum Jupiter Fatum Secondly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Actus as an Act according to Article 3. And what 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as an Energy or Act together with the eâ—ymological reasons of those sundry Appellations the Stoicks have imposed upon it which Acceptation we may understand Fate partly to be ipsum Dâ—i decretum the very Decree or absolute Command of God whereby He hath determined all Events to Necessity of Futurition from whence the Latin word Fatum importing a Decree pronounced is by Grammarians derived and partly ipsum ordinem seriem vel concatenationem Causarum in natura statutam the order series or subalternate concatenation of Causes according to whose praesctipt tenor all Events praedestined come to pass in respect to the Decree pronounced For thus much may be collected from that Definition of Fate ascribed to Plato by Plutarch de Fato viz. est lex Adrastaeae the law of Divine Justice consigning to every thing what is convenient to its nature and which no man can clude or infringe but more perspicuously from that notorious one of Chrysippus Fatum est sempiterna quaedam ac indeclinabilis series rerum catena volvens semetipsam implicans per aeternos consequentiae ordines ex quibus adapta connexaque est which we have formerly introduced and interpreted in our Chap. concerning the Mobility of the term of mans life To which for more assurance we may annex the respective signification and importance of each of those various Appellatives which the Stoicks have accommodated to Fate For they have named it 1 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because 't is a connected series or subalternately-dependent syntax of Causes and Effects 2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it involves and contains All things in that definite and invariable concatenation 3 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because all Events are the Necessary designations thereof or because it self is also under the same restraint of an immutable definition 4 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because no attempt can praevail to an alteration infringement of its tenor 5 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it is a Constirution Eternal 6 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it is a distribution made to every Individual 7 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it comprehends whatever is by Consignation due to every man 8 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because as the original so also the Dissolution of all things is subject to its appointment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Parca because it is the peculiar Lot or Portion destined to every man But as for this aequivocal Denominative Parca insomuch as it not onely determineth the state of all other things in general but also the Life of man in special quasi Nendo as it were by spinning out a thread of commensurate longitude thereupon did Hesiod in Theogn dichotomize it into three distinct species viz. 1 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect to the Irrevocability of time past which exactly resembleth a thread already spun and wound upon the reel or fuze 2 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect to the Decurrent or Praesent time which responds
to that excellent sentence of the Poet Libera stat nobis mens nulli subdita coelo The Second praegnant Argument wherewith the more sober Article 4. 2 By the common Experiment of the unaequal Fortunes of Twins sort of Book-men usually deride the Arrogance of our Genethliacks who blush not to promise to the world exact Copies of the Rolls of Destiny and divine as considently as if they had bin of the Cabal with all the Asterisms we derived from the common Experiment of Twinns who though procreated of the same Seminalities faecundate in the same Ovarie or bed of nature and for ought even our most perspicacious Harvey knows to the contrary conceived in the same moment and so under the same Ascendent are notwithstanding many times observed to differ in Sex physiognomy genius condition of life and mostly in the manner and time of their death Thus Esan and Jacob who may without the dispensation of a Figure be sayd to have bin but one and the same Birth the younger Midwising himself into the world by holding fast his brothers heel and so if not indubitating the right of Primogeniture yet at least portending his future purchase and usurpation thereof were yet so disparate n their Complexions Dispositions Fortunes course of life Age and dissolution that our Secretaries of Heaven must either demonstrate that the face of the Heavens was varied in that short moment that intervened betwixt neer Nativities or confess it to be the hand of Providence Divine which distributed to each his peculiar Lot not the irrational Starrs that caused that vast disproportion And thus Proclus and Euristhenes Gemini not only in their production but in the Crown of Lacedaemonia and so aequally disposed by their Fortunes also to the promotion of that Influence which the then paramont Conjunction of the Pianets had impressed upon them did neither live in equal glory nor perish by equal and synchronical Fates On the Reverse how many Myriads have proved Twinns in their Decease who were utter Aliens in their blood nativity constitutions professions inclinations fortunes Dare our Judicial Astrologers assirme that All who fall in battle at once had one and the same sydereal Fate which necessitated that their Copartnership in the grave unsainedly nothing acquainted with letters can be so contradictorily impudent What excuse have they then left them for stopping their ears against that grave Admonition of the oraculous Zoroaster 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ne tu augeas fatum Beware thou dost not aggravate thy Fate which signifies no less then this in thy power it is either to promote or frustrate the virtues of Celestial Influxes to promote them by Cooperation to infirme and defeat them by Counter-inclination or repugnancy To which we may accommodate also that memorable Aphorisme of the Prince of Astrologers Ptolemy Potest is qui sciens est multos stellarum effectus avertere quando naturam earum noverit ac seipsum ante illorum eventum praeparaveril Our last Argument to confound Chaldaean Fate is the Double Impiety inferrible thereupon 1 If the Infelicity of Article 5. 3 By the douâ—le Impiety Inseparable from the belief thereof every man be the indeclinable Effect of that malicious Tincture which the unfriendly Complexion of the Heavens at his Nativity infused into his nature as our aethereal Mercuries assirme then must it follow that those glorious orbs were created by God more for the harme and ruine then benefit and comfort of mankind for whose sake only subordinate to his own Glory the whole Creation was intended And 2 if all the regicides parricides homicides incests rapes rapines blasphemies sacrilegies rebellions proditions c. nefarious acts of Miscreants the very naming whereof will blister the most innocent lips be the executions of those designes which the malevolent starrs in their Confoederations have determined to accomplish by such and such unhappy Instruments then must it be conceded that no Malefactor ought to be accountable to justice because he can plead Non equidem vellem sed me mea Fata trahebant as also that God is the Author of Evil by giving to the starrs such noxious power and such unlimited Commissions as doe autorize them to operate to the Destruction of his Masterpiece To these 3 Redargutions of Astrological Necessity we might have annexed as many score borrowed from Picus Mirandulanus Bradwardine B. of Canterbury Sixtus Senensis Mersennus Gassendus All which heroical Champions of truth and Providence Divine have drawn their victorious swords in this quarrel against the Host of Heaven but remembring that proverbial axiome Frustra fit per plura quod fieri possit per pauciora we found our selves obliged to decline supererogation and referr the unsatisfied to these incomparable Authors However we ask leave to insert the memorable and not commonly quoted Confession of Hillarius Altobellus Senior in praefatione ad Tabulas Regias Divisionum 12. partium Coeli in these words Cum igitur per tot secula fluctuarit Astronomia mendax tanto tempore peragrarit totum orbem quot modis quot locis quot viribus quot cum temerariis vel ignavis auctoribus inverecunda fronte perfricta fornicata est nunquam nullibi nullis ante Tychonem à Ptolemaeo post aliqua saecula annuam veracem revolutionem dedit neque eventuum verum tempus consignavit non ipsa non dilectissima silia Astrologia Vtraque enim pavit curiosos mendaciis adulationibus Si autem interdummendaces non fuere sors favit vel casus vel per accidens congruentia syderum ad illa puncta non docta ac naturalis conjectatio By which ingenuous Confession of a Person whose assiduous inquest into the most recondite mysteries of Astronomy non only by indefatigate lecture of the choycest of Urania's Secretaries but also by the most exact use of Instruments and Tables and frequent tempestive Experiments had enabled him to detect all those pernicious Frauds which either the Ignorance or ostentation of succeeding Ages had foisted in upon the simple and demonstrable Vranometrical observations and Axioms of Antiquity not only to the Corruption but eternal Defamation and contempt of that noble Science how much of just Disparagement is inferred upon Judicial Astrology which the Avarice of Divining Impostors on one hand and the superstitious Curiosity of abject minds on the other have exalted to the height of Destiny we should rudely derogate from our Readers Capacity not wholly to entrust to his own immediate judgement To ratifie and terminate this our reprobation of our Genethliacal Schematists we have the like censure of them from Sâ— Ambrose in Hexaemero Nonnulli tentaverunt exprimere Nativitatum qualitates qualis futurus unusquisque qui natus sit esset cum hoc non solum vanum sit inutile quaerentibus sed impossibile pollicentibus CHAP. X. The Liberty of Mans Will Fortune and Fate conciliated to Providence Divine SECT I. THus long have we exercised the Candor and Patience of our
Reader with the prolix Recitation Article 1. The intent of the chapter and necessary Explanation of the Ancients opinions concerning Fate and the residue of our province is to gratify him with the concise Declarement of our own both concerning the legitimate Admission of this notion of Fate and the Conciliation thereof to mans Free-will Fortune and Providence Divine which we have formerly invited him to expect as the grand scope at which all our praevious Meditations were directed and the point in which all these lines of this small matter of Book are concentred First we are to abominate the execrable Opinion of Democritus Article 2. Democritus Fate inconsistent both to the Fundamentals of Religion and the Liberty of mans Will and therefore detested not only because it is uncapable of due Consistence with the sacred and indubitable Principles of Religious Faith which ascertain that the Creation Molition Conservation and constant Administration of all things are impossible rightly to be ascribed to any Cause but the Supreme Being alone but also because it is è diametro repugnant to the evidence of that infallible Criterion the Light of Nature which demonstrateth the Soul of man to be an Arbitrary and uncoacted Agent For that man hath in himself a power of inhibiting or suspending his Assent unto and Approbation of any object the Verity of whose Species is not sufficiently clear and distinct but Dubious is a perfect Demonstration of the Indifferency or Liberty of his Intellect and so also of its charge the Will or Faculty Elective as Cartesius excellently observes in Princip Philosoph part 1. sect 6. Secondly that opinion of Aristotle and Epicurus may indeed Article 3. Aristotle and Epicurus their Fate admitted in that it is Idenâ—ical to Nature but abominaâ—ed in that it clasheth with the Certitude of Divine Praescience be defended so far forth as it makes Fate and Nature or the Concatenation of natural Causes to be one and the same thing in reality though expressed by different Terms but ought to be exploded insomuch as it not only denies the Verity of Future Events and so substracts from God the proper Attribute of his most perfect Essence Omniscience by not conceding to him an infallible Science of all things to come but also supposeth no Creation of natural Causes no disposition no moderation of their Efficiencies by Providence Divine And thirdly as for that more specious opinion of the Platonist Article 4. The Platonick and Stoick Fate embraced so far as it is conceded to be a Constitution of the Divine wisdome but abandoned in that it detracts from Divine Omnipotence and Stoick we can discover no danger in our adhaesion to it so far as it affirmes the primitive Constitution and continual Gubernation of all things in the Universe by God by defining Fate to be that Method series or systeme of Causes which the Divine Nature at first constituted and established in order to the praecise and opportune effecting all things praedecreed by his infinite Wisdome But yet we must cautiously abandon it in this that it not only blasphemously invades the cardinal Praerogative of Divinity Omnipotence by denying him a reserved power of infringing or altering any one of those Laws which Himself ordained and enacted and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters of Destiny but also in great part excludes the mind of man from acting any voluntary part on the theatre of the world and leaves no room for the intervention of Contingents Article 5. In what qualified sense Christianisme may tolerate the use of the term Fate Nor is there any substantial reason to deterr the most scrupulous Christian from admitting the use of this term Fate in a rectified sense i. e. provided that He thereby understand not any blind and unpraemeditate Necessity but a provident and well ordered Concatenation of Causes which like the Magnetick Chain where all the inferior links are dependent on the impraegnating or invigorating Emanations of the First was constituted by the Fiat of the Eternal Wisdome and may be varied or inverted by the occasional Determinations of the same and this without incurring the Imperfection either of Inconstancy or Improvision For our warrant in this we have no less a Praecedent then S t. Austin whose words are these Qui omnium connexionem seriemque Causarum quâ fit omne quod fit Fati nomine appellant non multum cum iis de verbi controversia certandum est quandoquidem ipsum causarum ordinem quandam connexionem summi Dei tribuunt Voluntati ac proinde Fati voce qui voluerit uti sententiam teneat linguam corrigat in 5. de Civit. Dei cap. 8. ¶ SECT II. NOw as for the Abolition of the seeming Enmitie between Article 1. Fate and Fortune conciliated in the point of Providence Divine Fate and Fortune t is not obscure that the Concession of the one is very far from adnihilating the other For if we admit Fate to be a Law by the Divine Will imposed upon Natural Causes according to the tenor whereof all things are done that are done and Fortune to be an Event resulting from a concurse of Natural Causes besides above or contrary to the expectation conjecture and forecast of man though praecisely praeordained by the Providence of God and connexed to the series of Causes or Chain of Fate we cannot but soon perceive their Convention Concentration and Identity in the point of Providence Divine nor is there any veil of Discrepancy betwixt them in their naked and simple Realities but that light and thin one which either the Ignorance or Sophistry of man hath rudely and perhaps profanely drawn When a Prince dispatcheth two Posts to the same place by several waies neither knowing of the others mission and they meet each other in one moment at their journeys end though we may rightly call it Fortune in respect to them who nevet thought of that Convention yet still is it providence in respect to the Prince who sent them and limited their time of travell to such an houre And undoubtedly by the authority of no less reason are we bound to acknowledge that though many Events hourly occurring to us which the highest Human Prudence could never so much as suspect may without derogation to the sacred Monarchy of God be styled meerly Fortuitous in relation to our Improvision yet still are they the wise and convenient Praedeterminations of his Special Providence Our Memory may rehearse that the Terme Fortune hath a double importance 1 a Concurse of Causes 2 mans praevious Ignoration of the Event resulting from that Concurse and our Reason cannot bur hence inferr that according to the First Fortune may be admitted in respect to man though not of God and according to the Last nothing can interdict our assertion that Fortune is a part not only of Fate but also of Providence Divine which as hath bin profusely demonstrated comprehends all occurrences as well those which are
honor of its Invention as was betwixt the two Haâ—lots about the right to the Living Child others requiring if not to the justification of the Decree it self yet at least to justify the Execution thereof the concurse of Good Works so necessarily that no man can ever attain to Glory but by the scale of Merits at least those of our Saviour and others mincing or extenuating the Elective Liberty of man into a meer and simple Libency which we have more then once specified and as often described and accordingly attempting to salve the Repugnancy thus that the Elect are therefore Free because they do their Good works Libently or Willingly and likewise that the Reprobate are also Free because they doe their Evil works Libently Hereupon to him who shall charge upon them with this Vnactive Argumentation they instantly oppose that there is very great reason why every man endowed with this Libency should most strenuously endevour the constant practise of Good rather then Evil because though He be uncertain of the Decree concerning his Election or Reprobation yet is He certain of this that no man shall ever be assumed into Glory unless he shall have done Good nor any be excluded the Celestial Eden unless He shall have done Evil. To which they add that it is the main Duty of every man to the utmost of his power to ascertain himself rather of Election by his perseverance in good then of Reprobation by a debaucht and desperate resignation of the sceptre of his Will to all the temptations of Evil that so he may praevent or mitigate that Fear and Anxiety which must otherwise uncessantly excruciate his mind during his whole life by acquiring a setled confidence that from God who is infinitely Good and Just he hath no cause to expect evil while the scope of all his endevours is to deserve well at least to obtain Mercy at his hand To conclude lest man should in the interim either Glory in himself as if He ought according to justice to be Elected for his good works sake or Complain of the rigour of the Decree of his Reprobation murmuring that it was not his fault why his name was not inscribed in the Book of life they check his Glorying with this cooling card of the Apostle O Homo quis te discernit and hush his Complaint with Tu qui es qui respondeas Deo Nunquid dicet vas Figulo quare me fecisti sic Nunquid sacere illi licet aliud vas in honorem aliud verò in contumeliam Roman chap. 9. ver 21. And if this satisfy not they here set bounds to Curiosity and lime the wings of those Eagle Wits who would soare higher then the lower region of the mysterie with that grave advice of the Canonized Doctor Quare hunc trahat Deus illum verò non trahat noli judicare si non vis errare or that modest rule of Cornelius Tacitus Sanctius reverentius visum de actis Deorum credere quà m scire But as for the Second Opinion to our first inquisition that Article 4. The Second Opinion to a great part extricated from the same Labyrinth seemes capable of extrication from the forementioned Labyrinth without much difficulty thus I am says Adrastus or the Fatist either Elect to glory or Reprobate to misery by an eternal Decree of God This we grant to be most true but with this additional qualification that Himself is Now the Cause why He was from eternity Elect or Reprobate For He is now in that very state in which God foresaw that he would be when educed into existence endowed with reason and assisted with sufficient Grace for the clear discernment of Good from Evil and it now depends upon the Liberty of his Will that God hath praevised him operating good or evil so that the Decree of his Election or Reprobation is subsequent or posterior to the Divine Praevision of his future good or evil Demerits To speak yet louder God therfore Elected him to Glory because He Foresaw that he would use both the Liberty of his Understanding and Will and that Supernaturall Light or Divine Grace which the Compassion of God vouchsafed for his Assistance as he ought to enable him to lead an honest and pious life and therefore Reprobated him to misery because He Foresaw that he would Abuse the Lights of Nature and Grace in constantly and impenitently doing actions point-blank repugnant to their frequent and importune Advisoes This being inferred the Fatist cannot but perceive that it lyes on his part now to doe well and with all the nerves of his Mind to Cooperate to Divine Grace that so God from eternity foreseeing that his Conformity to the dictates of his Grace may have Elected him For if he shall counterinflect his Will to the Inclinations of Divine Grace and pursue Evil those Evil works shall be very they which God from eternity having respect unto hath Damned him for the Guilt of them and impoenitence for them Nor can He elude this truth by pleading that God doth Article 5. The Fatists Subterfuge of the Infallibility of Divine Praenotion praecluded from eternity Foreknow whether He shall be Elect or Reprobate and that therefore of Necessity he shall be what he Will be since the Divine Science is uncapable of Elusion or Mutability Because though God indeed had an infallible Praecognition from Eternity whether he would be Praedestinate or Reprobate yet is that Praecognition grounded upon his own eternal Decree and that eternal Decree grounded upon his eternal Praevision of the Fatists Good or Evil life So that the actual Determination of the Will of man to the constant prosecution of Good is the Basis or first Degree in this mysterious Climax of Praedestination the Praevision thereof by God the second the respective Decree of God the third and his indeceptible Praescience the fourth and last Not that these Antecessions and Consecutions are Temporany i. e. not that the Praescience of God is posterior to his Decree and his Decree posterior to his Praevision for those 3. make but one simple and intire Act in the Divine Intellect and Will and Eternity is but one permanent Now incapable of Division because of Cessation really but Anthropopathically i. e. that narrow and remote Man when he speculates the nature of his own Free-Will and that of Divine Justice as integrally Consistent is necessitated for comprehension sake to suppose some Momenta Rationis or Priority and Posteriority in Eternity as we have singularly enunciated in the 2. Articl 4. Sect. 6. chap. praecedent Article 6. A second subterfuge of the Fatist viz. that the Subsequence of the Decree to Praenotion doth implicate the possibility of its Elusion and Mutability praevented Again the Fatist can justly promise to himself no greater protection by this farther objection that if the Divine Decree be subquent to Divine Praevision therefore is it in his power to stagger the Certitude of the Decree and dissolve its rigour
Infinite beyond Finite Omniscience beyond Nescience in a word as the inscrutable Counsels of Divinity are above the comprehension of narrow crass and frail Humanity Had they sayd no more then He who being assaulted with the same consternating Scruple returned in short Fata volentem ducunt Nolentem trahunt they had contracted but increased the weight of their Speculations For that rich and emphatick Sentence comprehends the substance of all their larger Evasions and yet for all that the summe there of ariseth to no more then this Though man hath a power of Non-resistance yet he hath no power of Resistance i. e. though man hath such a Liberty that he may be drawn Not-unwillingly yet not such as that he may not be drawn Vnwillingly or more plainly that man hath a Freedome of Assent but not of Dissent for who hath resisted the Will of God Nor could it have proved any Disparagement but contrarywise Article 13. A Dehortation from immoderate Curiosity in Divine Mysteries and concise Adhortation to conform unto and calmly acquiesce in the Revealed Will of God the highest Honour to which the circumscribed Intellectuals of dark Mortality have any reason to aspire here to have confessed a Ne ultra and humbly acquiesced in a becoming despair of other satisfaction then this Deus ab aeterno Fati syntaxin causarúmve naturalium seriem subalternatim sic ordinavit sanxit quia sic ordinavit sanxit i. e. quia imperscrutabili ejus sapientiae sic visum est When the Wit of man wanting the Ballast of Piety bears too much sail it cannot escape oversetting especially when it adventures upon the immens vertiginous and bottomless ocean os Providence Divine where All that is discoverable is darkness and horror What greater Prudence did the great Plato ever shew which might consecrate his Memory to the venerable esteem of inferior Ages then that in his introduction of Socrates praeparing his Auditors when He was to dispute about some things which concerned the Attributes of the Divine Nature with this excellent Allay or suppressive of immoderate scrutiny in such reserved mysteries Aequum est nos meminisse me qui disseram vos qui judicabitis Homines esse meet it is for us to remember that both I who am to discourse and you who are to judge are but Men. The Arcana of Gods Decrees are like the meridian Sun on which the more we gaze the less we perceive and all we can gain by our audacious inspection will be only Blindness and too late Repentance When the most Learned and Acute whose monuments of Perspicacity are the most refulgent Gemms in the embroidered coate of Fame have found their Disquisitions terminated in the sensible Mellifice of Bees the contexture of Spiders the spinstry of Silkworms not to advance to those Giant Problems of the reciprocal Afflux and Reflux of the Sea the sensible torrent of the Aer from West to East under the Tropicks the Cause of Earthquaks the motions and distances of Celestial or Quintessential bodies the Circumference and Diametre of the Globe Terraqueous and its Libration or suspension upon Nothing the verticity and Alliciency of the Loadstone the nature of the Soul c. we say when the most Eagle-eyed Indagators have found themselves discouraged and at a loss in these minute Mechanicks of Nature what a distracted Insolency is it for us to Attach those infinitely more inexplorable Abstrusities of the Divine Praeordination which are too intense for the stronger Opticks of Cherubins What did grave and modest Antiquity design by their erecting of the statue of that Monster Sphinx over the doores of their Temples only this by the commination of imminent Destruction to deterr the Curious from prying into the recluse and abscondite Sanctum Sanctorum of the Deity This the profound Euclid more then glanced at when being interrogated by some Philopragmonist who hoped to confound the Mathematicks with the Metaphysicks concerning the Nature and Politie of the Gods He made this incomparable answer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as for other things concerning the Gods I know nought but this I know full well that they detest and abominate the profanely Curious And this that reverend Father also reflected on when He sayd Vt multò faciliùs invenit syderum Conditorem humilis Pietas quà m syderum ordinem superba Curiositas ita firma stabilique fide sciamus omne Dei judicium justum esse ubi investigare non poteris quare ita judicaret sufficiet scire quis judicaret Since therefore it is impossible for us to make our selves privy to the Concealed Will of our Creator all that remains on our part is to endevour with all humility and serenity to conforme and cooperate to his Revealed assuring our selves that He who is All Wisdome and Goodness can will nothing but what is Good nay infinitely better for us then what our imperfect and deceptible understanding can instruct our Will to desire for our selves This was the noblest resolve of the noble Epictetus Semper magis volo quod Deus vult quà m quod Ego adjungar illi velut minister assecla cum illo appeto cum illo desidero quod Deus vult volo And in truth this is the only true Halcyon that can calme all the distracting tempests of our Cares the imperturbed Haven wherein the Weather-beaten vessels of our Minds may safely Anchor and bid defiance to all the impetuous Gusts of Adversity and Temptations the Magisterial Elixir of all virtue and so of all real Delight nay Heaven anticipated and the Term wherein both my Cogitations and Pen shall acquiesce All Glory be to God on high on earth Peace and Good Will towards men FINIS