the procreation of its like in specie for the most part and that the Plastick Spirit thereof punctually observe the modell or pattern of that Fabrick of the body from whence it came or that upon a preposterous commixture of various and unequal seeds once in an age there should succeed the production of some new Heteroclite or unpatternd Monster whose Composition is onely contingent and difform to the Idea of either its Active or Passive Principle in the simplicity of their divided Figures And are not the exquisite Delineations of every Embryon woven out by the subtile fingers of Archeus or the Formative spirit the multiplicity distinction elaboration of organs both external and internal the severall Functions and Offices assigned to those organs and so artificially contrived that every one is distinct yet none independent every one single yet all conspiring to the same end all operative yet none per se locomotive are not these certain and praeordinate effects with innumerable others the meanest whereof we cannot seriously think upon without a rapture of amazement more worthy our admiration then a single irregularity a spontaneous Monster of Nilus a bipartite Centaure a prodigious Insect c. whose generations are accounted accidental and their configurations not preordained but the inconsiderate and extemporary results of Fortune Perhaps these stupid Idolaters of Chance will referre these constant and setled operations to Nature but whatever they mean by Nature how immense a stock of Wisdom must it necessarily be endowed withall which in all its works so cunningly contrives so great variety of organs observes such exact Symmetry in all parts so providently disposeth every member and fits them to the easie execution of their predestinate functions If they goe farther and affirm that Nature is nothing but the primitive Constitution of the World which resulted from the casual separation conflux and disposition of its material principle Atoms and that it doth constantly persist in the same Method which it first obtained from Fortune the answer is easie that though Nature be constant to that order in all her productions which the World obtained in its first composure yet how ridiculously stupid must he be who can admit a serious perswasion that the bodies of Animals in the beginning could be so exquisitely configurated by meer Chance and without the direction and indeed the designement of an infinite Wisdome in whose eternal intellect the prototypes of each species were first adumbrated Let them object again that every day affords examples of the skill of Fortune in the production of Froggs Toads Flies and other spontaneous Insects and I shall soon return that those Insects or spontaneous Animals have their Causes certain and by reason of that energie once conferred upon their Efficients must arise to animation in such or such a Figure according to the magnitude number situation complexion quiet motion or in a word the Temperament of those particles out of which their bodies are amassed and according to the activity of that domestick Heat which ferments and actuates the matter Secondly that our debate is about the original of Nature it self and of that precise Virtue radically implanted in the seeds of things or more emphatically what hand inoculated that procreative power in each seminality and endowed it with a capacity requisite to the conformation of bodies so admirable in their structure if there were not some principle in the nonage of the Universe who infused that Prolifical or fertile Tincture ordained that scheme of members and gave it rules to act by from which it never fwerves but upon a disobedience and non-conformity of matter If we lookt no farther then the Cortex or Exteriors of Animals and there speculated as well the amiable comeliness of their Figures in the whole for there is no real Deformity in Nature as the geometrical Analogie or convenience betwixt the Members and their Actions each being respectively configurated to the performance of its peculiar office 't were more then sufficient to discover to us the impossibility of their primitive institution by Fortune But when we dissect them prie into their Entrals and there survey the almost infinite multitude of organs principal and subordinate the variety of their uses some being officiall to Nutrition some to Vitality some to Generation others to Sense others to Locomotion none impeding the activity of another but all unanimously conspiring to conserve the oeconomy of that Form which like the main spring in an Automaton invigorates and actuates the whole fabrick either we must bid dehance to the chief inducement of beleif and drown the loud clamors of our Conscience or else fall down transported with an ecstasie of pious Wonder and humbly confess that these are the Impresses of the infinite power and wisdome of an omniscient and omnipotent Creator but not the Contingencies or temerarious effects of Chance Thoughts like these had the prudent Gassendus when in his detestation of the interest of that Pretendress Fortune cap. de exortu mundi his golden pen dropt this rhetorical logick Id quod stuporem generat dispositio interna est in corporibus Animalium Nam si foret quidem duntaxat multitudo aliqua partium forte fortuna commistarum tum ea posset Fortunae tribui at in multitudine illa pene innumerabili nullam esse partem non tantam non talem non ubi non quomodo non cum ea functione qua congruum est ut neque inutilis sit neque esse commodior valeat rationem prorsus omnem sugit ut ita fieri non sapientia sed Fortuna sit constitutum Nor doe Animals alone but Vegetables also though of an inferior Classis amply and sensibly testifie the Divinity of their Article 2. The necessity of the Worlds Greation by an Agent infinite in Science and Power proclaimed by the constant Uniformity of Nature in her perpetuation of Vegetables Founder and confute the Apotheosis of Fortune Thus when the Aliment of a Plant being the aqueous irrigation of the earth insensibly prolected ascends from the lowest filament of the shaggy root up to the Trunck and thence works up to the extremities of every branch and twigge can we imagine that this thin insipid juice can be so inspissated and so ingeniously moulded into a Bud that bud discriminated and variegated into a larger particoloured Blossom that Blossom gradually expanded into a determinate flower which gratifies our eyes with the beauty of its embroidery and our nosthrils with the fragrancy of its odour that Flower lost in the richer emergencie of a Fruit which hath its figure colour magnitude odour sapour maturity duration all certain and constant and the abridgement or Epitome of this included in the seed of that fruit which being insperst upon the earth is impregnate with a Faculty to expand it self into a second Plant in all things rivall to the former and empowered to act all those several Metamorphoses over again to a perpetuall rejuvenescence of that peculiar
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
great and excellent that I may be assured the same cannot be in me either Formaliter or Eminenter and therefore I cannot be the Cause of that Idea by direct and genuine inference I determine that I am not alone in the World but that there is existent in the universe some other Being which is the father of this Idea For if I finde no such Idea occur to my minde in earnest I know no argument that may make me confident of the existence of any one thing distinct from my self Now among these Ideas that I may range them into distinct Article 7. The diversity of Ideas respective to the diversity of Entities orders respective to the severall Degrees of Entities from which they result or are derived there is one which holds forth me to my self concerning which no difficulty can be started as to the concernment of the present Demonstration another which represents God others which pourtray things meerly Corporeal and Inanimate others which describe Angels others resemble Animals and finally others that shew me other men like my selfe As for those Ideas which represent Men Animals or Angels I easily understand that such may be composed and made up Article 8. The possible originals of each sort severely examined and all found to be desumable from our selves the Idea of God only excepted of other Ideas which I usually conceive of my self and other corporeall Entities and of God though there were neither Men nor Animals nor Angels in the whole World beside my self And as for those of Corporeal Entities in them I meet with nothing so great noble or excellent which seems not to have its fountain or origin in my self For when I make a deep and strict inquisition into them I discover that of those things which they comprehend there are only very few which I clearly and distinctly understand such are Magnitude or Quantity extended into its three dimensions of Longitude Latitude Profundity Figure arising from the termination of that extension Situation of parts or that position which parts variously figurated obtain and hold among themselves and Motion or the change of situation in the whole or parts composing the whole to which may be superadded Substance Duration and Number But as for other things as Light Sounds Odors Sapors Heat Cold and other tactile qualities these fall not under the comprehension of my thoughts but darkly and with as much obscurity as confusion insomuch that when I have summ'd up all I know of them it amounts to no more then this that I am even ignorant whether they be true or false i. e. whether such Ideas as I conceive of them be the Ideas of things really existent or of Non-entities For though I have faithfully observed that Falsity properly and most emphatically so called or Formal falsity can be no where found in the world but in our judgments or determinations yet is there another Material falsity in our Ideas when they represent a Non-entity for a real Entity a nothing in stead of a something Thus to exemplifie the representations which I have of Heat and Cold appear so narrow dim and confused that my most intense and acute speculations cannot acquire from them any plenary and stable satisfaction Whether cold be only a privation of Heat or Heat no more but the privation of Cold Whether both be real and positive qualities or neither and since there can be no Ideas but as of real entities in regard it is a truth apparent that cold is nothing else but a privation of heat that same Idea which exhibiâ—s cold as something real and positive may justly be reputed false and so likewise may others of the same series To such Ideas therefore it is not necessary that I assigne any other original besides my self for since they may be materially false i. e. represent nothing under the disguise of something it is declared unto me by the Light of Nature that they proceed from nothing i. e. that no other reason can be given why they are in me but only this that something is wanting to my nature which is requisite to make it absolutely perfect and compleat and if they were true yet in respect they exhibit so litle of reality that I cannot in the most abstracted contemplation clearly distinguish that litle from nothing I see no reason why they may not worthily be counted the Minervas of my own brain or the productions of my own thoughts Now as concerning those things which are clear and distinct in the Ideas of Corporeal Natures I have discovered that some of them also be derived from the Idea of my self such are Substance Duration Number c. of the same classis For when I consider a stone to be a substance or an entity constituted in a capacity of subsisting per se and at the same time consider my self also to be a substance although I conceive my self to be Res cogitans a thinking ens and look not upon my self as Res extensa a quantative or extensive but upon a stone as Res extensa and not cogitans and that therefore there must be a great dissimilitude between these two conceptions yet they seem to be reconciled and shake hands in termino substantialitatis and also when I consider that I now am and formerly have been and when I have various cogitations whose number I comprehend I then acquire the Ideas of Duration and Number which I can after transfer and apply to what other things I please But for the residue of particular things whereof the Ideas of Corporeal Natures are composed as Extension Figure Situation and Motion these have not their residence in me since I am nothing else in propriety of essence but Res cogitans formaliter and yet in relation that they are only certain Modi substantiae modificated substance and I also am a substance they seem to be comprehended in me eminenter by way of transcendency And so there remains unexamined only the Idea of God in which I am to consider whether it include any thing which cannot be derivative from my self By the name God I understand a certain substance infinite Article 9. The Idea of God here described cannot be either formally or materially false but the most clear distinct and true of all others independent omnipotent omniscient from which as well my own as all other dependent natures were derived by whose incomprehensible Wisdome Power and Goodness the universe was created according to the admirable Idea formed in his own eternall intellect and is constantly conserved in the same perfect order and exquisite harmony which in the beginning he was pleased to institute Now so divine excellent and perfect are all these Attributes that when with deep yet humble and reverentiall thoughts I contemplate them either conjunctively or distinctly I become fully informed that they are too great and noble to be derived from so mean frail and imperfect a being as my self and upon this firm foundation I erect
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
inexhaustible abyss of matter as sufficeth to the generation not onely of this world but of an infinite multitude of others fully as large as this so well as we are assured that in this world is contained matter sufficient to the composition of an Elephant as well as of a Flea Sure I am no man ever saw the outside of the world and if so is it not a meer Rhodomontado of phansie or as Pliny calls it a high madness to imagine such an infinite abyss of matter Let us however deal with these as wise Physicians with Hypochondriacks that they may the more easily cure them allow them their absurdities and grant that from eternity there was such an infinity of Atoms confusedly hurried to and fro in an infinite space yet the difficulty will always remain how in so great a laxity and infinite liberty of range so many Atoms could so convene and combine together as to terminate and setle each other by reciprocal coherence and mutual concatenation how so orderly marshal and dispose their several divisions into such elegant Figures how adapt those figures to such genuine and constant operations and all this without the counsell disposition and revinction of any other cause but their own rude and giddy propensity to motion and the casual result of their cessation from discord That Animals have obtained such exquisite forms respective to their several destinations this we can refer to the artifice of their peculiar Seminalities or the cunning of that Formative virtue which lying ambuscadoed in the spumous consistence of their genital emissions and being once awakened into Activity by the excitement of a convenient Matrix or Receptarie immediately designes this or that parcel of matter for such or such a part another for another and so spins it out into an uniform labyrinth of members at last weaving all those into an ingenious Figure in all points resembling the Protoplast or first genitor of that species who received this Seminal Tincture or faculty prolifical from the immediate bounty of its Creator But that Atoms as they are in their naked and incomplex nature should be allowed to have a Plastick or fabrefactive virtue equal to that conferred upon the seeds of Animals is a sigment as worthy our spleen as that ridiculous branch of the same root the Autocthonous or spontaneous eruption of our first Parents from the confermentation of Water and Earth and the production of mankinde like that of Mushroms which whimsey is also entituled to Epicurus by no meaner a tradition then that of Censorinus de Di. Nat. cap. 2. whose words for the more clear and credible transmission of the Fable I thought it not altogether impertinent here to insert Nec longe secus Epicurus credidit limo calefactos uteros nescio quos radicibus terrae cohaerenteis primum increvisse infantibus ex se editis ingenitum lactis humorem natura ministrante praebuisse quos ita educatos adultos genus hominum propagasse To this we may adde for a single testimony is not strong enough to oblige any man to beleive so unpardonable a dotage in a grave Philosopher the concurrent Auctorities of Lactantius lib. 2. cap. 7. Plutarch 5. Placit 19. Diogenes Laertius lib. 2. in vita Archelai Atheniens Diodorus Siculus lib. 1. and Macrobius 3. Saturn 6. Though for my part I conceive this phrensie to have possessed many heads upon whose skulls corruption had planted growing Perewikes of Moss many hundreds of years before Epicurus his was warm in regard many antient Nations in particular the Aegyptians and Phoenicians contending for the honor of seniority have gloried in the title of Autocthonae and thought their Eschutcheons sufficiently noble if charged onely with this impress Terrae silii But I return from this my Excursion If the World indeed were as Ovids Chaos rudis indigestaque moles a deformed and promiscuous miscellanie or masse of Heterogeneities and the several parts of it variously blended together without either discrimination or order then might the pretence of Fortune be more plausible For should we take a man who had been born and bred up to maturity of years in some obscure cavern of the earth and never lookt abroad upon the World nor heard of more then what immediately concerned his aliment and other natural necessities on a suddain educe him from his dungeon and shew him an Animal cut in peices and all its dissimilar parts as skin muscles fat veins arteries nerves tendons ligaments cartilages bones marrow c. laied together in a promiscuous heap doubtless we could not quarrel at his incredulity if he would not be perswaded that any thing but Chance had a hand in that confusion But should we instantly present him another Animal feeding walking and performing all the comely functions of vitality instruct him in the several uses and actions of all those parts which he had formerly surveyed in the disorder of an heap then kill that Animal also and for his farther information anatomzie its carcase and exhibite to him the several parts in all things respondent to the former t is conjectural that we should finde that the rudeness of his education would not so totally have extinguished the Light of Nature in him as not to have left some spark by the glimmering whereof he might discover some more noble Principle then Fortune to have been the Efficient of that more then ingenious machine Now we cannot but observe that in the great engine of the universe nothing is with less order decency beauty uniformity symmetry constancy in a word with less wisdom either deâ—â—gned or finished then in the smaller organ of an Animal in the perfection of its integrality And if so how neer comes it to an absolute contradiction that we should acknowledge some noble and prudent Cause that moulded and compacted all those different parts into one most elegant and accomplisht body and exactly accommodated that body to the easie execution of its predestinate operations and yet not acknowledg the same in the ordination and construction of the more admirable because more difficult fabrick of the Universe I say a Contradiction for if the easier Artifice of an Animal be conceded too hard assuredly the more difficult machination of the innumerably organ'd World must needs be granted impossible to be wrought by the impotent and ignorant fingers of Fortune Quanto enim major operis moles tanto erit ut sapientiae ita potentiae majus argumentum non quod aliunde elaboratio minutorum corpusculorum non commendet artificem sed quod in opere ingenti symmetriam servare industrium materiam regere operosum esse videatur Lastly as the Votaries of Fortune have argued à minori ad Article 6. The Epicureans grand Argument of the possibility of the configuration of the Universe by a casual and spontaneous disposition of Atoms from the frequent actuall production of an Infect by the same means or principles countermined by an inversion or Argument Ã
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
to stand in the front of those Sententiae ratae which he dared Scepticity withall Nor did his sedulous Commentator Lucretius recede an inch from the same text but fondly commensurating the power of an Infinite wisdome by the narrow capacity of his own finite reason preached to the world that to ascribe the government of sublunary affairs to the Gods was impiety in the inference and must implicitly destroy the fundamentals of their Divinity which is made up of Beatitude and Immortality neither of which can consist with the perpetual disquiet and impetuous anxiety of mind which the Administration of so vast and tumultuous a Common-wealth as this of the World must introduce For when he would impose that the shoulders of Divinity though a real Atlas are too weak to sustain so great a weight as that of Rector General under a pretext of tender zeal forsooth he insimulates those of prophanation Qui summum illud quicquid est tam tristi atque multiplici ministerio polluunt as Pliny expresses it and therefore exclaims Nam proh Sancta Deûm tranquilla pectora pace Quae placidum degunt aevum vitamque serenam Quis regere immensi summam Quis habere profundi Indu-manu validas potis est moderanter habenas Quis pariter Coelos omneis convertere omneis Ignibus aethereis terras suffire feraceis Omnibus inque locis esse omni tempore praestò Nubibus ut faciat tenebras coelique serena Concutiat sonitu tum fulmina mittat aedeis Saepe suas disturbet in diversa recedens Saeviat exercens telum quod saepe nocenteis Praeterit exanimatque indignos inque merenteis c. lib. 2. Ah! since the happy and immortal Powers In câ—lme content melt their eternal houres Feasting on self-enjoyment who can keep The rains of Nature Who command the Deep To wind about the ponderous Sphears what arme Hath strength enough what Influence can warme The fruitfull earth with Fires aetherial who Can fill all places and all actions doe To veil the face of Light with sable clouds And wrap the lucid sky in sulph'ry shrouds Whose Coruscations split the fluid aer Convell the feet of Rocks and with despair Affect poor Mortals into Quick silver then turn And with Granadoes his own Temples burn Then dart his flames at Innocence and wound Virtue while guilty Vice continues sound Their other Argument is extracted from the conceived Vncertainty and irregularity of Contingencies and the unaequal Article 5. Their second Argument and its convenient dissection into two parts viz. dispensation of good and evill all things seeming to fall out according to the giddy lottery of Chance and as confusedly as if there were no Providence at all This may be collected as well from that speech of Epicurus charged upon him by that heroick Champian of Divine Monarchy Lactantius Nulla dispositio est 1. The irregularity of contingencies and multa enim facta sunt aliter quà m fieri debuerunt as from the context of his Physiology wherein having made it his Hypothesis that all bodies both coelestial and sublunary were at first configurated by Fortune i. e. arose to such and such particular figures by the casual segregation convention and complexion of the General matter divided into several masses and that by the inclination of their convenient Figures they were adliged to such and such peculiar Motions and accommodated to the necessary causation of determinate viciffitudes he proceeds to reduce all succeeding events in the World to that primitive series of Causes which made their own spontaneous eruption out of the Chaos and attained to the certain rules of their future activity at the same time they attained to their distinctions and single essences denominating that chain of causalities Nature and holding her to be her own Directress and by the law of innate tendency obliged to a perpetual continuation of the same motions begun in the first minute of the worlds composure according to that exclamation of Pontanus Lib. 1. de Stellis Quid vexare Deos frustr à juvat ordine certo Fert Natura vices labuntur ordine certo Sydera tam varios rerum patientia casus Illa suos peragunt motus servant que tenorem Sorte datum c. What boot's it man with fruitless praiers to fret The Ears o' th Gods when Natures Laws are set Beyond Repeal or Alteration The radiant Lamps of heaven still move on In their old tracks nor can the Planets stray In all their wandrings from their native way Or change that Tenor which at first they got Consign'd unto them by their proper Lot The result of all which is that Epicurus would perswade that the Universe is a Commonwealth wherein every single member is by the signature and necessity of its particular constitution instructed in and impelled upon the praecise performance of its peculiar office so as not to want the direction of any Superintendent or to conform to the directions of a General Councel and seems to allow this only difference between the universal Politie of the World and the particular Republique of mankind that in this men frequently make deflexions from the general scope by reason of the seductions of their unstable and irregular judgments but in that all individuals punctually keep to their primitive assignations and so conspire to the satisfaction of the common interest by reason of the constancy of their natures and unalterable necessity of their forms And this Abridgement of his doctrine Plutarch de Fato hath prepared to our hands when personating Epicurus he thus argues Nulla est opus sapientia ordinis instruendi in exercitu si militum quivis sua sponte noverit locum ordinem stationem quam accipere debet tueri neque etiam opus olitoribus Fabrisve murariis si aqua illeic ultrò afsluat indigentibus irratione plantis heic lateres ligna lapidesque eas natura duce motiones at que inclinationes subeant quibus in sua loca inque expetitam concinnitatem coeant c. Now for the other part of the Argument viz. the unequal 2. The unequal or injust distribution of good and evill distribution of Good and Evill and the ordinary intervention of many effects inconsistent with the justice and righteous administration of Divinity this is clearly hinted by Lucretius who makes it the main scope of his sixth Canto to alienate mens minds from the beleif of an Vniversal moderator by several instances of events that seem to hold too visible an affinity to Temerity and Inconsideration to have any relation at all to the judicious method requisite to Providence and particularly towers himself over that one example of the Thunder-bolt as if his reason had slown to a pitch above all possibility of contradiction when yet the summary of all that bold discourse abstracted by an impartial hand amounts to no more then this Since we observe the Thunder-bolt 1. To be for the most part discharged on the heads of the
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
the fourth admitted to Arbitrary motion but excluded Reason and those of the highest enriched with all Either this Necessity must be imposed upon them by Fortune or by themselves or by some other principle which hath the free donation and so the limitation of all those priviledges or Faculties First not by Fortune for that she could not institute these assignations draw this Helix that still enlargeth into a wider capacity nor make this law of Propriety inviolable is amply manifest from the Perpetuity or constant observation of the same by all corporeal entities every one having their peculiar capacities so defined circumscribed and immured that no one did ever since the first hour of Time exceed the bounds of its own species nor climbeup to the state of its superior for Constancy and Fortune are Antagonists never to be reconciled but like Castor and Pollux when one peeps above the other sculks below the horizon Secondly not by Themselves for there is in every thing a kind of native Ambition to ennoble its nature enlarge its power nay so much as in it lies to mount even to infinity according to that Axiom of Scaliger Exercit. 9. pag. 52. Vnicuique enti inest appetitio infinitatis Thus simple Natures covet to become compounds Compounds spurre on to arrive at Vegetables those affect the dignity of Sense sensibles grow desirous of musculary Motion c. Can wee conceive that a Plant would continue fixed and nayled down by its own roots to the earth and there live a cold dull unactive life if it could give to its self motion and abilities for nobler actions That a Beast would be constant to the gross and heavy operations of meer sense submit to the burdens and endure the tyrannous oppressions of man if it could endow it self with the prerogative of Reason and so become equal to his imperious Lord Or that man would sit down quiet and remain subject to the infirmities calamities and mortality of his nature if he had any hopes to better it to wind up himself to heaven and there take the wall of Cherubins nay rival the calme felicity and immortality of God For so invincible a reluctancy have we against the necessity of our frailties and so uncessant hormetick a desire to be above them by the melioration of our state that we may truly accommodate to our pride what the eloquent Tertullian spake to express that of some of the Roman Emperours si ipsi se Deos facere potuissent certè quidem homines nunquam fuissent could they have made themselves Gods doubtless they never would have been men Seeing therefore that t is repugnant to that insatiable Appetite of Melioration even to infinity radically inherent in every entity create though I confess scarce perceptible in bodies devoid of Animation to deny to it self any perfection which is in its own power to give or acquire what clearer evidence can be expected to ensure our reason that the Ampliation and Limitation of all Natural Faculties or endowments is not in the arbitrary disposition or elective power of Finite essences and by consequence that the Law of Propriety or the restriction of every species to its own orb of activity was not made by compact among themselves but imposed upon them by an Infinite This considered it remains indisputable that the Distribution and Assignation of those different Qualifications being neither in the power of Fortune nor of the Things that enjoy them it must properly and solely belong to that supernatural Infinite which is the fountain of Being Life Sense Locomotion and Reason and therefore had the power freely to give them being induced to the Collocation of them by the meer invitement of his own Goodness and directed in the convenient Distribution of them by the Counsel of his own Wisdome This Truth all Ages have held sacred and the wiser Ethnicks both of Greece and Rome ever engraffed it into their Creed preaching it to the world though blended under the Chaos of their symbolical or Hieroglyphical Idolatry For Homer courting the propitious aspect of his best Deity Jupiter in a panegyricall Hymn ascribes to him as a chief and peculiar Attribute the power of Circumscribing and Bounding of all things thus bespeaking him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Jovem Deorum optimum canam maximum Latesonantem validissimum Terminos afferentem c. And Aristotle likewise de Mundo Tom. 2. pag. 1592. cals his Infinitum divinum or God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Quod ab eo omnia terminata sunt ac nihil in rerum natura sit infinitum from his setting bounds to all things and leaving nothing undefined Nor was this unacknowledged by the elder Romans for they had a set form of devotion and a solemn sacrifice appointed particularly ad Iovem terminalem as Dionysius Halicarnass Antiquit. Roman Lib. 2. p. 133. hath transmitted to posterity To this also seems the sweet tongued Ovid to allude when in his description of the Creation he saith Limitibus discrevit omnia certis Now the Faculties of all Natural Agents being immediately derived from and strictly limited by God so that no one can ever transcend its own nor usurpe upon anothers confines the Light of Nature will infer that all their operations also are praescribed and both the manner and end of all their activities precisely predetermined nay the very time and place with all other adjuncts and circumstances of their effects appointed by the Providence of his Infinite Wisdome Hitherto have we confronted only Nature to Fortune let us therefore now give her one charge more with an Argument desumed à minori from Art Did ever any man that beheld the curious Mathematicks of Archimedes his Sphear the automatous flight of Regiomontanus his Eagle the artificial wings of Architas Dove or those inanimate Birds that the ingenious Mathematician whom the glorious Charles the fifth selected for his companion in his retirement from Empire sent flying in at his window or but observe the regular motions in a trochiliack Horodix or Watcht conceive that the motions of those engines were originally spontaneous instituted by meer chance or that each wheel assumed to it self by Lot its particular figure situation axis number of teeth and precise measure of circumrotation Undoubtedly no but on the contrary instantly concluded that they were the appointed effects of provident industry and had their models grounded upon maximes of the highest and most learned reason And yet is our Atheist so effronted with impudence as to give check to his own Conscience by daring to affirme that the system of the Celestial orbs the Laws of natural motions and the Architecture of those admirable organs in the body of an Animal which are engines whose Artifice doth by incomprehensible excesses transcend our theory in the mathematicks insomuch that some of the strongest skuls of our age have ventured crazing to finde out the Geometry of the Muscles or the Mechanicks of
of that large Tohu Vacuum Coacervatum or Nothing which must then have bin introduced from the surface of the Waters up to the midle region which Nature could never endure nor had God any necessity to enforce if Aer condensed into Water shrinks into a space or Continent 400. times less then what it possest before condensation for since Water weighs 400. times heavier then Aer as the subtile Galilaeo Dialog 1. del moviment pag. 81. examining the proportions of Gravity betwixt those two bodies demonstratively discovered it must necessarily carry the same proportion also to Space or Locality then assuredly when we shall have calculated the perpendicular height of the Atmosphear or lower region of the Aer and reduced it to the 400 th part we shall soon be satisfied that the Addition which the Aer Aquaefied could bring to the waters of the Sea effused upon the bosome of the earth cannot suffice to swell the Deluge so high as the semialtitude of many lofty mountains such as Slotus in Norway which Franc. Patricius out of Fr. Bacon and Scaliger hath accounted the highest on the earth Athos in Macedonia Tenariff Caucasus Atlas c. whose tops make large encroachments on the midle region and seem to invade the Firmament Again to charge this immense Accumulation of Waters upon 40. days rain though we should conced that rain to be neither Sea evaporated nor Aer condensed is not to undo but entangle the miracle For taking the Altitude of the mountains according to the calculation of the most moderate Geometry and then soberly perpending what aggravation to the Waters of the Sea now converted upon the earth the most violent natural rain of 40. days and nights could probably make which the most hyperbolical conceit cannot advance higher then 40. fathom we shall easily detect the difficulty And secondly as Nature could not afford the Material Cause of this general Inundation the Waters so neither the Mighty Essicient or Impulsive that should with such prodigious impetuosity hoyse up so huge a mass of Sea contrary to the strong renitency or depressure of its Gravity drive it from its native easy Currents in the declining veins and cavities of the earth upon an absolute 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Acclivity on the elevated surface thereof and make it fall in Cataracts up-hill For 1 though the Waters desire to stand above the mountains as the Divine Hebrew Poet hath pleased to phrase it Psalm 104. vers 9. yet they but desire it and by their own inherent and essential Tendency are renderd uncapable to satisfy that elemental ambition for water permitted to its own propensity or inclination immediaiely tendeth downward and therfore he that can conceive a river to desert its declive chanel and climb a precipice without the violence of a Miracle hath a strong Phansy but a weak judgement nor need any man despair to perswade his credulity that Helmonts ridiculous Romance of the Cause of Earthquaks viz. that an Angel or minister of Divine revenge descends into the Centrals of the Earth and there with a great Clapper or Sledge giving a mighty Thump against the feet of Rocks makes a hoarse or grave kind of Bom which enlarging its sound rends the foundations thereof and puts the percussed mass into a rigor or shaking fit of an Ague is a solid and philosophical Verity And thirdly as the Waters could not elevate themselves so neither could the Attractive Virtue of those Celestial Magnets the Sun Moon and Stars work them out of their depths by rarefying them into vapours which mounted up to the midle region of the Aer and there encountred by intense Cold should be reduced to clouds and those again dissolved in Cataracts For should we grant what the Arabian Astrologers returned in answer to the Aegyptian Caliph who had set them to unty this knot viz. that there was a great Conjunction of ♄ and ♃ not long before the floud and the malignant influence of that confederacy much aggravated by another fatal Convention of all the Planets in the watery signe of Pisces immediately preceding it as Sepher Juchasin fol. 148. hath delivered which the learned Mirandula hath sufficiently disproved and smiled at yet must the greatness of the Effect manifestly confute the possibility of that for a Cause First because Nature hath frequently shewed to the world the like Conjunctions but never the like event and again because those Luminaries are not commissioned with so unlimited a power and in their strongest conspiracies of insluence can at most but weakly incline or dispose not at all compell or necessitare nor are their destinations to ruine but conserve the world If therfore Nature uniting all her divisions of Waters below the Moon into one great heap or Abyss must yet fall very much short of that immane proportion requisite to furnish out the Deluge and though her stock had bin large enough yet could she not without apparent destruction of her self i. e. infringing those fundamental Constitutions or Elementary Laws whose constant Tenor only defines her to be Nature assist to their eruption out of their proper Receptaries and their preposterous Ascension up hill truely I am yet to learn what can be conceived to remain but this that those Decumani Fluctus those immens Cataracts had both their supply and motion immediatly from that high hand to which nothing that he wills can be difficult With this Problem I confess I have more then once impuzled my reason yet doth the difficulty sometimes enflame my Curiosity to enquire out the pervestigable part of the miracle viz. Whence Omnipotence summoned this mighty Syndrome or Conflux of Waters to appear at so short a warning upon the face of the Earth or in what part of the Universe they were quartered before and by what wayes and means they were drawn off again and voyded after the Floud That eminent Master of the Opticks and excellent Mathematician Christoph Scheinerus in Rosa Vrsina pag. 693. discoursing against those who have asserted the Incorruptibility of the Heavens quoad partes totum introduceth Ferdinand Quirinus de Salazar a Jesuit in his Comment upon 27. vers of the 8. chap. of the Proverbs of Salomon delivering his opinion derived from others together with reasons to support it that there must be a Tehom Rabba or Abyss of Waters above the Firmament or betwixt the 8 th sphear and the Shecinah or dwelling place of God The Texts of Scripture upon which this opinion is supported are 1 the 7. vers of the 1. Chap. of Genes where the Author of that book describing the several piles or stories of this great building saith thus and God made the Firmament and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament from the waters which were above the firmament c. 2 that of David Psalm 33. vers 7. he layd up the depth in storehouses 3 that of the Angel to Esdras 2. ch 4. vers 7. proposing questions to puzle weak but proud
man was created principally to declare the Glory of the Creator Ad quid enim tantus decor universi nisi esset homo qui consideraret ipsâ—que perspecto hymnum Authori caneret T is an Axiome of constant Verity that Nature makes nothing in vain and this rule doubtless she learned from that Wisdome which determineth all its actions to certain adequate and proper Ends now we must grant either that God adorned the Universe with such exquisite pulchritude and admirable imbellishment of Art to no purpose at all and so was more vain and improvident then his instrument Nature or else that he conferred that elegancy and amiable decorament upon it to this end that the curious Cogitations of man might be entertained exercised and delighted in the speculation and admiration thereof and through that maze of pleasant wonder be conducted to the true Elyzium the contemplation of the Fountain of Pulchritude and entelechia of Excellencies God For there is no medium between these two Contraries nor any hope of evading the rigour of this Dilemma upon pretence of neutrality since God had no other end wherefore he beautified the World but his own Glory in chief and the excitement of the Admiration and Magnificat of man as subservient thereunto nor doth the World contain any other Nature but Man that is qualified with Faculties requisite to the satisfaction of that end Quis enim aliquam aliam unquam invenit naturam quae aedificium hoc tantum conspiciens in Architecti sapientissimi admirationem perinde rapiatur We well know that Relatives secundum esse positively necessitate the existence each of other and therefore to allow what cannot be disallowed but by incurring a more dangerous absurdity that God made and exhibited the Beauty of the World tanquam admirandum spectaculum as a spectacle that cannot but excite Admiration in the speculator and yet to deny that he provided a fit and respective spectator such whose Sense should transmit the idea of that Pulchritude to the judicature of a higher Faculty and that again be thereby impregnated with Admiration which is nothing but our Reasons being at a stand at the novelty or excellence of an object occurring to our sense for what is either frequent or manifest to our cognition we never admire and that 's the cause why this Affection of the mind as it is the first of Passions so it is the only one that wants a Contrary as the unimitable Des Cartes hath discovered to us in lib. de passion part 1. articl 54. is not only an impious derogation to the wisdome of God but also a manifest Contradiction to our own reason which from the existence of the Relatum a spectacle immediately concludes the necessary existence of the Correlatnm a spectator And that this Spectator can be no other Animal but man is too bright a truth to need any other illustration but what is reflected from it self To which Argument of the Creators adopting man to be his Darling and intimate Favorite the Logick of every man may superadd many others of equivalent importance drawn from the consideration of those Praeeminences and Praerogatives wherewith his Munificence hath bin pleased to ennoble his nature and exalt him to a neerer Cognation or Affinity to his own glorious Essence then any other Creature in the Universe as the excellent contexture and majestique Figure of his Body the semi-divine Faculties of his Soul his Monarchy domination or royalty over all other sublunary natures Omnia enim sibi submittit dum omnia quae in mundo sunt vel ad usus vitae necessarios refert vel ad varia genera voluptatum and lastly that inestimable propriety the Immortality of his Soul Now to direct all this to the mark since God hath thus proclaimed Man to be next to his own Glory which is the last of Ends as his Will is the first of Causes the grand and principal scope of his mighty work of Creation and that he made all things in order to his accommodation and well-being in this life and allurement nay manuduction or conduct to immarcescible beatitude after Death and since his Act of Providence or the constant Conservation of all things in the primitive perfection distinction and order of their Natures is nothing but his act of Creation prolonged or spun out through all the independent Atoms or successive particles of time as hath bin more then once intimated beyond all dispute the Product must be the same with our Thesis viz. That Man is the object of Gods special Providence and by consequence that all occurrences of his life are punctually predetermined ordered and brought to pass by the same As every man brings into the World with him a certain Prolepticall or Anticipated Cognition of a Deity or First Cause Article 2. That the soul of man contains a proleptical notion of Gods special Providence of all things deeply and indelebly stamp'd upon his mind as hath bin formerly demonstrated so also holds he as an Adjunct or rather a part thereof a coessentiall Prenotion that this First Cause or Supreme Nature is the Fountain from whence those two different streams of Happiness and Misery or Good and Evil the former by Condonation the other by Permission are constantly derived and upon consequence that all Occurrences of his life are the just and prudent Designations of its special Providence That every man in whom the Light of Nature is not damp't by Fatuity either native and temperamental or casually supervenient hath this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or impress of an especial Providence decreeing and disposing all events that have do or shall befall him is manifest from hence that no man though educated in the wildest ignorance or highest barbarisme imaginable but was naturally and by the advisoes of his intestine Dictator inclined either to conceive or imbrace some kind of Religion as an homage or fealty due from him to that Supreme Power in whose hands he apprehended the rains of Good and Evil to be held and whose favour and benigne aspect he thought procurable and anger attoneable by the seasonable addresses of Invocation and Sacrifice And in truth to him whose meditations shall sink deep enough it will soon appear that this Anticipation is the very root of Article 3. That this proleptical notion is the basis of Religion Religion for though man stood fully perswaded of the Existence of God yet would not that alone be argument sufficient to convince him into the necessity of a devout Adoration of him unless his mind were also possessed with a firme beleif of this proper Attribute of his Nature which so neerly concerns his felicity or infelicity viz. his special Providence which regulates all the affaires and appoints all the Contingencies of every individual mans life For t is the sense of our own Defects Imperfections and Dependency that first leads us to the knowledg of his All sufficiency Perfections and Self-subsistence the apprehension of our
at least sufficiently consider tho real difference betwixt a Spontaneous and an Arbitrary action while they contended that because either may be said to be Voluntary therfore they are one and the same originally For indeed a Spontaneous action though when men discourse at randome and in the general it may seem to comprehend an Arbitrary one yet in praecise and distinct reasoning it sounds no more then a certain blind impulse of nature grounded upon no praecedent ratiocination when an Arbitrary action properly so called depends upon a praevious ratiocination examination dijudication and election That a Spontaneous action is no more then an indiscreet impulse Article 4. That a Spontaneous action and an indeliberate Impulse of Nature are homologous or identical of nature devoid of all deliberation is manifest from hence that not onely Infants and Brutes to neither of which a Philosopher will allow either use of Reason or Liberty of Will may do many things spontaneously but even Inanimates have their Spontaneous motions as Fire ascends spontaneously and all bodies endowed with gravity descend spontaneously so that in truth to act by the impulse of nature and to act spontaneously appear to be one and the same thing diversly phrased And this makes it the less wonder if since every appetite be ex suâ naturâ by the tendency of its own nature carried on towards Good it may be said to be carried on towards Good of its own accord or spontaneously and so indeed that as a stone because by naturall tendency it falls downward cannot again change that tendency and ascend upward so likewise the Appetite because it is determined only to Good wants an Indifferency of tending towards Evil and as a stone by reason of its want of Indifferency to upward and downward is said to be moved downward Spontaneously but not Arbitrarily so the Appetite by reason of its defect of Indifferency to Good and Evil may be said to tend towards Good in general Spontaneously but not Arbitrarily And hence comes it that if you please to suppose the Will to be determined to any one particular Good grant it to be the Summum Bonum so that it cannot relinquish that and with aequal appetition prosecute any other Good real or only apparent then indeed you may justly enough affirm the Will to tend towards that Summum Bonum spontaneously since 't is most natural to the Will to prosecute that which is the chiefest of Goods for it would not prosecute the same above all others if it were dimoved to the prosecution of less Good but not Arbitrarily since it wants an Indifferency of tending to another Good as well as that or to speak more plainly since it is not in its power at pleasure to desert that chiefest Good and address it self to the pursuit of a less Good Nor can this truth be staggered by that objection that this Article 5. The Divines objection that the Tendency of the Will is Volent and therefore Free praevented by a distinction of Libency and Liberty tendency of the Will is Volent since that Volency I ask leave to use that word untill I can find another more adaequate to my notion imports not a Liberty but a meer Libency that is a Complacency or Collubescence and so an exclusion of all coaction violence renitence or imposition and from hence that the Dilection Prosecution and Fruition of such a Good may be properly enough accounted Voluntary no man can rightly inferre that t is therefore highly Arbitrary but only that t is highly Libent or Complacent for there may be a Libency we confess and yet no Liberty because no Indifferency Again whereas they have added that the Perfection of the Liberty of the Will doth consist in this so to adhaere to Good as not to be capable of dimotion or diversion from it we may not Article 6. Their Sâ—perstructure that the Peâ—fection of the Wills Liberty is its constant Adhaesion to and inseparability from real Good demolished by two reasons 1 that this Perfection imagined is not of the Liberty but the Will it self 2 that it belongs only to separated Souls in the state of Glorification unjustly suspect them of inadvertency in that they did not discover this Perfection which they so much magnify to be not of the Liberty it selfe but of the Will or Appetite which being Imperfect only in this respect that at pleasure it may desert and abandon real and true Good and convert to the Affectation and prosecution of specious and counterfeit must acquire its perfection from hence that quitting that native Indifferency or Liberty it so firmely and inseparably adhaere to real and true Good that nothing can divorce it from thence and alienate it to the prosecution of counterfeit Besides we conceive such a perfection of the Will to be above the sober hopes of mortality as being reserved to make no small part of the Souls Beatitude in her state of Glorification when she shall have no other object but the real Summum Bonum and no other Appetite but a fixt dilection thereof For had flesh and blood bin capable of so great and divine an Excellency as the devesting the Will of that Indifferency to Good and Evil and the constant determination of it only to real Good doubtless S t Paul a man of the most mortified affections to the specious Goods of this life and of the most fervent desires towards the substantial and eternal of the next had never with so many tears lamented his being subject to that inevitable and implacable Psychomachy and civil war betwixt his Rational and Sensual Appetites nor in the height of despaire to conquer those rebellious inclinations to evil cried out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Miserable man that I am who shall deliver me out of this body of death But this mistake hath proved of no small advantage to the Article 7. What kind of Indifferency that is wherein the Liberty Elective is eâ—â—â—nced investigation of the truth for from this which they concede viz. it is impossible for the Will which is once fixt upon the dilection and fruition of the Chiefest Good really and clearly so understood which is the prerogative only of those Sainted Minds which the kindness of Death hath made superior to the seducements of Sense ever to revolt from it and deslect to the quest of a less Good we may receive some assistance to our meditations and the more easily understand what kind of Indifferency that is wherein the nature of this Liberty Elective doth consist during our souls obligations to corporeity In our praecedent lines we affirmed that the Intellect is guide and doth hold the torch or give light to the Will and manifest it is that this Light which the Intellect holds forth to the Will is no other but that Judgement which the Intellect delivers concerning the Good and evil of objects i. e. that this object is good and that evil or among several different
ignorance who being hurried on to Article 6. â—â—ur weighty Reasons convincing that man hath an Absolute Power in himself to controll the temptations of Evil. the prosecution of Evil by the impetuous rapt or swindge of Passion can yet say Video meliora probóque for in this case also was it in his power to have more seriously and sedulously examined sifted and praeconsidered the evils impendent on that action and so to have avoided it We say absolutely in his power for four weighty respects 1 Because we frequently observe that if in the same moment when we are prepared to commit a sin and already entered upon the execution there chance to come in some grave and virtuous Person whom we revere or some Magistrate whose revenging sword we sear intervene we instantly become conscious of our wicked intentions and desist from the perpetration of it 2 Because there are many Virtuous Persons who having learned and practised that noblest militia of conquering themselves can command themselves even in the highest orgasmus and fervour of their passions holding it most base and unworthy the dignity of a generous mind to be surprized with the subtlest Ambushes of Vice and led captive by the Pygmie armies of sensual Temptations 3 Because t is not in vain that God compassionating the frailties and deceptibility of humane nature hath vouchsafed to accommodate our understanding with those faithful and powerful auxiliaries Laws Praecepts Exhortations and pious Praecedents to which we may in the hottest charges of vicious temptations with safety and assured Conquest recurre and upon which if with sufficient attention we reflect the eye of our mind we shall become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ejus domini quod res esse apparet Lords Comptrollers of Apparences i. e. detect the frauds and impostures of Evil though drest in all the glorious ornaments of Good 4 Because no man endevoring to excuse his offence can truly say Video meliora probóque but he doth manifestly grant the action he doth to be Deliberate and Praecogitate which is as much as this t was absolutely in my power to have omitted the doing of it and to have done the contrary good For none can say so of an indeliberate action as when he feels a commotion of his blood and spirits at the first touch of Anger which is the reason of Seneca his affirmation 2 de Ira 3 quod primus motus non sit voluntarius that the first motion which an object excites in the mind is involuntary and the ground of that Maxime Primi motus non sunt in nostra potestate What these First Motions which objects their species being Article 7. What those First Motions are which objects inevitably excite in the Mind and that the Consequences of those motions are praeventible by the mediation of the nerves and spirits transmitted to the mind excite therein are in the general though Epictetus hath furnished us with a convenient brief description of them in these words Primus motus est quem creant visa animi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 appellant Philosophi quibus mens hominis prima statim specie accidentis ad animum rei pellitur non voluntatis sunt neque arbitrariae sed vi quadam suâ sese inferunt hominibus nosâ—itandae yet the most apposite and most familiar way of explaining their nature and extent which our meditations could find out is to exemplify them in some one particular beginning Passion and chiefly in that of Anger where these Impulses or motions are most sensible because most forcible Which that we may the more worthily performe let us with Des Cartes concede two distinct species of Anger 1 one caused in a moment which invading with some violence cannot be concealed but discovers it self for the most part by colouring the face with a Vermilion or Aurora tincture on a suddain but performes little and is easily and soon calmed 2 Another which invading with less violence is not to be discovered unless rarely by inducing paleness upon the Countenance by any signes in the beginning but being of a less diffusive condition doth more corrode and gall the heart and consequently produce more dangerous effects To the first of these they are most obnoxious who have the most of Love Nobleness or sweetness of disposition habited in them For it ariseth not from any profound hatred but from a suddain Aversation repentinely surprising the Mind and because loving good and Heroick minds are always propense to imagine that all things ought to proceed in that manner or course which they judge to be the best therefore so soon as they discover any thing to be carried on in a contrary course to Good they instantly make a stand in their thoughts become offended at it and grow angry yea many times when the matter concerns not them in special for since they love much they take to heart as the vulgar phrase it resent and appropriate the Cause of them they love as neerly as if it were their own insomuch as what would have bin no more then matter of Indignation to others proves matter of Anger to them And because that Inclination whereby they become possest with a constant propensity to love doth effect that they have always much of heat because much of blood in and about their Heart therefore that repentine Aversion which suddainly surpriseth them cannot but propell some small quantity of Choler the Tinder whereon the sparks of this Passion fix and foment to the Heart nor that little of Choler but be accended and excite in an instant a great commotion and effervescence of the blood thither propelled But this Commotion lasteth but a small space of time because the impulse or force of the unexpected Aversation is of no continuance and so soon as they deprehend the matter for which they were angry to be of no moment and such as ought not to have commoved them to that height they becalme themselves conjure down their spirits and become affected with a reluctancy against and a poenitence for that Passion and so destroy it in the Embryo or shell With the other weak abject and ingenerous minds are most transported For though it seldome discover it self in the beginning unless by some paleness in the face yet is its force by degrees increased by reason of that agitation which the fervent desire of Revenge exciteth in the blood which being permixed with that Choler propelled to the heart from the inferior part of the Liver and Spleen kindles therein a sharp pungent and corroding Heat And as those minds are most generous and noble which are most inclined to Gratitude so are those the most proud abject and base which suffer themselves the most to be transported with this kind of ignoble Anger For by so much the greater do Injuries appear to be by how much the greater value Pride makes a man put upon himself and by how much the greater aestimation is set upon those Goods which are
that that supposed action could not but follow upon those other actions subalternately praecedent and consequently that it must be as Democritus would have it Fatal or Necessary Which opinion Aristotle ardently impugneth in lib. de Interpre cap. 8. when discussing the verity and necessity of Propositions He contends to evince that though of two opposite singular propositions which concern a thing either Praeterite or Praesent one must be true the other false yet the Canon holds not in two Contrary singular propositions which concern a thing Future the Verity of the one not necessitating the Falsity of the other For as He there argues if every Affirmation or Negation concerning a thing to come were true or false ex Necessitate then would the Futurity of any thing include a Necessity of its Futurition i. e. whatever is Future would be Necessary and on the contrary whatever is not Future would be Not-necessary and upon just inference nothing could remain either Fortuitous or Arbitrary which to admit is an Incongruity so manifest that the repugnancy of every mans Experience detects it an Incommodity so intolerable that it not only disparageth but confuteth it self And this if there be any Fidelity in the records of our Memory is the Summary of their Theory who have apprehended and asserted Fate to be a meer Natural Constitution of Causes subalternately connected as not dependent on any thing Divine nor any Eternal Decree so not capable of any mutation or interruption by the intervention of any Impediment purely Fortuitous or Counter-activity of any Arbitrary Agent SECT III. Article 1. The Principal of the Second Sect Aristotle and Epicurus IN the other Division of Philosophers who also conceded Fate to be a meer Natural Constitution of Causes subalternately dependent c. but yet denied the inevitable or necessary insequution of all Effects upon that concatenation allowing the possibility of its mutation or interruption by either Chance or mans Free will the Principal are Aristotle and Article 2. The Grounds of the Authors imputing the opinion both of Fates Identity with Nature and the possibility of its Mutation Declination by either Fortuitous or Arbitrary Antagonists to Aristotle Epicurus First as for Aristotle that He held Fate or fatal Necessity to be nothing but very Nature or if you like it better every particular Cause acting secundum suam naturam naturalémve ductum according to its proper or natural Virtue is manifest from his own words in sundry places of his Writings To particular 1 He sayth in 2. phys cap. 6. Eas generationes acoretiones alterationes quae violentae sunt ut dum ex arte ob delicias cogimus plantas aliquas praematurè pubescere adolesceréque esse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non Fatales hoc est non Naturales making Fatal Effects to be meeâ—ly Natural And 2 He sayth 1 Meteorol cap. ultim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fatalibus temporibus magnas quasdam hyemes imbriúmque excessus quibus creentur diluvia contingere eo modo quo contingit hyems statis anni temporibus which rightly paraphrased imports thus much that as Winter the Sun receding from our climate at some certain period of the yeer according to the Ecliptick progress consigned unto it by Nature is the regular effect of the Suns remove to larger distance even so are hard Winters and immoderate rains the regular effects of some periodal Conjunctions of the Planets proceeding in their motions according to the setled Constitutions of Nature From whence we have an advantage to observe that though Stobaeus Ecl. Phys tells us Aristotelem non tam existimasse Fatum esse Causam quà m modum Causae advenientem rebus ex necessitate statutis that Arist conceived not Fate to be so much a Cause as the manner of a Cause advenient to things determined by Necessity yet nevertheless are we so to comment upon this his nice descant as that we understand Fate not to be any new kind of Cause but Nature her self which in respect to her Agency is called a Cause and in respect to the certain proper and necessary manner or way of her acting is called Fate And that He impugned the former Error viz. that all Agents included in this Universal Subalternation act ex inevitabili necessitate or cannot but doe what they doe is not obscurely intimated in this that He defined Fate to be pure Nature Since the Works of Nature are not effected of inoppugnable necessity as may be boldly concluded from the frequent Experiments not only in Generation which is commonly impeded by the intervention of any indisposition or impatibility of Matter and other resisting Accidents but also in Generous and virtuous Minds which easily subdue and countermand those strong inclinations or propensities to Avarice Luxury Audacity Incontinency c. which may not unjustly be esteemed the genuine Effects of their very constitutive Principles and branches that shoot up from the root of their Corporeal Temperament Upon which reason we may conjecture that Arist reflected when He sayd of Socrates praeter naturam ac fatum suum continens evasit He acquired an Habit of Continency even in spite of the contrary sollicitation of his individual Nature and particular Fate Secondly as for Epicurus that his thoughts made an Unison Article 3. Epicurus unanimous to Arist in the point of Physical and Eluctable Necessity with those of Aristotle in the key of a Non-ineluctable Fate is sufficiently constant from hence that having admitted a certain Necessity Natural in this sentence Naturam à rebus ipsarúmve serie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doceri cogique sive necessitate agi in Epist ad Herodotum He yet denied the Inevitability or Absoluteness thereof in another Fragment of his revived by Stobaetis in Ecl. Phys where He delivers as a general Canon Omnia sieri trium modorum aliquo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Necessitate Consilio Fortuna For in that he makes Fortune and Consultation or mans Free will equal competitors in the empire of the world with Necessity Natural He manifestly excludes it from being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sole Despot or Monarch and reserves to the two others an equal dominion Which assurance may duely be augmented by the superaddition of this also that Cicero de Fato introducing Epicurus disputing about the verity of Future Events makes him deny with Aristotle that of two contrary singular Enunciations about a thing to come the one must be true and the other false subnecting this reason Nulla est in natura talis Necessitas And certainly as He stood equal with Aristotle in the denial so hath He outdone him by many degrees in his endevours Article 4. The scope of Epicurus his Figment of the Declination of Atoms in the human Soul and his Accommodation thereof to the tuition of mans Liberty epitomized for the Refutation of this unsound opinion of an Absolute Necessity insomuch as he excogitated his Hypothesis of the Declination of Atoms illustrated
this by mediation of the Spirits discurrent or rather transmitted through all parts of the body All which Lucretius fully expresseth in these Verses Declinamus item motus nec tempore certo Necregione loci certa sed ubi ipsa tulit Mens Nam dubio-procul his rebus sua quoique voluntas Principium dat hinc motus per membra vagantur lib. 2. Again perhaps Epicurus will not gainsay but that the motion of Declination is as much Natural as the motion of Gravity But yet will He by no perswasions yeeld that the Mind being contemperate of Declinatory Atoms is so affected and attracted by Necessity toward one object that it cannot instantly be deflected to another For as a mixt Nature is made so is the Mobility of its insensible parts varied and from various Natural motions retused or refracted ariseth a Third Nature according to which its motions may be sayd to be Voluntary and Natural both insomuch as they proceed à Natura libera from Nature free and uncoacted Nor will He deny supposing the Occursation and Arietation of Atoms that it is pure Necessity that Percussions Repulses and either Reflexions or Cohaesions should succeed among them but yet may He refuse to allow a Necessity of such Occursations as if they could not be impeded nor their Consequents be diverted Hence concerning that eternal series of the Causes of the Apple and the Mind Epicurus will grant that when things are already effected a kind of Necessity may be attributed thereunto such in respect whereof those things cannot be uneffected since non datur jus in praeterita there is no countermanding things Praeterite but before those things were peracted there was no such Necessity since both Fortune or Contingency and the opposing Liberty of mans Will might have interrupted inverted and changed it For few are ignorant of the wide disparity between these two Assirmations viz. What is once done cannot be not done and what is done might not have bin done Since in the Former a thing is considered as already past and in the Later as yet to come and as according to the Former it is Necessary so according to the Later it may be or Contingent or Voluntary By which reason was it possible that the Apple might not have bin praesented to the eye possible that the Tree which bare it might first have withered that the Seed of which that tree was generated might either have proved abortive and steril or else have bin sowed in some other place that other of its Causes might have bin divers ways praepeded which also may be affirmed of the Mind and its Causes and consequently none of the many Causes which did antecede the Appetition of the Apple can be conceived to have bin Necessary as they might if the Causes were of themselves uncapable of Impediment or if there were one Cause Paramont to all others in the Concatenation which by an absolute soveraignty or despotique power had directed and coacted them Allbeit we concede that the Appetition of the Apple by the mind is the Consequent of the Minds Cognition thereof and that Cognition the consequent of its Occursation to the eye and that the Consequent of its Position in a place convenient for sight and that the consequent of its Existence and so from link to link retrograde up to eternity yet notwithstanding can no man justify this Inference that therefore the Mind is Necessitated to that Appetition because still there remains a Posse to the Mind of being Averted from the Affectation and Prosecution thereof in case either the Species of a better object or a suspicion of poyson therein concealed shall intervene or a refrigeration of the Stomach by the dyspeptical and slatulent juice thereof be feared or any other Cause of moment sufficient to perswade the mind to abstain from the use thereof shall be interposed Nor is this Rejoynder disswasive that when the Mind is averted Article 7. The most weighty Rejoynder of the oonnexion of those Causes which Avert the Mind from so found too light from the Appetition of the Apple the Causes Antecedent were not such as might induce the mind to an Appetition but such as induced it to an Aversation and that these Averting not those Attracting Causes were so connected to the series of Fate that the mind could not but be averted from it well as of those which Attract it to an object to the eternal Series of Fate to overbalance Epicurus his defence of mans Liberty For though the Mind be contemperate of such a Contexture of Atoms as that it may be Commoved by the irruent Species of external Objects yet is the nature of its contexture such also as that it can derive from it self some motions distinct from nay contrary to those motions excited by Extradvenient Images which motions being instituted by no other Principle but it self are manifestly Spontaneous and Voluntary and by which it is empower'd to resist External motions and therefore may not so be carried to one Object as not to be upon advantage deflected to another And hence we may Conclude that the Mind is not obliged to a necessity of any one Object but stands Free to refuse that and elect another and that the Reason of a thing to come is not a little different from that of a thing already past since in respect to a thing Future there remains an Indifferency to the Mind of electing either of two Objects but in respect to a thing Praeterite there is a Necessity of its election of one If this Solution be thought too light we can superadd another of weight sufficient to counterpoyse the Doubt viz. that which Carneades in Cicero insinuated when he taught that the Epicureans might have defended the Liberty of mans Mind without their commentitious Declination of Atoms For having once declared that the Mind hath Voluntary motions of its own institution they needed no other Argument to confute Chrysippus to whom when they had conceded that no motion can be without a Cause Movent there remained no reason why they should have granted that all Effects have their Antecedent Causes since to the will of man no Causes are Antecedent it being to it self the Principium à quo of all its motions Voluntary And this is the faithfull Abridgement of Epicurus his Doctrin concerning Fate as a Constitution meerly Natural and capable of interruption alteration opposition by either of the Two other in his Triumvirate viz. Fortune or pure Contingency and the Liberty of mans mind which He conceived Copartners in the Empire of the World ¶ SECT IV. THere is yet another Species of Fate retaining to our Second Article 1. Mathematical Fate briefly described Genus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose exceeding vanity and inconsiderableness had well-nigh occasioned our total Inconsideration thereof in this place and that is Fatum Mathematicum sive Astrologicum the Mathematicians and Astrologers Fate being a certain imaginary Necessity Natural imposed upon