it is expresly affirmed that both Sexes in distinct Persons were then created Male and female created he them and such transpositions are not unusual neither in the Holy History nor in other Histories The first Chapter gives the brief and orderly Relation of the whole Series of Times and Things done in them and the second Chapter is only a fuller and more explicit Declaration of some things that are briefly and compendiously delivered in the first Chapter as appears not only by the Relation of the Formation of Eve but divers other passages relating to what was transacted in the first Chapter 7. The Formation of Man was the last Work of the Creation the last Work of the last Day and the Reasons of this Order seem to be these 1. Because in the Method of the Creation of Sublunary Natures Almighty God proceeded from the less to the more perfect and curious Parts of the visible Creation as first he made Vegetables then Fishes and Birds then Brutes and Man in the last place as the most perfect and containing not only the Faculties of Vegetables and Animals and that in a more perfect nature but also a superadded intellectual spiritual Soul So he was the noblest part of the Creation at least of this lower World 2. Because Mankind should be furnished to his hand with all things convenient and useful to his existence and operation as the Grass was provided before the Brutes were created so before the Creation of Mankind Fruits of the Earth were provided for his food and delight a Paradise for his entertainment and employment of his Senses and Industry Idleness being not indulged even in Paradise and the goodly Furniture of the visible World both Celestial and Sublunary to raise his Admiration Contemplation and Delight 3. Because God Almighty intended him a liberal Patrimony which he would furnish and compleat in all its numbers before Man was created and as soon as he had created him gave him this inferior World as his Usufructuary and Steward at least but yet withall gave him a subordinate dominion of that whereof he made him his Steward and this great Benefactor prepared this Gift of this inferior Terrestrial World to be ready for his Creature Man's reception as soon as he had a Being and accordingly gave it him with all its Furniture Gen. 1.28 29. 8. That Man was by Almighty God in his first Creation in a state of perfect Felicity and Immortality but under a condition of Obedience to the Divine Will Command and Law that he had implanted in his Mind and Conscience certain Principles of Moral Goodness and Righteousness which are the Original of those common Notions of Good and Evil as so many secret Byasses and Inclinations to the observance of the Good and avoidance of the Evil. And as even the inferior Animals have implanted in them secret Instincts and Tendences for the preservation and advance of their sensible individual and specifical natures so these implanted Notions and Moral Inclinations in the Mind of Man were therein lodged to guide and lead him in a conformity to his excellent Constitution and for the attainment of an intellectual and eternal Good and these though the vigour and brightness of them were much abated by his Fall yet were transmitted with his nature to his Descendents And this is the Original of those common Notions which yet remain in the Humane Nature though refracted and abated by the Fall of Man this is that common Light and Law of Nature which to this day in some measure prevails in the generality of Mankind to the Acknowledgment Adoration and Reverence of a Deity and Moral Righteousness this is that Law of Nature mentioned by the Apostle Rom. 1. written in the Hearts of Men wherby they do by Nature the things contained in the Law But of this I shall write somewhat fuller in the ensuing Chapter 9. Besides this Moral inscribed Law God Almighty for the tryal of Man's Obedience gave him a positive Law prohibiting the eating of the forbidden Fruit under pain of temporal and eternal Death and Curse and Man was left in the hands of his own liberty to obey or disobey it 10. That Man being left to the free liberty of his own Will though furnished with sufficient abilities to have obeyed Almighty God yet by the temptation of Satan his own sensual appetite and ambitious affectation violated his Maker's Law and broke that Condition upon which much of his Perfection and Happiness was conferred upon him and although he retained his Essentials namely his Essential Constitution this Spirituality and Immortality of his Soul his Faculties of Understanding and Will he thereby incurred these unhappy deprivations 1. A loss of the immortal state of his Composition being now obnoxious to the separation of Soul and Body 2. A very great abatement of that temporal Felicity he had in this Life and obnoxious to the everlasting separation from God with the Death of the Soul 3. An abatement and diminution of those Habits of Knowledge and Rectitude of Soul and a great weakning and decay of the vigour and activity of connatural implanted Notions or Inclinations 4. A great disorder in the due subordination of his Faculties and a great confusion and corruption prevailing upon his noble Faculties and weakning disordering and abasing them 5. An impair of that Sovereignty and Dominion over the Creatures who rebelled against Man as soon as he forsook his Maker 6. Diseases Disorders Weaknesses Sicknesses Harbingers and Forerunners of Death attaquing his Bodily Constitution 7. A transmission of these Hereditary Imperfections and Decays to his Posterity And herein and hereby we have an Account of that great Quaesitum among the Learned Heathen where yet for want of this Discovery by the Holy Scriptures they could never attain the full knowledge and reason namely the Original of Sin and Evil and those many Corruptions Defections and Miseries of Mankind And thus much concerning the Divine History of the Creation and Defection of Man CAP. IV. The Reasonableness of this Hypothesis of the Origination of the World and particularly of the Humane Nature and the great Advantages it hath above all other Hypotheses touching the same THat the World had a beginning of its Being at least in that order and consistence that it now holds I have shewed in the beginning of this Book Again if there could be any imaginable doubt or question whether the great Integrals of the World were eternal and without beginning yet I have shewed that Mankind or the successive Generations thereof ex ante genitis is in Nature and Reason impossible and in Fact and Experience apparently improbable and therefore that there were some common Parents of Mankind who had their beginning of existence and that in some other way than they are now produced All that have supposed an Origination of Mankind ex non genitis have admitted something either of Matter analogous to it out of which Mankind hath had such his Origination
Memory retaining the series of propositions argumentations and a long tract of historical narratives 3. In that it is more distinct and unconfused than the sensitive Memory 4. In that it is firmer and more fixed and permanent than the sensitive Memory 5. In that it can resuscitate and stir up it self to remember and call together other Images or media to retrive what it once remembred which is Reminiscence an act of intention which therefore Aristotle in his Book De Memoria Reminiscentia makes an act peculiar to Man whereas the Memory of Brutes is either conserved by the Images impressed by the Imagination and there continued or revived and reinforced by the occurrence of external Objects bearing an identity or resemblance to the Images at first impressed by the Phantasie 4. Deliberation a staid and attentive consideration of things to be known and their media and of their several weights conclusiveness or evidence and of things to be done and their media their congruity suitableness possibility and convenience and of the several circumstances aptly conducible thereunto which is an act far above the animal actings which are sudden and transient and admit not of that attention mora and propendency of actions 5. Judgment either concerning things to be known of the weight and concludency of them and ends in decision or of things done or to be done of their congruity fitness rightness appositness and this if it refers to things to be done ends in determination or purpose if in relation to things already done then in sentence of approbation or disapprobation And hither that which we call Conscience is to be referred namely if by a due comparison of things done with the rule there be a consonancy follows the sentence of Approbation if discordant from it the sentence of Condemnation And this act of the Judgment in relation to things to be done and the determination thereupon is that which is usually stiled the last decision of the practical Understanding immediately antecedent to the decree of the Will which it must follow by a kind of moral necessity when it acts as a reasonable Faculty and in the due state and order of its nature though by its liberty and empire it sometimes suspends its concurrence And thus far concerning the Acts of the Understanding 3. Concerning intellectual Habits or the genuine effects of these acts in the understanding Faculty and they are divers and diversly expressed by those that have treated thereof 1. Opinion when the assent of the Understanding is so far gained by evidence of probability that it rather inclines to one perswasion than to another yet not altogether without a mixture of incertainty or doubting 2. Science or Knowledge effected by such evidence cui non potest subesse falsum as in case of demonstrative evidence 3. Fides or Faith or Belief which rests upon the relation of another that we have no reasonable cause to suspect and upon this account we believe Divine Revelation when we are sufficiently convinced that it is Divine Revelation we also believe our Senses because we have the greatest Moral evidence that we can reasonably have of the truth of their reports when they are not controlled by apparent Reason impossibility or improbability We believe good and credible persons and this principally referrs to matter of fact which we cannot or do not controll by our Senses or other weighty evidence as that there was such a man as Julius Caesar that there is such a place as Rome though we never saw the one or the other because delivered over to us by credible persons and such who could probably have no end to deceive us 4. Wisdom which is a complicated habit referring to all things to be known and done the due comparison of things and actions and the preference of them according to their various natures and degrees 5. Prudence which is principally in reference to actions to be done the due means order season method of doing or not doing 6. Moral Virtues as Justice Temperance Sobriety Fortitude Patience c. for these begin in the Intellect though their exercise belong principally to the faculty of the Will 7. Arts Liberal or Mechanical for though the exercise of those in which the formal nature of an Art consists be external yet the Ideal notion and habit of them begins in the Understanding and a man is first a Geometrician in his Brain before he be such in his Hand And all these habits of the intellectual Faculty are far advanced above what is found in Sensible Natures take the last for instance It is true we find a rare dexterity in the Spider and Silkworm in framing of their threads but this proceeds not from any Intellectual principle in them but from an Instinct connatural to them and whereunto they are determined by the Law of their nature again we find in the Fox the Hawk and other Animals admirable sagacities wiles and subtilties in getting their prey and in defending themselves But when we consider the sagacity of the Humane Understanding although the particular Instincts of some Animals are scarce imitable by it yet it exceeds them in other things almost of the same nature and so by way of equivalence or rather prelation in those very Instincts witness the Arts of Painting Tapestry Fortification Architecture the Engins whereby noxious and subtil Animals are subdued and infinite more arising from the fruitfulness of the Understanding and the dexterity of the Hand And thus much touching the Intellective Faculty the seat of intellective Perception and Counsel I come to consider of that other Faculty the Will the seat of Empire and Authority The Will therefore is that other great Faculty of the Reasonable Soul and it is not a bare appetitive power as that of the sensual appetite but is a rational appetite and is considerable 1. In its Nature 2. In its Object 3. In its Acts. 1. The Nature of this Faculty is that it is free domina suarum actionum free from compulsion and so spontaneous and free from determination by the particular Object wherein it differs from the sensitive appetite which though spontaneous because moving from an inward principle yet is if not altogether yet for the most part determined in its choice by the external Object But how far forth the Will is determined by the last act of the practick Understanding or how far such a determination is or is not consistent with the essential or natural liberty of the Will is not seasonable here to dispute This liberty of Will together with that other Faculty of Understanding is that which renders the humane Nature properly capable of a Law and of the consequence of Law Rewards and Punishments which doth not properly belong to the animal Nature because destitute of these two Faculties 2. The Object of the Will is not confined to a sensible Good but is much larger namely such a Good as is compatible to an Intellectual Nature in its full
and sensitive Province there are Plant-animals and some kind of Insects arising from Vegetables that seem to participate of both Between the animal and rational Province there seem to be some Animals that have a dark Image or resemblance of the Influxes of Reason So between the corporeal and intellectual World there is constituted Man participating much of both Natures It a quod non transitur ad extreme nisi per media 2. That Man in his constitution seems admirably fitted to the convenience of his Nature a little World accommodated with Faculties and Organs admirably convenient to it self a kind of entire State Kingdom or Republick within himself fitted with all accommodations and requisites for the due Regiment of himself as a Sensible and Intellectual Being He hath the Council or Senate of his Intellect and her subservient Acts and Faculties to advise him the Empire and Regiment of his Will to command the Satellites and Ministers of his Passions and Animal Spirits to execute his Conscience for his Tribunal There wants nothing within this little Circle of himself which may be requisite to order that little compacted Province for its Political Regiment And thus far concerning Man as relating to himself his Parts Faculties and entire Composition It remains that we take a little survey of him as he stands in relation to things without him which is the last Consideration that I promised in this brief Inventory of the Humane Nature and Excellencies The Humane Nature thus fitted with these Faculties is admirably accommodated to a threefold relation to somewhat without him namely To Almighty God To the rest of Mankind And to this mundus aspectabilis wherein he lives 1. To Almighty God for being a Creature endued with an Immortal Soul endued with those great Faculties of Understanding and Will and those Facultates Ancillares of his Affections he is rendred into a capacity 1. Of knowing Him 2. Of knowing his Will and what is acceptable to Him for it is in a great measure inscribed in his Soul 3. Of being a fit Subject to Him and to obey Him 4. Of loving and trusting in Him 5. Of glorifying of Him especially in the Contemplation of His Works which are proposed to his Sense and Understanding 6. Of Invoking and Worshipping And 7. Finally to enjoy the Blessed Vision of Him by reason of the congruity of his Immortal and Intellectual Nature to such a fruition And thus we have him in his Duty Religion and in his Happiness Immortal Life 2. To the rest of mankind he is accommodated with Moral principles inherent in his Nature and improvable by the exercise of his Faculties as is before shewn he is accommodated with Speech and Intellectual signs to maintain intercourse and mutual communion and commerce and his very disposition and the mutual necessitudes of humane Nature necessarily maintain mutual offices and correspondence between them and the accommodations of Government and Laws are the fruit and productions of his Intellectual nature and the support of society 3. To the rest of the visible World there is an admirable accommodation of the humane Nature and Faculties to the Mundus aspectabilis and of the several parts of it and of them to it 1. Of the Faculties of the humane Nature to the visible Universe especially the vegetable and animal Natures which by means of the admirable advantage of his Intellect and that singular Engin of the Hand he hath skill and power to subdue and bring under whereby he exerciseth dominion over them and protection of them as the Vicegerent and Deputy of Almighty God 2. Of the Universe and parts thereof to the humane Nature and Faculties which were infinite to enumerate I shall only insert some of them 1. A kind of awful subjection and fear of the greatest part of the animal Nature of him and to him and though some be so hardy and unruly as to resist him yet he wants not power by the advantage of his Understanding and Hand to subdue and master them 2. An accommodation of most of the things within the compass of the visible Universe to his use and convenience which though I cannot say it is the only or the prime end of their being yet they are singularly accommodated to the use delight and benefit of mankind as might easily appear by an enumeration of particulars The light motion and influence of the Sun and Stars the nature position and frame of Elements the variety and concurrence of the Meteors the fertility of the Land the position of the Ocean the interspersion of the Rivers the various Minerals Vegetables and Animals some serving for his food some for his clothing some for his labour and travel some for his delight the whole compass of Nature affording infinite variety of Instances of this kind 3. An admirable accommodation of all the things in the World to his Faculties and for their delight advancement and improvement He hath the perception of Sense to which all the visible Objects of the World are presented and he hath the light and searching Faculty of his Understanding which as it is qualified for such an employment of Contemplation so it hath a fruitful exhibition of Objects of great variety and excellency the knowledge whereof doth not only delight and enrich his Faculties but are so many manuductions to the knowledge and admiration of the infinite Wisdom Power and Goodness of the Creator and Upholder of them And thus I have given a short and brief estimate of the peculiar Excellencies of the Humane Nature I did not design a large or exact enumeration or description of them There is not any one particular above-mentioned but would take up the business of a just Volume and I am easily conscious that I have omitted many things that possibly might be of as great importance as any that I have mentioned But this brief Inventory I have here given as preparatory to what follows and to pre-possess the Reader 1. That a natural Indagation according to the light of natural Reason touching the Origination of such a Creature as this is no contemptible or unworthy enquiry 2. That surely such a Creature as this thus accommodated could not have his Origination from any less than an Intellectual most Wise Powerful and Beneficent Being the great God Creator and Governour of Heaven and Earth And this is the scope and end of my business in this Tract the short Synopsis whereof is as followeth There are two grand Opinions among the Ancients touching the Origination of Man The first is That Humane Species had no beginning but was Eternal the second That it had a beginning In the first place I examin the supposition of the Eternity of Mankind in their successive Generations And in order thereunto I take up the consideration of the Eternity of the World as it is now constituted and whether it be in Nature possible that it should be so I then descend to the particular consideration of the Eternity of
of the Earth These are procured every Year whether there be any need of them or not and possibly sometimes in greater numbers than is convenient for this inferior World And although it be true that the Divine Power doth intend or remit or manage these Productions secundùm regimen consilium voluntatis yet it is most evident these Productions are ordinary animal and natural without choice or design in inanimate Nature If therefore these Productions be natural and periodical every Year why should there not be as well productions of Men or perfect Brutes if it were purely natural as well as Frogs and Flies since the former may be of more use especially in many desolate places than always the latter How many great and vast Islands and Continents are there especially in Armenia which have no considerable number of Inhabitants if any at all to people them In Ireland there are great store of Wolves and so there were anciently in England till they were destroyed by the Industry of the Inhabitants in Ireland their increase is by propagation without any new production in England they cannot increase by propagation because here are none How comes it to pass that Nature doth not produce new Wolves in England as well as Frogs Adders Hornets and Wasps If it be said that Nature neglects it because they are noxious as this is to make Nature an intelligent Agent so it answers not the difficulty For why doth she then not destroy the Species in Ireland upon the same account But this is but a vanity Nature as well intends the existence of a Wolf as of a Sheep where the means of its production is equal though Mankind prefer the latter as more useful to him If any thing therefore of this deliberative nature be to be found in the voluntary and intentional Regiments of things of this kind it is to be attributed to the great and supreme Rector of the World who doth work according to Counsel Wisdom and Will Upon the whole matter therefore I conclude That as well by the reason of the thing and upon true natural congruity as also de facto and upon experimental Observations Mankind no nor the perfect Animals are not produced nor producible by any meer natural Cause as at this day or in any Age or Time since their first Creation otherwise than by a natural production which is the Truth asserted by the Great Verulam in his 9 th Century in fine As for the Heathen Opinion which was That upon great Mutations of the World perfect Creatures were first ingendred of Concretion as well as Frogs Worms and Flies and such like we know it to be vain but if any such thing should be admitted discoursing according to Sense it cannot be except you admit a Chaos first and a commixture of Heaven and Earth for the Frame of the World once in order cannot effect it by any Excess or Casualty And as thus neither Casualty nor bare Nature cannot originate Mankind or any perfect Animal ex putri so much less can Art The Chymists tell us that by re-union of separate Principles of Vegetables they will in a Glass revive a Vegetable of the same species at least in figure and effigies this hath been pretended but I could never hear any Man speak it that saw it done But never was any so mad except Paracelsus that could ever pretend to make up a Sensible Being much less the Humane Nature Paracelsus vainly and falsly pretended to the raising of an Homunculus but yet not without the help of those Naturales geniturae utriusque sexus wherein notwithstanding he lyed as he did in many things else which he never could effect notwithstanding his vain boasting of his Skill Upon the whole Matter therefore I conclude That the Origination of Mankind or of the inferior perfect Animals neither was nor could be the Effect of Humane Art or Skill as Paracelsus nor of Chance or Casualty as Epicurus nor of Nature as Cardanus Caesalpinus and some other Recreants in Religion and Philosophy But it was the free powerful and wonderful Work of the God of Nature who made all things by his Power and Wisdom and having made them lodged in them and for them that pre-ordained Law of their Creation and Existence which we commonly call Nature That Nature indeed is the Law or Rule instituted and implanted by the wise and glorious God in things when made but in the first Effection of Mankind God Almighty not Nature was the Author As in my Watch the Law and Rule of its Motion is the Constitution and Position of its Parts by the Hand and Mind of the skilful Artist but the Author or Efficient of my Watch is the Artist himself and not that Motion that is as it were the Law or Rule of the Engin. SECT IV. CAP. I. Concerning the last Opinion attributing the Origination of Mankind to the immediate Power and Will of Almighty God IN the foregoing Section and Chapters I have performed these things 1. I have removed the Supposition of an Eternal Existence of the Humane Species as altogether incredible and indeed impossible 2. I have established consequently this Truth That the Species humana had a beginning and this I have done principally upon natural Evidence of the incompossibility of an Eternal Existence of successive Generations 3. I have considered those Evidences of Fact or Moral Evidences of the Inception of Mankind and removed such as seem more fallible and less concludent and subjoined such as seem to be of greater weight 4. Among these of the latter sort I have considered the general Tradition thereof both of the unlearned and learned part of Mankind wherein among others I have considered the Opinion of those Famous Sects of Philosophers the Platonists Epicureans Peripateticks and Stoicks 5. Though I have made use of their common Suffrage in order to the Proof of the Origination of Mankind yet I have not allowed all their several Notions or Hypothesis touching the Method or Manner of their admitted Origination of the Humane Nature And therefore 6. I having thus established the Thesis in general I have descended to the Examination of the particular Hypotheses taken up by various Philosophers touching the same Origination And those I have distributed into these three Ranks 1. Those that suppose an accidental or casual Production of Mankind which was principally the Opinion of the Epicureans This Opinion I have examined and rejected as vain 2. Those that suppose this Production to be Natural or by the bare Concurrence of Natural Causes as Avicen Cardan and some others which I have likewise examined and rejected as utterly inevident and false 3. There remains therefore the third Opinion that attributes the Origination of Mankind to the immediate Power and Beneplacitum of the Supreme Intellectual Being namely Almighty God and this was the Opinion of divers of the Platonists and Stoicks This Opinion is in the general true and agreeth not only with the Divine
condition of his Obedience to the Command of God and upon the breach of that Condition were either utterly lost as the indissolubility of the Union of the Compositum by one Man's Disobedience Sin entred into the World and Death by Sin Others were abated as the Excellency of his Knowledge Righteousness the fruition of Happiness the Perfection of his Sovereignty over the Creatures the Gloriousness and Beauty and much of the Vigour of his Body the exquisite Order and Subordination of his Faculties but his Essentials the Immortality of his Soul the Faculties of Intellection and Will and the Natural Beauty and Usefulness of his Body remains notwithstanding that terrible Concussion whereof somewhat more hereafter 4. We have the Method of this Production of Man it was not by or from any meer Natural Cause but by the immediate Command of the Divine Will Wisdom and Power it was not from any Semen naturally accidentally or intentionally formed and so by a gradual maturation and growth ex uteris terrestribus or as the foetus humanus is perfected at this day For it was not possible that any such Seminal Principle should be formed casually or by any meer Natural Cause as hath been already shewn And although the Divine Power could have perfected all as well Man as the other Animals by first forming such a Semen and giving it either a gradual or speedy production as Insects are at this day produced yet 1. It was utterly superfluous to have used such a processus formativus ex semine because it required no less than an Almighty Power to have moulded and fashioned or actuated such a Semen as to have produced Man by an immediate Supernatural Formation and Production and therefore since the same Power was requisite in both it is not at all necessary nor reasonable to suppose so long a process as first to form a Semen and by a Seminal Process to have perfected the Humane Nature and the Holy History expresly imports the contrary 2. If we suppose a Semen prepared by the Divine Power that Production that must arise thereupon must either be immediate and sudden if not absolutely instantaneous or it must be gradual and pass through all these spaces of Time gradual Formation and accession of Growth and Increase as we see in embryone foetu nuper nato We cannot suppose the former but we must suppose it to be otherwise than natural and call in the Divine Power to effect it as much as in an instantaneous formation sine praecedente semine And we cannot suppose the latter because it is expresly contrary to the description of the Humane Production for it was done within the compass of the Sixth Day and the formation and perfecting of the Humane Nature was immediately finished after the Omnipotent Command and Determination of the Will of God it was no sooner said faciamus hominem c. but it was done It is true in that ordinary Law which Almighty God hath instituted in Nature already established by him there are regular and successive and gradual procedures and it is convenient it should be so and it is true also in this short period of the Six Days Work within which the Universe was finished Almighty God observed a certain convenient Order making that to precede which was fittest and most useful to precede in order to the production of things but as to the speed and dispatch of Productions the Almighty God used the Majesty that became the Excellency of his Greatness and obsequious Matter presently yielded to the Power of his Command Fiat factum est Psal 33.9 He said and it was done he commanded and it stood fast Therefore although now in settled Nature and according to the standing Laws of the Divine Wisdom Man is first conceived ex semine then lodgeth 10 Months in utero muliebri wherein during that time he is gradually formed and perfected and then after his Birth gradually increaseth passeth through the impotency of Infancy the weaknesses of Childhood and the follies of Youth before he comes to a ripe and full age yet it was not so here in the same moment the Body is formed in its full and perfect nature and the Animal Soul and Faculties together with it and the Rational Soul infused in the same moment without any priority of Time but only of Order and Nature So that Man was at the very same moment a perfect Organical Body with all his Nerves Veins Viscera Bones and Parts conformed a Vital and Sensitive Nature joyned with it and a Rational Soul infused without first living the Life of a Plant then of an Animal then of a Man the whole Scene was performed in one moment and so it became both the Greatness of the Divine Majesty and Power and so it was necessary to be in the first production of Man although in the succeeding procedure of natural Generations it must be and was otherwise because the supreme Wisdom and Will judged it so And although to any Man that will duly consider almost any thing there must of necessity be another Rule or Law for the first production of things than there is or may be in the ordinary regiment and governing of Generations when Nature is once established yet the want of this Consideration hath bred all those vain Errors of those Philosophers that asserted the Eternity of the World and of those others who being not satisfied with that Hypothesis but driven by a kind of necessity of Reason to acknowledge an Origination of Mankind yet could not deliver themselves from fancying that Humane Productions must needs be as like those they now know as they could well frame them And therefore according to these Men the Earth must be conceited to be Mater and the Sun vice Patris and the Earth must have her Uteri and Succus nutritius and the Increase of Mankind must be by some such gradual process as we see in natural productions or sponte nata and they cannot easily bring their Minds to believe the instantaneous production of Man by the immediate Power of God because it hath a gradual process in ordinary natural Generations and yet the same Men can give themselves leave to imagin Hominem oriri posse sicut blitum though never Experience of former Ages since the existence of Men upon the Earth give us any Example of it bating only the Fictions of some Poets Maimonides lib. 2. cap. 27. hath observed this Mistake and singularly confutes it by evincing That if Men go by this Rule of Judgment the nature of things in their Original as they find them in their Constitution being constituted they will disbelieve the most certain Truths Neque argumentari licet ullo modo à natura rei alicujus post illius generationem firmam subsistentiam in perfectione sua ad naturam ejus eo tempore quo movebatur ad generationem quod si verò his erras plurima tibi orientur dubia absurda ut pro
falsis habeas ea quae vera sunt vice versa pro veris ea quae falsa sunt and gives this Example Suppose a Child of a ready Wit whose Mother died shortly after his Birth should go alone with his Father into some uninhabited Island where he was bred up without the sight of any Beast or Woman and there should inquire of his Father Quomodo qua ratione facti sumus existentiámque nostram accipimus cui pater Unusquisque nostrum generatur in ventre cujusdam individui speciei nostrae nobis simillimi quod foemina vocatur in ventre autem existentes exiguum admodum primo corpusculum habemus movemus nutrimur paulatim crescimus vivimus donec ad certam quandam magnitudinem venimus tum aperitur inferius in ventre porta quaedam eximus nec tamen postea crescere desinimus usque dum ad hanc circiter quam vides quantitatem pervenimus Puer ille orbus statim iterum quaeret dum ibi parvi fuimus ibi viximus nos movimus crevimus an quoque comedimus bibimus ac per nares respiravimus an excrementa ejecimus respondetur ei quod non ipse sine dubio hoc incipiet negare demonstrationes extruere ex impossibilibus argmentando ab ente perfecto dicet quilibet nostrum si per unicam horam careat respiratione mori cogimur quomodo credi potest aliquem in utero clauso per tot menses vivere potest And so goes on with the young Man forming very strong Arguments against this most certain Truth meerly by the misapprehension of Inferences from the nature of things in their perfect Existence to the nature of things in their Original It is true Men must be wary and considerate before they conclude against the Frame and Order of things as they appear in Nature because otherwise Men may take liberty to conjecture any thing which is certainly unbecoming a Philosopher especially who pretends to govern himself by the Phaenomena of Nature and it is that which we have before condemned But on the other side to suppose that impossible in the Origination of things which we find not in things already setled is too hasty and rash a Conclusion especially when we are driven to confess another kind of Origination of Mankind than now is and do not find any so probable and so free from absurd Consequences so ancient so convincingly delivered as that by the Divine Historian Moses And this is so much the rather credible because it is impossible to conceive that Man could have his first Origination but from an intelligent most wise and powerful Efficient unless a Man shall offer violence to his own Reason and certainly to such an Efficient such a Production is not only possible but sutable to be supposed 5. We have here prescribed and determined the Law and Means of the natural production of the Individuals of Mankind in their future production according to that Method and Mode which hath in all Ages ever since by the course of Nature been observed namely by Propagation by mutual Conjunction of their Sexes though this could not be the Method of their first production And this Prolifick Power of production of Mankind by successive natural generation was by the Virtue and Efficacy of the Divine Institution and Benediction given to Mankind in his first Creation and by virtue thereof that Power and Faculty is continued in them and traduced to the succeeding Individuals to this day and accordingly Virtute divinae ordinationis institutionis uterque sexus appetitum illum procreandi innatum habent membra vasa huic facultati subservientia hucusque obtinent diversitate sexuum eidem officio necessariâ gaudent quod non vel cafus vel stupida coeca natura obtinere potuerunt sine ordinatione appropriatione institutione summi sapientissimi numinis ejúsque volitionis determinationnis And as this Law of future Generations was thus given to Mankind and quasi alligata to them so it is exclusive of any other either casual or natural way of Generation except it be by Miracle and therefore we must now suppose a possibility of an utter abrogation of this natural Law if we should suppose any other kind of natural production of Mankind should after this first production of the Humane Nature be possible We may with as fair a Supposition imagin that a Man should be produced by the natural conjunction of Sheep or of Lions or a Star be produced ex putri materia terrestri as to suppose a Man to be produced accidentally casually or naturally in any other Method than this Divine Law of Nature fixed in the Humane Nature by the Divine Institution hath determined unless as great a supernatural Miracle should happen by the Divine immediate Power as did in the Conception of the Messias 6. As subservient and necessary to this Law of future Generation we have here the distinction of Sexes Male and female created he them This distinction and conjunction of Sexes in order to the propagation of Mankind was part of that Law and Order that the Wise God instituted for this end And certainly there needs not any clearer Argument that the production of Mankind was not a Work of Chance or blind necessary Nature but a Work of a most Wise Intelligent Powerful Being that adapted the discrimination of Sexes to the propagation of Mankind either Sex without the other being in Nature utterly unprofitable and unuseful to that end without which the succession of Mankind must have been determined in the first Individual And it is no less evidence of the continual active Providence of that Great and Wise God that the succession of both Sexes is continued in that equal proportion as that there is no grand disparity in the propagation of Individuals of either Sex This diversity of Sexes was not in the same Individual as if Adam had been Androgyna or one double Person conjoyned or continued consisting of both Sexes till they were after divided and severed as Plato in Symposio and many of the ancient and modern Jews have thought but the first Creation of Adam in virili sexu being perfected the production of Eve ex latere Adami was the very same Day of his Creation miraculously performed by Almighty God for the Words Male and female created he them referr to the whole entire complement of the Creation of Man which was not till the Formation of Eve There may be something mysterious in this business of the Manner of Eves Formation which may be hard to unriddle It is enough that God Almighty before the end of the Sixth Day formed both Sexes of Mankind in order to the common help of each other and the propagation of the future Generations of Mankind the History therefore of the Formation of Eve though mentioned in the second Chapter and after the Benediction of the Seventh Day must necessarily be referred to the Sixth Day wherein
of Mankind was by the same wise and provident Power and that as the Humane Nature is accommodated to it self so this World is accommodated to the exigence and convenience of the Humane Nature When I have considered the admirable Congruity of all the Parts of Christian Religion and how it corresponds and is adapted to the convenience and condition of the Humane Nature and how those antecedent Prophesies Promises and Directions of Religion in the Old Testament bear an admirable congruity to the Model of Religion in the New Testament notwithstanding the vast distances between the manifestations of them and how all the Scheme of Divine Dispensations from the beginning of the World bear an admirable accommodation each to other and to the Evangelical Doctrin it gives us a strong Moral Evidence that the same one God was the Author of this Religion that although there seem a diversity and variety in the Administrations yet when I look upon them together compare the congruity of what goes before to what follows it seems one most beautiful Piece fitted and accommodated in every part to the other and hereby I satisfie my self that it is the true Religion that it is all of one piece and one common Author of it namely the God of Truth And so when I consider the Humane Nature and the admirable accommodation that one part thereof hath to the other and also look upon the Mundus aspectabilis especially this lower World wherewith we are by reason of its vicinity best acquainted and observe how admirably the same is accommodated to the Animal Life of Man And although the Parts thereof are distinct various distant yet there are drawn from it Lines of Accommodations and Communication to the Use of the Humane Nature so exactly and appositly that I cannot choose but acknowledge one common Author both of the greater and lesser World and such an Author as made and disposed all things by the highest Wisdom and the wisest Choice If there had been divers Authors of the greater and lesser World there could never have been an accommodation of things so disparate one to another unless both had acted in subordination to one common third Being or by one common Counsel Again it was not possible that Casualty or Chance could have accommodated things of various kinds one to another If Chance could make a Beam of a House and could have made Tenents at either end yet it is not possible to conceive that Chance could cast it to be just of a fit length to answer the congruity of its contignation to another piece of Timber or fit the Mortises of other pieces of Timber to those Tenents or fit the particles and scantlets to answer just one another this must of necessity require a Workman that works by Understanding Choice and Appropriation because it requires accommodation of several things of several kinds to one End by several Means Thus therefore when I see the admirable accommodation of Humane Nature to its own existence and conveniences the admirable accommodation therein of things of different natures one to another as Organs to Faculties Sinews to Bones Nerves to Muscles Spirits to Nerves when I see the excellent accommodation of this lower World especially to the Humane Nature although they are in themselves several and heterogeneal I cannot without violence to my own Observation Experience and Reason I say I cannot but attribute the first Formation of Humane Nature yea and of all the Universe to one most Wise Intelligent Powerful Being who did all things according to the counsel of his Will after the most wise and excellent Idea of his unsearchable Understanding CAP. V. Concerning the Nature of that Intelligent Agent that first formed the Humane Nature and some Objections against the Inferences above made and their Answer HAving in the foregoing Chapter reduced the Origination of Mankind to an Intelligent Efficient effecting it per modum efficientis voluntarii per intentionem I shall in this place inquire what kind of Intelligent Efficient this was for among Intelligent Beings there is one Primum the Glorious God whose Understanding Power and Goodness is infinite there are also acknowledged by the Heathen Intelligentiae à primo those which Aristotle calls by the Name of Separate Intelligences Plato calls Dii ex Diis and we commonly call Angels very glorious and powerful Creatures which Plato takes into the Business of the Creation of Man as to the Corporeal Frame And it seems to be that the Effection of the Humane Nature in any part thereof is not attributable to the Angels neither as instrumental much less as principal Causes 1. As to the Soul of Man it seems beyond dispute for that was a created Substance and Creation of any new Substance being an infinite Motion is not within the power of any Finite Nature the Pretence therefore rests only as to the Corporeal or at least Animal Nature 2. Therefore I say that the Formation of the Bodily much less the Animal Nature of Man in order to the reception of the Soul was neither coordinately nor instrumentally the Work of Angels And the Reasons that seem sufficient to make out this Truth are these 1. It seems utterly above an Angelical Power to organize the Body of the Humane Nature for though it is true that in the established way of Generation the Parents who are inferior in nature to Angels do organize the Body at least mediante semine yet that is done in the virtue and strength of the Ordination and Institution of Almighty God So that as well Man as the Semen genitale are the Instruments deputed by Almighty God in virtue of his Supreme Power to propagate the Humane Nature And therefore since the first Formation of the Humane Nature was a new Formation not according to the Laws established after in Nature the first Production of Mankind was immediately by the Almighty Power and not by the Power of any subordinate Intelligence 2. Again it could not possibly be but that the Humane Nature must be completed in an instant For how is it conceptible that first there should be Corpus formatum with all the Organs Vessels Blood and Spirits disposed and ordered in their several Cells and Motions unless Man had been then at the same time animated as well as organized For the outward shape or stature of a Man is no more a fit Receptacle of an Animal much less of a Rational Life than a Statue of Wax or Stone The same Hand therefore that animated formed and fashioned also the same Humane Body in the same moment by virtue of the Volition Determination or Faciamus of the Divine Will 3. As we have no manner of evidence of the Angelical concurrence or instrumentality in the Formation of Man or of any of the lower Animals so there is no necessity at all of such a Supposition And we are not to multiply Causes without necessity for as the bare determination of the most powerful and efficacious
faculty being but a part of that admirable effect that was wrought in the formation of the Humane Nature it rather advanceth than any way depreciateth the Power and Wisdom of the first Efficient of Mankind that he was formed together with such a power of propagating his kind 2. From hence we learn not only that there is a God but in some measure we learn what he is As this Work the primitive Effection of the Humane Nature could never be effected but by an Intelligent Being so when we see such a Work as this we cannot choose but acknowledge that he is transcendently wise transcendently powerful transcendently good that such was his Power and Wisdom appears by his Work and that such was his Goodness appears in that freely without any motive or advantage to himself he formed this excellent creature Man it was but to communicate his abundant Goodness and to give Being to an Intelligent Nature that might be capable of the participation of his Goodness and Bounty commensurate to his nature We also learn that as he made an Intelligent Being so he is a Transcendent Intelligence He that made the Eye shall he not see It is very true the perception of Sense is the lowest kind of perception and the perception of rational and discursive Intellection is of a higher rank than the perception of Sense the Intuitive perception is nobler than that of Ratiocination but the perception if I may use that word in Almighty God is of a transcendent perfection above all these and includeth them all but not under those allayes that render other kind of perceptions less perfect He sees and hears and knows without an Eye without an Ear without an Object He that could create an Intellectual Being doth most perfectly understand and know for he could not be destitute of any perfection whereof an incorporeal Being could be capable and since he made a Being capable of Intelligence certainly he had a greater and more perfect Intelligence And here I cannot choose but re-mind some things again that I have formerly intimated viz. 1. That those that go about to attribute the Origination of Mankind to a bare Order or Law of Nature as the primitive Effector thereof speak that which is perfectly irrational and unintelligible for although a Law or Rule is the Method and Order by which an Intelligent Being may act yet a Law or Rule or Order is a dead unactive uneffective thing of it self without an Agent that useth it and exerciseth it as his Rule and Method of Action What would a Law signifie in a Kingdom or State unless there were some Person or Society of Men that did exercise and execute and judge and determin and act by it or according to it And therefore Aristotle in the Books de Mundo attributed to him though in the description of God as to the constancy of his working he stile him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lex aequabiliter in nos fusa nec transpositionem nec correctionem ullam recipiens praestantior firmior omnibus quae in tabulis descriptae contineantur Yet he rests not in that description but tells us that he is a Being that acts by Empire and Command and Will Quod in navi guhernator in curru auriga in choro praecentor in civitate lex in exercitu imperator hoc idem in mundo Deus So that to the effecting of the Humane Nature a bare independent Law is incompetent but there must be an Intelligent Being whose Will that Rule and Law which we call Nature is 2. That although the Manner and Method that the Divine Power and Wisdom used in the first formation and effecting of the Humane Nature is not cognoscible by the Light of Nature without Divine Revelation because none but Almighty God was acquainted with or present at that Work and his Power and Wisdom might use various Orders or Methods in its first effection yet the Conclusion that this Work whatever particular Method it had for its effection was the Work of a most powerful intelligent wise Being acting by Intellection Will and Intention is a Truth apparently evident to the Light of Nature and Reason and as infallible a Demonstration of a Deity as if a Man could have been present and seen the Work done as I do most rationally conclude an excellent Watch or other Automaton was the work of an intelligent Artist though I do not know the particular manner how he made it unless I am particularly informed thereof by him 3. From hence we learn that the Divine Providence extends to this lower World and all the things therein and is not only confined to things above the Moon as Aristotle would have it He that condescended to the effection not only of Man but of all the Animals of this lower World certainly had a regard to them and would not leave them without the regiment of his Providence which were the Works of his own immediate Power and Will It is true the ordinary regiment of the Divine Providence in things natural is ordinarily managed by this regular and ordinary Law of Nature whereof we have spoken before But yet he deals not by the World as I deal by my Watch when I have wound it up I take no more care of it but it moves according to the regular composure of it but he communicates a general Influence to it whereby it is supported in its Being and Order and as he manifested a more special care in the fashioning of Man so he affords him a special Providence in his regiment 4. From hence we learn not only the Original of those admirable Faculties in Man especially of the light of his Understanding and the liberty of his Will whereby he resembles his Maker but also from whence he had that Intellectual Soul not out of the Matter whereof his Corporeal and Animal Nature was constituted but of a higher and nobler extraction namely by Creation he breathed into him the breath of Life 5. From hence we learn to be confirmed not only in the Notion of the Immortality of the Soul but in some measure the reason of it It was a created Spiritual Nature infused into him by the Almighty efficiency and infusion of God 6. From hence we learn that Mankind is of kin to both Worlds the Celestial and Elementary nexus utriusque mundi capable of a felicity beyond the extent of this inferior World 7. From hence we also learn from whence these common Notions especially of the Existence of a God and these anticipations of some Moral Principles of the Veneration of God Righteousness and Justice are evidently to be found in the generality of Mankind but where they are impaired by corrupt Customs or Education from whence those Operations of the natural Conscience are discernible in most Men antecedent to any Instruction or Education the original of those common Notions that more immediately concern the Intellective Faculty and Moral Inclinations that more immediately concern the
Volitive Faculty seem to be two the first more primitive and radical in the Soul the second not altogether so radical and primitive yet such as have also a natural connexion with and to the Soul First therefore as to the first of these The Soul of Man as it came out of the hands of the Glorious God so it had engraven in it these Impressions and Characters of some great and intellective Principles and rational Propensions that serve secretly to direct and incline him to these common Notions and Sentiments So that whether the Souls of the Descendents from Adam were traduced from him or whether they are immediately created and infused by God a Dispute not seasonable in this place yet those real Characters Impressions and rational Noemata and Instincts though weakned by the Fall and the contracted Corruption of Humane Nature are brought with us into the World and grow up with us whereby Mankind hath not only those great excellencies of his Faculties Understanding and Will but a certain congenit stock of Rational Tendencies and Sentiments engraven and lodged in his Soul which if duly attended and improved are admirable helps to the perfecting and advancing of a Rational Life And therefore as the Divine Goodness did not only give the Faculties of Sense and Perception to the Sensitive and Animal Nature but also lodged in their sensitive Souls certain connatural and congenit sensitive Instincts not acquired by Experience but congenit with them whereby they are directed and inclined to what is conducible to the sensitive good of their Sensitive Nature so the Rational Nature is furnished with certain congenit Notions Inclinations and Tendencies born with him but improved and perfected by the exercise of Reason and Observation whereby he is inclined and directed antecedently to the good of a Reasonable Life or Nature These differences seem to be in those congenit Inclinations and Instincts of Animals and Men 1. In the nature of them those anticipations that are in Animals are meerly sensible those in Men intellectual moral and suitable to the Operations of a reasonable Being 2. In their end those of Animals are only in order to a sensible good and the regiment of a sensual Life those in Men are directed to the use and benefit of a rational Life and not only so but in order to the acquest of a supernatural and eternal Life 3. In as much as the Sensible Nature is not endued with Intellection and Will and therefore not properly capable of a Law in the true and formal nature of a Law therefore those Instincts that are lodged in their nature are meerly Inclinations or natural Propensions or Biasses But the Humane Nature being endued with Intellection Reason and Liberty and therefore capable of a Law in its true propriety and formal nature those rational Propensions and Inclinations in the Humane Nature are lodged in him by the great Governour and Law-giver of Heaven and Earth per modum legis obligantis and the insition and engraving of those Notions Propensions and rational Tendencies are in nature of a promulgation of that Law the inscription thereof in their Hearts and means helps and assistances to their observance thereof And herein lies the true Root of the Obligation of the natural Law and natural Consciences so excellently decyphered by the Apostle in the two first Chapters of the Epistle to the Romans and this I call the primitive and radical Insition of the Law of Nature in the Soul 2. But besides this primitive Insition there is a secondary yet natural Insition of the Law of Nature in the humane Soul which expands and improves it self as the exercise of Reason increaseth which is a certain congruity between the Faculties of the Soul the Intellect and Will and those Truths of indisputable importance in the Understanding especially that of the Existence and Regiment of Almighty God and those moral Sentiments of Good and Evil that in their discovery concern immediately the Understanding or Synteresis but in their exercise concern more immediately the Will That as we see by a certain connatural congruity between the visive Faculty and the visible Object and as we tast by a connatural congruity between the Faculty and the Object of Tast so there is a connatural congruity between the intellective and volitive Faculties in the Soul and those communia noemata of these great important Truths both intellective and moral whereby the Soul perceives and relisheth and tasteth true and good and inclines to it 8. From the Consideration of this Effection of Man by the Power and Goodness and Wisdom of the glorious God we have the discovery of that infinite obligation of Duty Love and Gratitude of all Mankind unto Almighty God To give a benefit to a Being already existing carries in it an Obligation of the person benefited to his Benefactor juxta modum mensuram beneficii But God Almighty is the Benefactor of Mankind in the greatest imaginable amplitude and comprehension he gave him Being the vastest and most unlimited Gift and he gave him such a Being so advanced so excellent and perfect and accommodate with all the conveniences that his nature was possibly capable of and although Man wilfully threw away a great measure of his Happiness yet he hath still so much left as binds him to an eternal Gratitude and Duty to God both as his Maker and as his Benefactor and the Posterity of Adam hath still continued upon them the same reason of Duty and Gratitude I shall not here as I said enter into the Consideration of the propagation of the Humane Nature If the Soul of every person propagated be created and infused by God then every person seems related unto Almighty God in a way little different from that of the first formed Man But if the Soul be also propagated as Light or Fire from Fire or Light by a kind of Irradiation from the Soul of the first Man yet still we are all his Off-spring every Man owes more of his Being to Almighty God than to his natural Parents whose very Propagative Faculty was at first given to the Humane Nature by the only virtue efficacy and energy of the Divine Commission and Institution and the Parents of our Nature are but vicaria instrumenta Numinis in the propagation and formation of our Nature 9. From hence we learn the true Foundation and Root and Extent of that Subjection that the Created Nature owes to Almighty God namely on the part of Man there is dependence upon God as the root and support of his existence there is the obligation of love gratitude and duty as to his greatest and most sovereign Benefactor But this is not all the foundation of Subjection on the part of Man and Authority on the part of God but there are certain radical foundations of the Divine Authority and Sovereignty over Man namely 1. A right of Propriety nothing can be more a Man 's own than that which he gives a
his Words especially in Expressions of collateral things not being the principal Subject of the Discourse which though they may lye in his way yet are not much under his strict advertence but he thinks it is enough if he dresseth his Discourse so that it tend to what it principally aims and drives at And hence it is that in Chronological Computations which I sometimes make use of I content my self with a more lax and common Computation without any great curiosity or exactness because it equally serves my purpose as if my Computations were more critical and exact even usque ad minutias Chronologicas and so in some other mentions of Names and Times of Authors and the like and likewise in the choice of Words or Expressions wherein possibly I may sometimes be too lax and free using such as come next into my Mind without a curious or critical choice which is more excusable in a Discourse of this nature than in some Polemical and Controversial Discourses of other natures where Men usually catch at Words and Expressions and it is the greatest part of their Business 4. I must also desire my Readers pardon in that in my Transcripts of some entire Texts out of Aristotle Plato Plutarch and others I use the Latin Translation and not the Original Greek wherein the Authors wrote I was a better Grecian in the 16 th than in the 66 th Year of my Life and my application to another Study and Profession rendred my skill in that Language of little use to me and so I wore it out by degrees And thus thou hast this Book presented to thy view I wish thee as much Contentment in Reading as I had in Writing it If there be any thing therein that may be useful to thee as I suppose there may be there is matter for my Contentment and thy Benefit if all be not answerable thereunto and to thy expectation the former Considerations give thee reasonable Motives of Charity to excuse it The Contents SECT I. CAP. I. THE Introduction declaring the Reason of the Choice of this Subject and the Method of the intended Discourse CAP. II. Touching the Excellency of the Humane Nature in General CAP. III. A brief Consideration of the Hypotheses that concern the Eternity of the World CAP. IV. Concerning the Origination of Mankind and whether the same were Eternal or had a Beginning CAP. V. Concerning the Supposition of the first Eternal Existence of the common Parents of Mankind and the production of the succeeding Individuals from them CAP. VI. Certain Objections against the Truths formerly delivered and against the Reasons given in proof thereof with their Solutions SECT II. CAP. I. The Proofs of Fact that seem with the greatest Moral Evidence to evince the Inception of Mankind and first touching the Antiquity or Novity of History CAP. II. Concerning the first Evidence the Antiquity of History and the Chronological Account of Times CAP. III. The Second Evidence of Fact namely the apparent Evidences of the first Foundation of the Greatest and Ancient Kingdoms and Empires CAP. IV. The Third Instance of Fact proving the Origination of Mankind namely the Invention of Arts. CAP. V. The Fourth Instance of Fact seeming to evince the Novity of Mankind namely the Inceptions of the Religions and Deities of the Heathens and the deficiency of this Instance CAP. VI. A Fifth Consideration concerning the Decays especially of the Humane Nature and whether there be any such Decays and what may be collected concerning the Origination of Man upon that Supposition CAP. VII The Sixth Evidence of Fact proving Novitatem generis humani namely the History of the Patres familiarum and the original Plantation of the Continents and Islands of the World CAP. VIII The Seventh Evidence of Fact proving the Origination of Man namely the Gradual Increase of Mankind CAP. IX Concerning those Correctives of the Evils of Mankind which may be thought to be sufficient to reduce it to a greater Equability CAP. X. The farther Examination of the precedent Objection CAP. XI The Consequence and Illation upon the premisses against the Eternity of Mankind CAP. XII The Eighth Evidence of Fact proving the Origination of Mankind namely the Consent of Mankind SECT III. CAP. I. The Opinions of the more Learned part of Mankind Philosphers and other Writers touching Man's Origination CAP. II. Touching the various Methods of the Origination of Mankind CAP. III. Touching the Second Opinion of those that assert the Natural Production of Mankind ex non genitis or the possibility thereof CAP. IV. Concerning Vegetables and especially Insecta Animalia whether any of them are sponte orta or arise not rather ex praeexistente semine CAP. V. If it be supposed that any of those Insects at this day have their Original ex non genitis or spontaneè whether yet the same may be said a Natural or Fortuitous Production CAP. VI. Supposing the Production of Insects were totally spontaneous equivocal and ex putrido whether any Consequence be thence deducible for the like Production of Perfect Animals but especially of Men. CAP. VII Touching the Matter of Fact it self whether de facto there hath been any such Origination of Mankind or of any Perfect Animal either Natural or Casual SECT IV. CAP. I. Concerning the last Opinion attributing the Origination of Mankind to the immediate Power and Will of Almighty God CAP. II. The Mosaical History touching the Production of the World and of Mankind and the Congruity and Reasonableness of the Mosaical Hypothesis CAP. III. Concerning the Production and Formation of Man CAP. IV. The Reasonableness of this Hypothesis of the Origination of the World and particularly of the Humane Nature and the great Advantages it hath above all other Hypotheses touching the same CAP. V. Concerning the Nature of that Intelligent Agent that first formed the Humane Nature and some Objections against the Inferences above made and their Answer CAP. VI. The Reasonableness of the Divine Hypothesis touching the Origination of the World and particularly of Man and the preference thereof before all the other precedent Suppositions CAP. VII A Collection of certain evident and profitable Consequences from this Consideration that the first Individuals of Humane Nature had their Original from a Great Powerful Wise Intelligent Being CAP. VIII A farther Enquiry touching the End of the Formation of Man so far as the same may be collected by Natural Light and Ratiocination DE HOMINE CAP. I. The Introduction declaring the reason of the choice of this Subject and the Method of the intended Discourse IT is an admirable evidence of the Divine Wisdom and Providence that there is that sutable accommodation and adaptation of all things in Nature both to their own convenience and exigence and to the convenience use and exigence of one another which evidenceth 1. That all things are made governed and disposed by a most intelligent and wise and powerful Being 2. That that governing Being is but one and that all this
accommodation and adaptation and mutual subservience of the things in Nature are the product of one most wise decree counsel and purpose of that one most wise intelligent and soveragâ—n in Being It is not here seasonable to make a large prosecution of the particular instances of that accommodation of things in Nature nor of the necessity of the former consequences arising from it The instances thereof that are sutable to the Design meant in this Discourse shall be only these two which I shall but shortly touch 1. The admirable accommodation of Sensible Faculty to the Objects of Sense and of those Objects to it and of both to the well-being of the Sensible Nature 2. The admirable accommodation of the Intellectual Faculty in Man to Intellectual Objects and of those Objects to it and of both to the well-being of the Humane or Rational Nature Touching the former the Sensible Nature in its complement and integrity hath five exterior powers or faculties that are accommodated to all those motions or impressions of natural bodies and their accidents which are useful to it and by these five ports or gates all those impressions which are useful for the perception of the Sensible Nature are communicated to it namely the five exterior Senses It is not only possible but very likely that there may be such motions or qualities of Bodies that make not any impression upon any of those Senses but if there be such they are such as are not of use for the perception or convenience of the Sensible Nature But for such as are necessary for such perception of the Sensible Nature there is no motion quality or operation of external Bodies but what hath accommodated to it a Faculty in Sense receptive of it Is there such a motion or objectiveness of external Bodies which produceth light or colour figure vicinity or distance the Faculty of Sight is fitted to receive that impression or objectiveness and that objectiveness fitted and accommodate to that Faculty Is there that motion or objectiveness that causeth sounds the Faculty of Hearing is fitted to be receptive of it and that objectiveness or motion or what ever it is fitted to make an impression upon that Faculty And so for the other Senses And by this adaptation and congruity of these Faculties to their several proper Objects and by the fitness and proportionateness of these objective Impressions Qualities or Motions upon their respective Faculties accommodated to their reception the Sensible Nature hath so much of perception and reception of things as is necessary for its sensible Being I speak not here of those other interior Senses of Discrimination of the Objects of Sense Phantasie Memory Appetite and the rest for they are not at present to my purpose II. And what is thus excellent and admirable in the accommodation between the sensitive Faculties and their Objects is to be observed in the intellectual Faculty though the Faculty and Object are far more noble and excellent than that of Sense As there is an accommodation between the visive Faculty and its Object and as there is an accommodation between the Faculty of the Taste and the Object the Object fitted to make an impression upon the Faculty and Faculty fitted to take the impression from the Object so there is an accommodation and sutable adaptation between the intellective Faculty and the intelligible Object the Object as it were thrusting it self into the Faculty and the Faculty receiving and perceiving the Object The means of derivation and immediate union of these intelligible Objects to the Understanding are various Sometimes divine and supernatural as by immediate irradiation or revelation sometimes artificial and instituted as by discourse and instituted signs and thus Intelligibles are conveyed from one man to another by words or writing sometimes natural and that seems to be by three kinds of means 1. by the mediation of Sense which is ordinarily the first basis of all humane intellectual knowledge 2. by ratiocination or discourse of the Mind whereby even from sensible Objects the Intellect receives a farther prospect of other Intelligibles not immediately presented by or to the Sense but by consequences deductions and conclusions deduced from things more obvious to Sense and perchance at first represented by it 3. there seems to be a third means which is a kind of intuition there are some truths so plain and evident and open that need not any process of ratiocination to evidence or evince them they seem to be objected to the Intellective Nature when it is grown perfect and fit for intellectual operation as the Objects of Light or Colour are objected to the Eye when it is open they are understood and assented unto quasi per saltum intuitum and though these truths are such as are also deducible by ratiocination and rational process yet the connexion between the premisses and the conclusion in them are so clear and the transition from the premisses to the conclusion is so swift short and clear that it seems to be in a moment and the assent to them and evidence of them is instantaneous such are many conclusions of moral and intellectual truths which seem upon this accompt to be congenite with us connatural to us and engraven in the very frame and compages of the Soul because they are Intelligibles of that nature that present themselves and thrust themselves into the Understanding immediately and many times without the mediation of Sense or Ratiocination There is that primitive congruity between these Intelligibles and the Intellectual Faculty that they are immediately united as I said by a kind of intuition and though they are deducible by ratiocination as conclusions from premisses yet in respect of their swift transitus in the Understanding they seem to be principles Now this excellent Faculty of the Understanding though it seems to be passive in relation to its reception of its Object yet it is not barely a passive Faculty it hath an activity about that Object that it receives and it actively trades upon it to its farther improvement And therefore according to the nature of this excellent Faculty the Understanding which as it hath been said is partly active and partly passive there are two things that do much improve and enrich this Faculty First It is improved by its Exercise and Employment the very Faculty it self will degenerate and grow sluggish dull and rusty by idleness The exercise of the Intellective Faculty makes it agil quick and lively yea though the object about which it is exercised be poor little and low yet a Man hath this advantage by the exercise of this Faculty about it that it keeps it from rust and torpidness it enlargeth and habituates it for a due improvement even about nobler Objects Secondly It is enriched by the nobleness and worth of the Object about which it is exercised when the Object is noble generous useful and sutable at least in a convenient degree to the worth of the Faculty
and the Humane Nature Almighty God is the highest and most excellent and soveraign Object of the Intellectual Faculty It is true he falls not under the last qualification Though he is but one and one most simple uncompounded Being yet his Nature and Perfections his Power Wisdom Goodness and all other Excellencies are infinite and incomprehensible by any intellectual Nature but himself and therefore he is an Object infinitely too large for the comprehension of any created Understanding He is a Light too bright for our Intellective eye to see but by reflexion or through the Vail of his Word or Works The more we know of him and the more we draw near unto him by serious and humble contemplation the more we discover an endless and unsearchable Ocean and Perfection in him so that we must not cannot expect to find out the Almighty to perfection his ways are unsearchable and past finding out and much more his Essence and Perfections so that though he be the most natural and the most desirable Object of created Understandings he is an Object infinitely too large for it But although in respect of the measure of his Perfection he be an Object unproportionate to a created Understanding a Light too bright and an Ocean too large and too deep for it yet there is so much of his knowledge attainable by us as is sufficient for use nature and everlasting happiness and the knowlede of Almighty God so far as it is attainable by our narrow created Understanding highly advanceth the humane Understanding upon all accounts and infinitely excels the knowledge of any other Object in the world upon these ensuing accounts among many others First It is a knowledge of such an Object that hath the greatest and most convincing certainty in the world a certainty that he is and in a good measure a certainty what he is for though it be impossible for any or all the created Beings in the world to attain a distinct perfect and full Idaea of the Divine excellencies in their full adequate distinct perfections yet that Image that he hath given of himself in the admirable Frame of so much of the world which we know doth with all imaginable certainty evince That he is that he is but one one most intelligent wise powerful free good simple eternal infinite and most perfect Being the Fountain of Being and the first Cause of all things though we cannot attain the full comprehension of that perfection And truly it is no small evidence of the Divine Wisdom and Goodness That that great and important Truth of the being and perfection of Almighty God the Principle and Object of the greatest importance in the world to the good of Mankind and for the advance and perfecting of humane Nature should be written in such plain clear and evident Characters in the Works of Nature and evinced by Evidences rising from thence as are obvious to any person that hath but the common use of Reason and the honesty to use and exercise it sincerely Secondly It is the most noble and excellent Object in the world and that may and doth most enoble and advance the intellective Faculty he is the Fountain of all Being and of all Perfection Those Excellencies that are in the noblest created Natures in the world are but shadows of that perfection that is in him Though a created Understanding can never take in the fulness of the Divine Excellencies yet so much as it can or doth receive thereof is of greater extent use and value and doth more advance and enrich the Faculty than any other Object in the world though that other Object were fully and adequately known Thirdly Although the Understanding can never search out the Almighty to perfection by reason of the infinite excess of this Object beyond the capacity of a created Faculty yet there is that congruity between this Faculty and this Object that connatural ordination as it were of Intellective Faculty to this Object as if it were if not only yet principally lodged in the humane Nature for the sake of this Object so that though there is no commensurableness between this Object and a created Understanding yet there is a congruity and connaturality between them And hence it is that so much as we do or can know of God is delightful and grateful to the Understanding And though this abyss of excellency be infinite yet it doth not confound nor disorder nor overwhelm the Understanding in its modest and due searches into it And besides although the perfection of his Essence and many of his Attributes as Infinitude Immensity Indivisibility c. do dazle our Understandings yet some of his Attributes and the Manifestations thereof are not only highly delectable to the Intellective Faculty but are sutable and easily conceptible by us because apparent in his Works as his Goodness Beneficence Wisdom Power c. if we attend to it And certainly it was the great Goodness and Condescention of the Glorious God unto his Creature Man that when he knew all his own Excellencies were too great and too bright for us to see he hath Been pleased to discover so much of himself as was fit and necessary for us to know by means that our Faculties might use without dissipation distraction or too great astonishment namely first By his Works reflecting his Greatness and Goodness Secondly By his Word by Divine Revelation discovering his Goodness Mercy Power and Truth Thirdly By his Son through the Vail of our Flesh by all which that Brightness and Splendor of the Divine Excellence that by an immediate intuition or exhibition would-have overwhelmed our Intellective Faculty as it stands united to our Bodies is presented to us more proportionately to our Capacities and Faculties by a kind of refraction and a more easie and familiar manifestation Fourthly It is the most useful Object of our Knowledge that can be and in comparison of this all other Knowledge is vain light and impertinent and indeed all other knowledge is valuable upon this single account by how much it gives us a manifestation of the Divine Excellencies and leads and conducts to the knowledge of Almighty God and his Attributes If I consider my self in this Life there is not a moment which I live or wherein I have any contentation or comfort or convenience but all this I have from his Influence and Bounty and certainly it concerns me highly to know my Benefactor from whom I receive my Good that I may depend upon him be thankful unto him probitiate him and make my applications to him for what I want Again the wisest men that have searched after happiness in this Life though they have missed of the place where it is to be found have with great reason placed the best happiness that can be found on this side Death either in Virtue and the exercise thereof or in Tranquillity of mind or in both for they are rarely asunder Now I may be an excellent Mathematician a
these yet certainly of all the visible Creatures that we are acquainted with Man seems to have a very great Prerogative of excellence And though he may not bear so fair and so noble an Image of the Divine Glory as the Universe in its full Systeme and Order or as those nobler Beings that are of a Rank and Nature above him yet certainly he bears a greater measure of the Divine Image than any one visible Creature we know and so far forth as we know God himself affirms thus much of Man that he created him after his own Image which he sayes not of any of the Celestial Bodies themselves Gen. 1. Man therefore is a Creature that of all visible Creatures that we know is the noblest We may observe in the Creatures of a subordinate rank to us how the more inferiour and ignoble bear somewhat of the Image of the superiour a kind of shadow or adumbration of those perfections that in the superiour are more perfect not only by a gradually but specifically differing perfection We see in some Metals an Analogical resemblance of those vital effects of Vegetables growth digestion and augmentation that is more perfectly in Plants and perfect Vegetables We see in Vegetables a resemblance of Appetition Election Generation and in some of them an imperfect Image of that universal sense of Feeling which we find more perfectly in Animals We find in Animals especially some of them as Foxes Dogs Apes Horses and Elephants not only Perception Phantasie and Memory common to most if not all Animals but something of Sagacity Providence Disciplinableness and a something like unto a Discursive Ratiocination bearing an analogy image or imperfect resemblance of what we find though in a degree specifically more excellent in the humane Nature insomuch that Porphiry Plutarch Sextus Empericus Patricius and some others have been bold to make reasonableness not the specifical difference of the Humane Nature and some latter persons would not have the Definition of a man to be Animal Rationale without the addition of Religiosum wherein he seems particularly to exceed the Brutal Nature Although in truth that which seems to be Reason in the Brutes is nothing else but the Image and Analogical representation of that true Reason that is in Man as the Water-gall is the Image Shadow or weak Representation of the Rainbow And we have reason to think that that intellective and volitive power which is in Man bears an Image and Representation of the like power that is in Angels and separate Intelligences though neither of equality to that perfection that is in them either in degree or kind And although it were too great presumption to think that there is any thing in any created Nature that can bear any perfect resemblance of the incomprehensible perfection of the Divine Nature very Being it self not predicating univocally touching him and any created Being and Intellect and Will as we attribute them to God are as we may reasonably think not only of a Perfection infinitely transcending any created Intellect and Will but of another kind and nature from it yet though we are not able to comprehend the excellence of the Divine Nature we cannot frame unto our selves a conception of him without the notion of Intellect and Will though infinitely perfect It seems that those two great Faculties in us bear a weak Analogy with and Representation of the Divine Nature And therefore in that respect Man is the Image and Representation of the Glorious God though the disproportion between him and this his Image be infinitely more than the disproportion between Caesar and his Image upon his Coin or the Sun in the Heaven and the Shadow of him in a Bason of Water And in this respect the Humane Nature is a worthy and noble Object of our Enquiry and Knowledge because here is the best visible Image of Almighty God that we can fully acquaint our selves with next to him that was the Brightness of the Fathers Glory and express Image of his person Christ Jesus our Lord. And besides this relative consideration of the Humane Nature with relation to those Beings that are above him Man is an excellent Object of contemplation so if we look upon him either absolutely in himself or with relation to Creatures of an inferiour nature he is a worthy and noble object of our contemplation If we consider him absolutely in himself he is an Object worthy of our contemplation he is admirable in excellent composure and figuration of his Body and in every part apart and in the whole structure put together admirable in the Nature Faculties and Excellence of his Soul admirable in the conjunction of both together admirable in all the operations of Life Sense Intellect and Will which he exerciseth in this state of conjunction and union admirable in his production and generation and admirable as to the condition of his Soul in its state of disunion and separation The speculations concerning him are all full of great variety curiosity and worth because the Subject it self is such If we consider him with relation to other created Beings of an inferiour nature First he comprehends all the excellencies that are in the inferiour ranks of Being and that for the most part in a more excellent and perfect manner The Life that is in Vegetables and the operations of that Life the Life and Sense that is in Sensibles and the excellent operations of them all Sensation Perception Memory Phantasie Nutrition with its several process the faculties of Appetition Passion Generation The disposition of Parts and Organs that are best in any Animal are to be found in the disposition order and texture of the Body of man and wherein it differs it differs with much advantage and prelation over the structure of the Bodies of Animals so that the knowledge of Man gives us a full account of the excellence of others either Animals or Vegetables He that well knows Man knows whatsoever is excellent in the Animal or Vegetable Nature Secondly Besides these Excellencies common either to the Vegetable or Animal Nature and Man there are certain excellencies superadded to the Humane Nature certain specifical prelations in his Body the Structure Posture Beauty and Majesty thereof certain specifical excellencies and usefulness in some of his Organs the disposition of his Hand Brain Nerves and other Integrals Again the specifical Excellencies of his Soul in those great and admirable Faculties of Intellect and Will Of all which in their due time So that he that is well acquainted with and knows Man knows whatsoever is excellent in the Vegetable and Animal Nature and much more So that upon the whole account we have a Noble and Worthy Object of our Contemplations in the contemplation of Man 2. In the contemplation of Man we have an Object that doth not overmuch confound us with its excessive multiplicity and yet it doth not satiate nor proves ingrateful for want of sufficient variety Touching the former of these
it hath been before observed that he that goes about to make the whole Universe and all the several parts thereof the business of his Enquiry as he shall find that there are many things therein that he cannot come at or make any discovery of so among those parts of the Universe that are objected to a greater discovery of our Senses the multiplicity is so great that a man of the most equal and firm constitution must despair of Life enough to make a satisfactory particular and deep enquiry into them But the Object in hand is but one it is Man and the Nature of Man I confess it is true that he that shall make it his business to take in as it were by way of a common place all those things that may be taken up under this consideration and follow all those Lines that concenter in this or almost any other the most single piece of Contemplation will make this Subject large enough and upon that account may be drawn in almost all things imaginable We find in the consideration of the Humane Nature a Substance a Body a Spirit We find the several Objects of his Senses Light Colour Sound and infinite more He that upon this account will take in the distinct and large considerations of these and the like Appendices to Humane Nature in their full amplitude will have a large Plain that will more than exhaust his Life before he come to the Subject it self which he designes Again there is an infinite multitude of collateral considerations that yet are relative to man hither comes all the considerations of Theology Physick Natural Philosophy Politicks the considerations of Speech Government Laws of History Topography of Arts of those Sciences that relate to the Senses of Opticks Musick and infinite more for all these have a relation to Man and are like so many Lines drawn from several Objects that some way relate to him and concenter in him and he that shall make it his business to follow all those Lines to their utmost shall make the contemplation of Man almost as large as the contemplation of the whole Universe When I say therefore the contemplation of Man is the contemplation of a single Object I mean when it is kept into those single bounds of Man in his own specifical Nature and under the physical contemplation of his Nature Parts and Faculties as they are appropriate unto him And then it is a Subject that we may possibly make some progress in its contemplation and conception within the period of the time that by the ordinary time of Life and the permission of necessary avocations a man may employ in such a contemplation And yet secondly though in this restrained notion the Subject seems to be restrained and single we shall find it no very narrow Subject but there will be business enough in it to employ our Faculty and to take up that time which either more necessary or more imporunate thoughts or employments will allow us and variety enough to entertain our thoughts with delight contentation and usefulness 3. The Third Commendation of this Object to our contemplation is this that therein we have more opportunity of certainty and true knowledge of the Object enquired into than we can have in any other Object at least of equal use worth and value Many excellent things there are in Nature which were very well worth our Knowledge but yet as hath been said either by reason of their remoteness from us unaccessibleness to them subtilty and imperceptibleness to us either are not at all suspected to be or are not so much as within any of our Faculties to apprehend or discover what they are or in case we have any conception that there may be something of that kind yet our Notions touching them are but products of Imagination and Phantasie or at best very faint weak ungrounded and uncertain conjectures and such as we can never prove to the satisfaction of others or our selves Our Sense is the best evidence that we have in Nature touching the existence of corporeal things without us and where that is not possibly to be exercised we are naturally at a great uncertainty whether things are or what they are Now the Understanding perceives or understands things by the assistance of Sense in a double manner 1. It either perceives them immediately as being immediately objected to and perceptible to the Sense as I perceive the Sun and the Stars by my sight I find that there is a Body hard or gentle or hot or cold by my Touch and accordingly my Understanding judgeth of them Or secondly though the Sense perceive not the Object immediately yet it doth represent certain sensible effects or operations and though by those effects or operations the Understanding doth not immediately conclude anything else to be but what the Sense thus feels or sees yet the Understanding sometimes by ratiocination and sometimes by the Memory doth infer and conclude something else to be besides what the Sense immediately represents either as the cause or the concomitant of it and doth as forcibly and truly conclude the thing to be and also sometimes what the nature of that cause or concomitant is as if it were seen by the Eye or felt by the Hand I do not see nor by any Sense perceive the quiet undisturbed Air yet because I do see that a Bladder that was before flaccid doth swell by the reception of that which I see not I do as truly and certainly conclude that there is such a subtil Body which we call Air as if I could see it as plain as I see the Water I do not see the Animal or Vital Spirits neither can they by reason of their subtilty and volatileness be discovered immediately to the Sense yet when I see that forcible motion of the Nerves and Muscles I do as certainly conclude there are such Instruments which the Soul useth for the performance of those motions as if I saw them I come into a Room where there is no visible or tangible Fire yet I find by my Sense the Smoke ascending I do as forcibly conclude that Fire is or hath been near as if I saw it because my sensible experience and memory tells me they are concomitant Upon the same account it is that when my Sense and sensible experience shews me that these and these effects there are and that they are successively generated and corrupted though my eye sees not that God that first made those things yet my Sense having shewed me these sensible Objects and the state and vicisstude of them my Understanding doth truly conclude that all this vicissitude of things must terminate in a first cause of things with as great evidence and conviction as if my Sense could immediately see or perceive him So that in the ordinary way of Nature and without the help of divine Revelation all our certainty of things natural begins at our Senses namely the immediate sense of the things themselves
or the sense of those effects and operations which after by the help of the Understanding are carried up to the discovery of things not perceptible by Sense immediately Now there may be many things in Nature unto which we can have neither of these accessions of Sense How many Stars are now discovered by the Telescope which were never before known because not perceived by Sense And how many more there may be which are not visible to us by that help we cannot yet know till that discovery We cannot know what the extent of the Universe is whether there be any Worlds without the compass of this whether the Heavenly Bodies are inhabited and with what Creatures We cannot know the Nature Constitution Faculties of created and separate Intelligences nor the manner of their Ubi Motion Intellection mutual Intercourse or detection of their Minds These things are out of the reach of our Sense either mediately or immediately and consequently without the help of Divine Revelation we can never upon a natural account come to any certainty in them or the most we can otherwise know is by considering the reflexed acts of our Understanding whereby we know many acts of our own minds and Soul which are not perceptible to our external Senses and upon that account we may think that 〈…〉 their perception may be something analogical But Man is an Object of greatest vicinity to himself and hath thereby and by other contributions the best opportunity to know and understand himself with the greatest certainty and evidence And yet it cannot be denied that notwithstanding this great proximity of Man to himself yea and notwithstanding the many and great Essayes Attempts Enquiries and Observations that have been made in all successions of Ages by men of excellent Parts Learning and Industry we still remain and are like still to remain ignorant of many things of importance concerning our selves The great and wise God whose Glory it is to conceal a matter having lodged many things in the Humane Nature and Fabrick and Constitution thereof so secretly and so closely that notwithstanding the Experience and Observation of near 6000 years and the search and industry of the best Judgments in all Ages and the close proximity of Man to himself there are very many things in our Nature whereof we neither can and probably never shall be able to give any account to our selves or others with any evident nay with any tolerable certainty as if the Divine Wisdom meant hereby to give to the Children of Men an instance to keep them humble that cannot find out the certainty of what they hourly most intimately converse withal and an indication of his own profound and infinite Wisdom that can thus keep secret those things which in regard of their proximity to us we have great opportunity to know And of this nature are many things which we know to be but we cannot give our selves any sufficient explication of the manner or reason of them We are certain we have a vital active Principle in us by which we see understand remember which we call the Soul But whence that Soul comes or how and when and in what manner it is united to the Body whether it be extended with the Body or indivisible and in every point of the Body how and in what manner it exerciseth its nobler acts of Intellection and Volition or how far forth it stands in need of the Organs actually to exert any of those operations or how far forth it doth or may exert them without it how or by what means the Species not only of sensible Objects but even of Notions of the Mind are preserved in the Memory without confusion and dissipation notwithstanding lapse of time and intervention of infinite variety of Objects whether it be the same individual principle that exerciseth the acts of Intellection and likewise of Sense and Vegetation and if it be what become of these Faculties subservient to a temporal Life in the state of separation of the Soul where it is that the exercise of Sense is performed whether in the Brain or by the Soul by the mediation of the Spirits in the extremity of the Nerves and if the former how the Species of Visibles are carried through those dark Caverns between the Organ and Cerebellum supposed to be the Seat of the common Sense These and many more difficulties scarce explicable with any sufficient certainty do occur in the little Shop of the Fabrick of Humane Nature We must not therefore think that because of this nearness to our selves all the Phaenomena of our Nature can be rendred as evidently explicable as we do or may understand the Fabrick of our Hand by Anatomical Dissection But though this vicinity of our selves to our selves cannot give us the full prospect of all the Intrigues of our Nature yet we have thereby and by other opportunities much more advantage to know our selves than to know other things without us and by that opportunity of knowing of our selves to know the truth or falshood or analogy of very many things without us which otherwise could not be so well known or explicated 1. We have hereby an opportunity to know the Constitutions Frame and Order of our Bodies It is true the great advance of the practice and skill of Anatomy hath laid open to ocular inspection the Fabrick of the Bodies as well of Brutes and Birds as Men and therein they seem to be equally obvious to our knowledge But a Brute or a Man are another thing when they are alive from what they are when dead Anatomy can give us the Position Frame Situation Figure and connexion of all the several Integrals of the Body of Man or Beast but it is the living Mans observation of himself that must give account of those Vital motions that are in the Body when living as the Pulsations of the Heart the Circulation of the Blood the Communication of the Parts the Congruity or Disagreement between my Nature and other things variously qualified The Humor that separates divides attenuates and digests the Nourishment the several exertions of the several Organs relating to their several Functions the things that impede or advance the vital or sensible operations in a man what impressions are made upon the Blood and Spirits by the several passions of the Mind what things increase or advance the Spirits what disorder or discompose them the immediate and agil subservience of the Spirits to the Empire of the Mind or Soul These and infinite more touching the Body are discoverable by Observation and by no other Observation so well as by a mans Observation of himself 2. We have hereby an opportunity to know much more of the Nature Operations and other things relating to our Souls than we can touching other things or Natures There hath been much Dispute among Learned men concerning the manner of the Intellection of Spirits and Intelligences and by others touching the knowledge of Brutes touching their
operations I sensibly see and feel that my Hand or Foot moves upon the command of that principle within me And when that principle is removed by a total deprivation as Death or by a partial deprivation as in a mortified Limb or Member or by a temporary suspension as in an Apoplexy or Deliquium Animi I am sure there is no such motion because that principle is absent in Death or its operation suspended in case of such Diseases It was therefore a principle that was within distinct from my Body that while it was there exerted this Empire and was obeyed in it Secondly In those actings of my Soul which are not in themselves perceptible by any sensible effect yet I have as firm and certain an evidence that they are such as if I had a sensible perception of them When I think or understand or remember or abstract or divide or define or purpose or will it is most certain these effects or intrinsick operations of my mind are not possibly perceptible by my sight or hearing or taste or smell or feeling they are objects of such a nature that fall not under any perception of any of those Senses yet I am as certain if not much more certain that I do think or remember or abstract or reason or resolve or will as that I hear or see or feel and I do as certainly know before I write what I am now writing that I think or reason touching the things I am writing or that I resolve or purpose to write them as I am certain that I have written them when I have written them for the motions of my mind are as certainly obvious to a perception in me answerable to them which I call the reflex act of the Soul or the turning of the intellectual eye inward upon its own actions as the motions or rather passions of my Sense are certainly obvious to my Sense I see the Object and I perceive that I see it And therefore though he was a little too positive that said Ego cogito was as it were primum cognitum yet certainly herein he was irrefragably true that there cannot be any thing more certain and evident to a man that thinks than that he doth think and yet that Thinking is not perceptible by any of our five Senses Thirdly But there is yet a farther opportunity of very much certainty in that knowledge that a man may have of himself and of those things concerning himself by that conversation by the help of speech or signs that he hath or may have with other men Man only of all visible Creatures having this priviledge of communicating his thoughts and conceptions by instituted signs of speech or writing and by this a man acquires a threefold superadded certainty of what he may or doth know concerning himself Namely 1. He thereby knows that there is a specifical Identity between him and other men and that they agree in one common rational Nature for by mutual speech we find that we have both alike an intellective discursive Faculty as I do reason so doth he as I divide define abstract purpose determine will so doth he use the like operations of his Mind and although oftentimes interest and misapprehension make us differ in our conclusion yet he endeavours to maintain his Conclusion by the like method of Reason and discursive Ratiocination as I do and most times when prejudice and misapprehensions are removed that which seems reasonable to him seems so to me whereby it appears that we concenter in one common Nature and that the Principle of Reason and Reasonable Soul is common to us both and that we meet in one common rational Nature 2. He likewise knows that as they concenter in one common rational Nature so every one of that Species hath yet an individual Principle of his own that individuates and personally discriminates one from another For till we mutually communicate our thoughts by instituted signs he knows not what I think or purpose nor I what he thinks or purposeth 3. This adds a certainty to me that I am not deceived in those reflections that I make upon my self and the collections I make from them for as I do find I think I reason abstract divide define purpose so I find by the help of Speech and Signs that he hath the very like internal operations and as I do find that those do arise from a principle different and distinct from that moles Corporea which I have so I find that he hath the same perception of the original of these internal operations and attributes them to a Principle in him distinct from the Body So that if I might have any imaginable doubt of those reflexed perceptions which I have touching those appropriate operations of my own Mind I am confirmed in them because I find the like perceptions in all the men I converse with And thus far touching the third Commendable in the search of our selves namely Certainty and Evidence 4. The fourth advantage of this subject and the knowledge thereof is the profit and usefulness thereof Next to the knowledge of Almighty God and our Blessed Saviour and the Sacred Scriptures there is not any subject in the World that is more necessary and useful to be known than the Humane nature with those incidents that do necessarily fall into that consideration and of all the knowledge that relates to man there is nothing of greater moment or use to be known than Man under the Physical notion of his Body and Soul and both united together And the usefulness of this Consideration distributes it self into these two kinds Usefulness in reference to Speculation or Knowledge and Usefulness in relation to Practice or Exercise 1. Touching the Speculative Usefulness there is this to be said that there is in the contemplation of Man a means of discovery and explication of very great and momentous truths And although possibly the very same truths may be elicited and in some measure explicated by parallel Phaenomena in the contemplation of Animals yet they are more clearly and eminently evidenced in the contemplation of Man who by how much the more excellent and noble a Creature he is above Brutes and by how much he is the more observable to himself than they can be by to much the more useful and excellent is the knowledge of himself Now these Speculative truths which I shall chuse to instance in shall be these 1. The due contemplation of the Humane nature doth by a necessary connexion and chain of Causes carry us up to the unavoidable acknowledgement of the Deity because it carries every thinking man to an original of every successive individual thereof by a course of generation till it come to a common Parent of the whole Species the immediate workmanship of the Glorious God 2. Consequently it gives every considering man a sound and full conviction that the efficient of this first Parent of Mankind is a most wise most powerful and beneficent Being
For the true prospect of the Humane Fabrick in its essential and integral parts in the fabrick of his Body and the faculties and operation of his Soul must needs convince any man of ordinary reason that can observe but clear and evident consequences that the Efficient that first made this first root of Mankind was not only an intelligent Being but a Being of most admirable Power Wisdom and Goodness for such this effect doth necessarily declare its Efficient to be 3. As the contemplation of the Origination of the Species of Mankind gives us an assurance of the Existence of the first Cause and of his Attribute of Wisdom Power and Goodness so the contemplation of the secondary origination of Mankind or the production of the Individuals by generation gives us an evidence of the like power wisdom and goodness of God and a little Emblem of the Divine Power in the Creation of the World Any man that attentively considers the progress of the generative production of mankind will find that this goodly and noble Creature called Man hath its gradual formation and complement from a small almost imperceptible vital principle which by the Divine institution is endued with such a regular orderly and unerring power that from most inconsiderable and unlikely materials builds up gradually the goodly frame of the Body cloaths it self with it and exerciseth an admirable Oeconomy over it And this it doth not by such a kind of choice deliberation and forecast as the Watch-maker makes his Watch for as yet this vital rational principle doth not exercise an actual ratiocination or discursive deliberation neither hath those organs of Heart and Brain and Spirits and Vessels by the help of which we exercise our Acts of Reason till it hath made and framed them And yet this admirable Frame is immediately wrought by this little particle which we call the Soul and moulded formed and perfected with an incomparable and unerring dexterity skill elegance and curiosity more and greater than the most exquisite Artist can shew in the most polished piece of Artificial work Now if this little spark of Life that in this work of generation and formation is Vicarius Dei the Instrument of his power and wisdom if this little imperceptible Archeus is endowed by the Divine power wisdom and institution with this admirable regular and effective power out of so small inconsiderable and unlikely materials to mould up and fashion the goodly Fabrick of Humane Nature and to perfect it for a complete habitation for it self wherein to exercise its most excellent oeconomy and operations if this Pusillus divinae lucis radius ex tantilla tam improbabili materiae particula mirandam naturae humanae fabricam tam affabrè eleganter inerrabundè formaverit If we find in so small a particle of a created Being this admirable energy why should we make a question whether that God that at first gave this admirable energy to the Soul to frame so goodly a piece out of matter so near to nothing should not have power to create a World of matter out of nothing 2. Again since I do see as plainly as I see my Paper that I now write upon that this fabrication of the Humane Body is the immediate work of a Vital principle that prepareth disposeth digesteth distributeth and formeth the first rudiments of the Humane nature when it is no bigger than a little Bean that afterwards gradually augmenteth and perfecteth it to the goodly complement of a Man And the same thing I see in the first rudiments of all generations as well vegetable as animal It doth give to me notwithstanding all the bold confidence and conjectures of Epicurus and those that follow him as far as for shame they durst I say it doth give me not only an undeniable evidence but an exemplar in analogy and explication that the coalition of the goodly frame of the Universe was not the product of chance or fortuitous concourse of particles of matter nor the single effect of matter and motion but of the most wise and powerful ordination of the most wise and glorious God who thus ordered the World and instituted that Rule Order or Law which we call Nature to be the Law of its future being and operation if I see that the Coagmentation of a Man nay of a Chicken or a grain of Wheat is not by casualty but the wise and powerful God hath committed the Coagmentation Disposition and Formation thereof to their Seminal Principles tanquam Vicariis substitutis Divini Numinis Instrumentis as it were to Vicegerents and subservient Instruments of the Deity I have no reason to think that the goodly Frame of the Universe was the production of Chance or Accident or bare Matter or its casual motion or modification thereof but that the same was the Contrivance and Work of the Great Wise and Glorious God as a Work in a great measure answerable to the Excellency of such an Efficient 3. Again I find a sort of Men that pretend to much severity of Wit and would be thought too wise to be imposed upon by Credulity where they think they have not evidence enough of Sense or Reason to convince them that would be thought to be Men above the common rate these have gone about as far as they durst to exclude God out of the World and pity those Men as troubled with Credulity and of weak Parts that believe the Regiment of Divine Providence a business that they think or pretend to think may be made use of to impose upon the weaker part of Mankind think it a Fiction and such as is utterly inexplicable to the satisfaction of a reasonable and impartial judgment Now the due contemplation of the Humane Nature and that Oeconomy that the Active Principle in it ordinarily called the Soul doth exercise therein to my Understanding gives me both a reasonable evidence of the Divine Providence governing the World and a fair explication of it to me I mean not in this place to examine the truth or falsity of the Plurality of Subordinate Forms or whether there be two or three distinct Substantial Forms or Souls in Man whereby he is Vivens Sentiens Intelligens for they are proper for a farther Examination in their proper place But at present I do suppose that that one Soul whereby Man is constituted in Esse Hominis is the single Principle of all his operations of Life Sense and Intellection because as to this purpose which I am now upon it comes all to one whether there be a Unity or Plurality of Subordinate Forms or of Souls in the Humane Nature I say therefore in the Humane Fabrick we may observe two kinds of Forms if I may so call them the one the Forma Corporis as such whereby it hath those Properties or Operations which are common to Bodies of the like make or composition whereby it is weighty and descends as other Bodies it is figured it hath dimensions and
qualities common to other Bodies it hath in it some parts more active and fiery others more passive and waterish or earthy it hath its tendencies to corruption and dissipation And though after the separation of the Soul from the Body it perchance loseth some of those particular Qualities Figurations and Properties that it had before yet it retaineth many of them for many of these Proprieties of a Body as such do not depend upon the Specifical Form of the Humane Nature as such Again there is in this Body a certain Active Specifical Form whereby it is constituted in Esse Hominis which hath in it and doth communicate to the Body certain operations specifical to it by this he exerciseth those operations which either flow from or are communicated by that Form as Life Sense Intellection Volition and the like And though Life and Sense be common to Man and Brutes and their operations in many things alike yet by this Form he lives the Life of a Man and not of a Brute and hath the Sense of a Man and not of a Brute For there is no such thing as Animal or Vivens not determined unto some particular Species as there is no such thing as a Man not determined in some individual For Universals are but Notions and Entia Rationis having their existence only in the understanding power and not in reality And these Operations and Faculties of Humane Life Humane Sense and Humane Understanding and Volition flow not from the corporeal Moles but from some other active regent Principle that resides in the Body and governs it whiles it lives which we call the Soul And therefore although the corporeal Moles after some kinds of Deaths retain the same bulky Integrals the same Figure Colour and many other accidents yet the Soul being removed the Faculties and Operations of Life Sense and Intellection cease from that Moles corporea and are no longer in it This Principle of Life Sense and Intellection in Man called the Soul hath the Body as its Province and Districtus wherein it exerciseth these Faculties and Operations and we shall find the Actions which are performed by it in the Body are of three kinds or natures 1. Some are immanent and not terminated immediately in any external or corporeal action 2. Some are transient and spontaneous terminating in the Body or some parts or motions thereof 3. Some transient but involuntary and exercised and terminated in or upon the Body These seem to be the several kinds of Actions of the Soul at least relating to the Regiment and Oeconomical Government of the Soul upon the Body 1. The internal and immanent Faculties and Acts of the reasonable Soul besides those of Common Sense Phantasie Memory Passion and Appetite common to Men and inferiour Animals are Intellect and Will and the proper Acts of the Intellect are Intellection Deliberation and Determination or Decision The proper Acts of the Will are Volition Nolition Choice Purpose or Resolution and Command in relation to Subordinate Faculties And although there be many actings both of the Intellect and Will that are relative to other things or objects than what immediately concern the Microcosm it self yet the principal part of that analogical Providence that the Soul exerciseth in relation to the Microcosm or Humane Compositum are Intellection Deliberation and Determination in the Understanding and Choice Volition Nolition and Purpose in the Will and these do or should regularly precede all those imperate Acts of the Soul that relate to the Compositum Before I write or speak or go a journey or eat or any the like action there is the deliberation of the Understanding whether I shall do this action the decision of the Understanding that it is fit to be done the choice of the Will to do it the purpose of the Will that it shall be done And although many times the distinction of these several procedures of the Soul do not always appear distinct especially in sudden or ordinary actions which seem to have but one act antecedent to the thing done namely the willing of it to be done yet in actions of weight and importance all these have their distinct order and procedure For although in the most incomprehensible and perfect Will of Almighty God there is no such succession of procedure yet in the operations of the rational Soul that is linked to the Body there is ordinarily that successive procedure of those immanent acts of the Soul that relate to any thing to be done This therefore is the first part of that analogical Providence that the Soul exerciseth in relation to the Body namely deliberation or counsel and decision in the Intellect and choice and purpose in the Will 2. The next Act which immediately succceds Purpose is the Command that is given by the volitive Faculty of the Soul and the Execution thereof and herein are considerable First The Power commanding which is the Will now determined by purpose or resolution Secondly The things to which these commands relate or the Object of them which in relation to the Body is in effect nothing but motion of the Spirits Nerves Muscles parts of the Body or the entire Compositum by virtue of this command the Muscles the Hand the Eye the Tongue perform those imperate commands of the Will I do not digest sanguifie nor my Heart move nor my Blood circulate nor my Meat digest by any immediate command of my Will but I eat I drink I move my Eye my Hand my Muscles my whole Body in pursuance of this command of my Will Thirdly The executive Instrument of this command mediately are my Nerves and Muscles but immediately those subtil invisible and forcible Engins which we call the Animal Spirits these being the most subtil parts in Nature and parts of matter subtilized next in degree of purity to that Soul that commands them are in their nature proper fit and suitable to be the first recipients of the Empire of the Soul they are the nimblest agil strongest Instruments fittest to be executive of the commands of the Soul they are a middle nature between the Soul and the Body the nexus animae to the Body and these subtil Messengers speedily dispatch themselves through the Nerves to the Muscles which are by these Spirits and the native Indoles that is in them and the exact texture of them fitted to move those Integrals of the Body to which they serve and as the Spirits shot through the Nerves are the first and immediate Instruments of the Soul in its imperate acts so the Muscles are as it were the Instruments of the Spirits or the remote Instruments of these imperate motions And by this means the Soul hath the actual imperium and command of all those motions of the Body which are spontaneous or capable of being commanded by the volitive Power of the Soul 't is by this the Eye-lid opens or shuts the Eye is converted to this or that object the Lungs are intended or
Soul from the Body As the Body could not be reduced into that orderly frame in which it is constituted without the Plastick and Formative power of the Soul so it could never be upheld in that state of Order and Convenience without the continued Influence of the Soul The latter is as absolutely necessary for its continuance and conservation as the former for its constitution I easily foresee two Objections against the Method proposed 1. That the Hypothesis it self is not sufficiently evidenced How do we know that this Oeconomy is the effect of a Power or Nature or Being distinct from the Body and why may it not be the result of this Disposition Harmony or Contemperation of qualities or parts of that Matter that constitutes the Body 2. And if it be what need we magnifie the Humane Nature as the great Instructer in this business since we may with a little observation find very much the like in Brutes as well as Men For there we find a sensible Perception and Phantasie answering the Intellect in Man an Estimative or Judicial faculty an Appetition or Aversation and Locomotive faculty answering the Will and the very Oeconomy of the animal Soul or Spirits managing as well their spontaneous actions as these natural or involuntary exertions of Digestion Egestion Circulation and the rest of those Motions called Involuntary or Natural To the First of these I say That this is not the place for a large reduction of these Operations to the regiment of the Soul as a distinct active Faculty distinct from the Corporeal Moles and its contemperation that shall God willing in its due place be at large discussed which I am not here willing to anticipate In the mean time let the Objector but honestly and impartially examine and observe Himself and he will need no other evidence of this truth but his own experience to satisfie him that all those effects proceed from an active regnant Principle within him distinct from the Moles corporea or the contemperation thereof The distemper of the humours of the Body cause sometimes such sickness as disorders the Phantasie and Reason but sometimes though it distempers the Body the Intellective faculty and operations are nevertheless free and sound as Experience shews If this Objector was ever under a Sickness or Distemper of the latter kind let him give an account what it is that gives him under such a Disease the use of his Reason To the Second I need not say more than what I have before observed namely 1. That although the Inferiour Natures have a kind of Image of the Humane Nature yet it is less perfect and therefore no equal Instance in order to the explication of what I herein design 2. As it is less perfect so it is more distant and less evident to us than our selves are or may be to our selves the Regiment and Oeconomy of our own Souls in our Bodies and of them are more evident to us and perceptible by us than that Regiment and Oeconomy that the Souls of Brutes exercise in them and therefore fitter to be made our Instance of that which I go about thereby to illustrate namely the possibility necessity and explication of the Divine Providence in the governing and influencing of the Universe and all the parts thereof which I shall in the next place prosecute in the Analogy that this small Regnant Principle bears within its little Province to the Divine Regiment of the Universe Sic parvis componere magna I come therefore to the illustration of the Divine Providence and Regiment of the World by the foregoing Emblem thereof 1. By this smaller Instance of this Regiment of this lesser World by the immediate presidency of the Soul it seems evident that it is no way impossible but that the greater World may be governed by the Divine Wisdom Power and Providence It is true there are these two disparities between these namely the greater World and the lesser The greater World is of a more vast extent and again the Integrals and Parts thereof are of greater multiplicity and variety but neither of these are any impediment because the Regent thereof is of an infinite immensity more than commensurate to the extent of the World and such as is most intimately present with all the Beings of the World and of an infinite Understanding Wisdom and Power that is able to apply it self to every created Being and therefore without any difficulty equally able to govern the whole and every part thereof This we see in Natural agents that little spark of Life the Soul that exerciseth its regiment upon an Infant of a span long when the Body is grown to its due stature and together with the extension of the Body this little Vital particle evolves and diffuseth it self to the extent of the enlarged Body governs it with the same facility as it did before that extension And the sensible Soul of a vast Whale exerciseth its regiment to every part of that huge structure with the same efficacy and facility as the Soul of a Fly or a Mite doth in that small and almost imperceptible dimension to which it is consigned For the Soul is expanded and evolved and present to every part and the uttermost extremity of the greater as well as the lesser Animal And therefore if my Soul can have its effectual energy and regiment upon my Body with ease and facility with how much more ease and facility can a Being of immense Existence and Omnipresence of infinite Wisdom and Power govern and order a great but yet a finite Universe and all the numerous yet not infinite parts thereof 2. As there is a possibility of such a regiment of the Divine Wisdom Power and Influence in the Government of the World so there is a necessity of it It is not enough for the Soul of the Humane Nature to form and mould its Corporeal Vehicle if it gave over its work when that were done it would soon dissolve dissipate and corrupt There is the same necessity for the Divine Influence and regiment to order and govern conserve and keep together the Universe in that consistence it hath received as it was at first to give it before it could receive it The intermission of that Regiment and Divine Providence and Influx but a moment after the constitution of this World would have dissolved its order and consistence if not annihilated its Being And indeed he that observes the great variety of things in the World the many junctures and contributions of things that serve to keep up its consistence the want of any of which as the disorder of a little Nerve Vein or Artery in the Body would bring it into a great disorder the continual strife between contrary qualities the strange activity of the active Fiery Nature that involves it or at least is disseminated up and down in it the vast and irregular concretions of Meteors and those strange and various Phaenomena that are in the World which
thus I have gone through the Speculative consideration of the Divine Providence resulting from the contemplation of a Souls regiment of the Body wherein I have been the longer because the contemplation of the Divine Providence is a Subject that delights me and I am contented to dwell upon it as much as I may and to take up this or any the like occasion to lead me to the contemplation of it And thus far touching the Usefulness of the Contemplation of the Humane Nature in relation to truths Speculative II. The Usefulness of it in relation to matters Practical wherein I shall be shorter This Contemplation hath these useful Advantages namely 1. Physical 2. Moral 3. Theological or Divine 1. For Physical by which I mean that practical part of Physical knowledge that is called Medicinal The due consideration and knowledge of the structure fabrick and parts of the Humane Body is necessarily conducible to that excellent Faculty for the preservation of life and health no one thing being more conducible to the advance and perfection of that Science or Faculty than the knowledge of the Humane Body wherein the Experience of Anatomy and dissection and the Observations of the ancient and modern Physicians hath given a large evidence and testimony 2. The Moral Practical consequences deducible from the knowledge of the Humane nature are many and useful For instance when I consider the admirable Frame of the Humane Nature made by the Wisdom and according to the Image of the Glorious God 1. How careful should it make me that I do not injure that goodly Structure in others by offering violence to the life of another or to corrupt him either by evil example or evil counsels 2. How careful should it make me in relation to my self not to embase that excellent Frame either of my Body or Soul or both into the image of a Brute by sensuality luxury or intemperance or into the image of a Devil by malice envy or irreligion How careful should it make me to improve and ennoble those excellent and comprehensive faculties of my Understanding and Will with such Objects as are worthy to be known and desired The intellectual Faculty is a goodly field capable of great improvement and it is the worst husbandry in the world to sow it with trifles or impertinencies or to let it lye fallow without any seed at all 3. The Theological uses that arise from the knowledge of our selves are great and many When I consider the admirable Frame of my Body made up in that elegant stately and useful composure and when I consider the usefulness amplitude and nobleness of my Faculties an Understanding capable of the knowledge of all things necessary for me to know accommodate and fitted to the perception and intellection though not to the full comprehension of a World full of variety and excellency of a God full of all conceivable perfection and goodness a Memory able to retain the notions of what I understand a Will endued with freedom whereby I am a subordinate Lord of all my actions and endued with a connatural propension and appetite unto rational good Reason and Conscience to guide and direct me in all the enquiries and actions of my life and besides all this a Soul the stock and root of all those Faculties endued with immortality and capable of everlasting blessedness When I consider that this Soul of mine is not only endued with faculties admirably fitted to the life of Sense which I enjoy in this World but find in it certain secret connatural rudiments of goodness and virtue and a connatural desire and endeavour after a state of immortal happiness And when I consider that this Frame both of Body and Soul had its primitive origination immediately from the great Creator of all things and although my own immediate origination was from my Parents yet that very productive virtue was implanted in the primitive Nature by Almighty God and the derivation of the same specifical Nature to me was by virtue of his original Institution and Benediction and by virtue thereof that excellency and perfection of Humane Nature in its essential which was first formed by the glorious God is handed over to me abating only those decays which Sin brought into my nature I say when I deeply and intimately consider these things I cannot but be sensible that that Being from whom I thus derive this being and such a being is a most wise powerful and bountiful Being that could thus frame the Humane Nature and thus freely bestow and confer this constitution upon me 2. And upon this sense of his Wisdom Power and Goodness I must needs entertain it with all imaginable admiration of it and with all possible gratitude for so great and so free a gift 3. And consequently I cannot choose but exercise the choicest affections I have towards him of reverence and fear of his Greatness and Majesty of dependance and rest upon his Power and Goodness of love to the excellency of his Essential Perfection and Communicative Goodness and Beneficence 4. And consequently of entire subjection unto him that upon all the rights imaginable hath the most just sovereignty over me 5. And consequently of all due inquisitiveness what is the Will and good pleasure of that God that I owe so much gratitude love and subjection to that I may serve and please him 6. A resolved entire hearty obedience of that Will of his in all things thereby to testifie to him my love gratitude and subjection 7. An external manifestation to Men and Angels of that internal love and gratitude I owe him by continual praise and thanksgiving to him invocation of him reverence of him and all those acts of Religion Duty and Obedience which are the natural Proceed of that internal frame of my Soul towards him 8. A constant desire of my Soul to enjoy as much of this bountiful glorious blessed Being as it is possible for my nature to be capable of 9. And because my estate and condition in this life is but a state of mortality and a temporal life an earnest endeavour to have my everlasting Soul fitted and qualified to be an everlasting partaker of his presence and goodness in a state of nearer union to him and fruition of him in that future life of glory and immortality 10. And consequently abundance of circumspection care and vigilance that I so behave my self in this state of probation here that I neither lose his favour from whom I expect this happiness nor render my self unworthy unfit or uncapable to enjoy it And thus this deep serious and comprehensive Consideration of our selves and the Humane Nature in its just latitude doth not run out barely into Notions and Speculations but is operative and practical teacheth a man Virtue and Goodness and Religion and Piety as well as Knowledge and is operative to make a man such as it teacheth him to be perfects his nature enricheth it with practical as well as
speculative habits and fits and moulds and accommodates a man to a conformity to the End of his being And these be the Reasons that have especially put me upon the search and enquiry into this Subject MAN I am not without excellent helps and patterns in this Inquiry nor without the due fruits and effects that it hath had upon the Minds of them that have been exercised in it Galen though he spoke darkly and doubtfully of the Soul being destitute of much of that light which we now have yet upon the bare contemplation of the structure of the Body and the parts thereof in that excellent Book of his De Usu Partium resolves the whole Oeconomy thereof into the Power Wisdom Goodness and Efficiency of the Glorious God and is transported both with the admiration of the Divine Wisdom appearing therein and with indignation against the perversness and stupidity of Epicurus and his disciples which would attribute this one Phaenomenon to Chance And had he or should any else apply himself to the search of that Intellectual Principle in Man his Soul he will find a greater evidence of the Divine Wisdom Goodness and Power as will easily appear in a little consideration thereof CAP. II. Touching the Excellency of the Humane Nature in general ALthough I intend a more distinct Consideration of the Humane Nature and the Faculties of the Humane Soul and the Parts of the Humane Body yet it may be necessary before we come to the discussion of the origination of Mankind to premise something concerning the Nature of Mankind and its preheminence and excellence above all other sublunary Creatures that we may have a little tast touching that Being whose origination we inquire This Consideration will be of use to us in the enquiry touching the origination of Man to evidence that neither Chance nor surd or inanimate Nature could be the Efficient of such a Being but a most Wise Powerful and Excellent Author thereof I shall not at large discuss those Faculties and Organs which he hath in common with Vegetables and Brutes but those only that belong to him specifically as Man and those also but briefly The Corporeal Beings of this lower World are divided into these two ranks or kinds such as are Inanimate or not living and such as are Animate or living Life according to Aristotle in 1. De Anima cap. 1. is described by its effects viz. Nutritio auctio diminutio quae per seipsum fit and the lowest rank of such things as have life are Vegetables for though Minerals have a kind of analogical nutrition and augmentation yet it is such as ordinarily non fit per seipsa but rather by accession and digestion from external Principles and coagmentation The Principle from whence this Life flows in all Corporeal Natures that have it is that which they call Anima or at least vis Animastica The Faculties or Operations of this Anima vegetabilis are these 1. Attractio alimenti 2. Fermentatio assimilatio nutrimenti sic attracti in succum sibi congenerem 3. Digestio vel dispersio alimenti sic assimilati in diversas partes individui vegetabilis 4. Augmentatio individui vegetabilis ex unione consolidatione succi vegetabilis diversis partibus individui 5. Conformatio hujusmodi particularum unitarum specificae naturae ejusdem individui cujus est augmentatio ut in trunco ramis cortice fibris foliis fructu c. 6. Seminificatio propagatio ex semine vel partibus seminalibus 1. Attraction of aliment 2. Fermentation and assimilation of the nourishment so attracted into a juice of the same kind with it self 3. Digestion or dispersion of the aliment so assimilated into the divers parts of the vegetable individual 4. Augmentation of the vegetable individual from the union and consolidation of the vegetable juice to the divers parts of the individual 5. The conformation of these united particles to the specifical nature of the same Individual which is augmentation as in the trunk of a Tree the bark fibres leaves and fruit 6. Seminification and propagation from the seed or seminal parts These seem to be the process of the Vegetable Nature Soul and Life 2. The next rank of living Creatures is that which hath not only a vegetable life and a vegetable principle of life but hath also superadded a life of sense and a sensitive Soul or Principle of that life of Sense which nevertheless as one specifical Principle exerts the acts as well of the vegetable as sensitive life And this nature 1. Includes all those powers and faculties of the Vegetable Nature as Attraction Assimilation Digestion Augmentation Conformation and Propagation or Seminification 2. It includes them in a far more curious elegant and perfect manner at least in the more perfect Animals As for instance the first assimilation of the attracted nourishment in Vegetables converts it into a watry humor or juice but the assimilation thereof in Animals rectifies this alimental juice into Chyle and then into Blood The propagation of Vegetables is without distinction of Sexes but that of Animals usually with distinction of Sexes and many more such advances hath the animal nature above the vegetable in those faculties or operations which for the main are common to both 3. It superadds a greater and higher perfection to the animal nature by communicating to it certain essential Faculties and Powers that the vegetable nature hath not And those are these 1. Sense It is true that Campanella in his Book De Senfu rerum and some others that have written de Perceptione substantiae attribute a kind of Sense to all created Beings and therefore much more to those that have a vegetable life And in some Vegetables we see something that carries a kind of analogy to Sense they contract their leaves against the cold they open them to the favourable heat they provide teguments for themselves and their seeds against the injury of the weather as their cortices shells and membranes they seem to be carried with a complacency in the propagation of their kinds as well as Brutes and therefore many of them being impeded therein they germinate again though later in the year And some Plants seem to have the sense of Touch as in the Sensitive Plant and some others which seems to be an advance of the Vegetable Nature to the very confines or a kind of contiguity to the lowest degree of those Animals that are reckoned in the rank of Sensibles But this notwithstanding we deny a real and true sense to Vegetables indeed they have a kind of umbra Sensus a shadow of Sense as we shall hereafter observe that Sensibles have a kind of umbra Rationis a shadow of Reason but it is only a shadow thereof 2. There are also in their natures by the wise God of Nature implanted even in their vegetable natures certain passive Strictures or Signatures of that Wisdom which hath made and ordered all things with the highest reason even
appearances as one of the compound Engins of Archimedes or as a Watch that besides the hour of the day gives the day of the month the age of the Moon the place of the Sun in the Zodiack and other curious Motions wrought by multiplication of Wheels Now touching the Sensitive Natures there have been two extreme opinions both of them extremely contrary one to another and yet both of them as they are delivered by their Authors untrue 1. That Opinion that depresseth the natures of sensible Creatures below their just value and estimate rendring them no more but barely Mechanisms or Artificial Engins such as were Archytas his Dove Regiomontanus his wooden Eagle or Walchius his iron Spider that they have no vital Principle of all their various Motions but the meer modifications of Matter or at least the elementary Fire mingled with their other Matter that they have no other form or internal principle of Life Motion or Sense but that which is relative and results from the disposition texture organization and composition of their several Limbs Members or Organs This fancy began by Des Cartes in his Fundamenta Physica and hath been followed and improved by some of his admirers and particularly much favoured by Honoratus Faber in his Book De Generatione Animalium and herein they think they have given a fair solution to all the Phaenomena of the Sensitive Nature and given a fair prelation to the Soul of Man which they agree to be a substantial Principle of humane actions But in both these they have been disappointed for this supposition as it gives not at all a tolerable explication of the Phaenomena of sense and animal motions so if it did it would easily administer to a little more confidence and boldness a temptation to resolve all the Motions of the reasonable Soul into the like supposition only by advancing the Engin or Automaton humanum into a more curious and complicated constitution For he that can once suppose that the various modifications of Matter and Motion and the due organization of the Bodies of Brutes can produce the admirable operations of Sense Phantasie Memory Appetite and all those instincts which we find in Brutes is in a fair way of resolving the operation of the Reasonable Nature into the like supposition only by supposing the organization of the latter somewhat more curiously and exactly disposed and ordered as much above that of Brutes as theirs is above that of Vegetables It is true the organization of the humane and animal Body with accommodation to their several functions and offices is certainly fitted with the most curious and exact Mechanism imaginable as appears by the structure of the Heart the Lungs the Brain the Tongue the Hand the Nerves the Muscles and all other parts and the several orders and methods of their motions and adaptations to their several offices and the exercise by them of those Faculties to whose service they are consigned This must needs be acknowledged by every man that observes them or that takes the pains to read the Tracts of those that have written of them and especially Galen his divine Book De Usu Partium Des Cartes and Fabritius concerning the structure of the Eye the same Fabritius and Steno De motu Musculorum and divers others But that the Principle that sets on work these Organs and worketh by them is nothing else but the modification of Matter or the natural motion thereof thus or thus posited or disposed or the bare conformation of the Organs or the inclusion and expansion of any natural inanimate particles of elementary Fire is most apparently false even to the view of any that observes or considers impartially It is impossible to resolve Perception Phantasie Memory the sagacities and instincts of Brutes the spontaneousness of many of their animal motions into those Principles nor are they explicable without supposing some active determinate power force or virtue connexed to and inherent in their Spirits or more subtil parts of a higher extraction than the bare natural modification or texture of Matter or disposition of Organs or as they are often pleased to stile them their plexus partium Again it is visible to the Eye that that power or virtue or principle whatever it is that in the generative process first immediately formeth and organizeth the parts of the Body is that which guides orders and governs all the animal motions of it after That power which first forms the Brain the Heart the Liver the Eye is that which afterward increaseth augmenteth exerciseth and employeth them after And no man living can force himself to imagin that that Principle which forms organizeth disposeth and modifieth the parts is any thing that results from the organization or modification of those parts which are not yet moulded or framed but must have its modification from that Principle which is antecedent to any manner of organization or texture of parts into an animal composition No man therefore that hath not abjured his Reason and sworn allegiance to a preconceived fantastical Hypothesis can undertake the defence of such a supposition if he have but the patience impartially to consider and look about him 2. The other extreme Opinion seems to advance the Animal Nature too high at least without a due allay of their general expression namely those who attribute Reason and a reasoning faculty or power to Animals as well as to Men though not altogether in the same degree of perfection so that they will not have Reason to be the specifical or constitutive difference of the Humane Nature but common to them and Brutes This Opinion seems generally to be favoured by the Pythagoreans that held Transmigration of Souls by Plutarch in Grillo and his second Oration De Esu Carnium by Sextus Empiricus Contra Mathematicos by Porphyry Lib. 3. de Abstinentia ab Esu Animalium which he endeavours to prove and illustrate by divers reasons and instances and among the latter by Patricius in his fifth Book de Animis irrationalibus but above all by the ingenious and learned De Chambre in his Book of the Knowledge of Beasts wherein he asserts not only the simple apprehension of Beasts by phantasms or images wrought by the Phantasie but the conjunction of images with affirmations and negations which make up Propositions and the conjunction of Propositions one to another and illation of Conclusions upon them which is Ratiocination or Discourse And that in farther evidence thereof there is a certain kind of Language whereby Beasts or Birds especially of the same Species communicate their conceptions one to another only this discursive Ratiocination of Brutes he calls Ratio imaginativa and differenceth it from Ratio intellectualis which belongs properly to Men principally in this That the imaginative or brutal Ratiocination keeps still in particulars and within the verge of particular propositions and conclusions but intellectual Reason hath to do with universals and for the most part grounds and directs its
Ratiocination by them Touching the thing called Reason we must consider that it hath a double acceptation 1. It is taken for every conduct of any thing by fitting means to fitting ends or the due and convenient ordering and adapting of one thing to another and this again seems to be of three kinds viz. Active Passive or Mixt i. That I call Active Reason which from an inward intellective principle orders and disposeth as the Watch-maker contrives orders and disposeth the several parts of the Watch so that it excites a regular and useful motion 2. The Passive Reason which is more properly Reasonableness is that order and congruity which is impressed upon the thing thus wrought as in the Watch I see every thing moves duly and orderly and the reason of the motion of the Ballance is by the motion of the next Wheel and that by the motion of the next and that by the motion of the Fusee and that by the motion of the Spring the whole frame order and contexture of the Watch carries a reasonableness in it the passive impression of the Reason or intellectual Idea that was in the Artist 3. The Mixt sort of Reason seems to be when a thing concurrs actively and from an internal principle and in things that have life vitally to the production of a reasonable effect but yet per modum instrumenti and in the virtue of a superiour direction of a reasonable agent Thus when I plow my ground my Horse is harnessed and chained to my Plough and put in his track or surrow and guided by my Whip and my Tongue and so draws on my Plough and this reasonable work is performed actively and vitally by my Brute in the virtue of my direction And certainly this kind of latter Reason is evident not only in the brute Beasts in their instincts and operations but also in Vegetables and almost in all things in Nature for they are all indued with a certain inherent activity which is nevertheless implanted directed ordered and determined by the great Creator in the Laws of their several constitutions The process of nutrition and generation not only in Animals but even in Vegetables is done with the highest Reason exceeding the imitation of the Humane Reason the Birds making their Nests ordering their Eggs and moving them in incubation feeding and disciplining their young is done with the most exquisite reason and congruity thereunto beyond the artifice of the most ingenious man And it must needs be so for though they concur actively from an internal Principle to the production of the effect yet they are determined therein and thereunto and their track ordered for them and to them by the Laws of their nature instituted and imprinted on them by the unimitable Wisdom of the highest intellectual Being This mixed or instrumental Reason as I may call it therefore all must agree to belong not only to Brutes but almost to all things in Nature and herein differs from Reason or Reasonableness which I before call simply passive in that it immediately proceeds from the internal active Principles implanted by God in their natures 2. But there is another kind of Reason which we call Ratiocination or Discursus rationalis which consists principally in these three things though the two former without the latter make not up a compleat Ratiocination 1. The simple apprehension of things themselves which is done by images or representations thereof made either by the Intellect or by the representations made thereunto by the Phantasie 2. The compounding of the images or representation of things with an affirmation or negation this makes a Proposition 3. The composition of several Propositions among themselves and drawing from them Conclusions and this is called Syllogismus Ratiocination or Discourse But though this be the analysis of Ratiocination into which by a careful attention it may be resolved we are not to think all sort of reasoning or ratiocination even in Men themselves is presently by way of explicit or formed Syllogisms or artificial Moods and Figure Some consecutions are so intimately and evidently connexed to or found in the premisses that the conclusion is attained quasi per saltum and without any thing of ratiocinative process and as the Eye sees his object immediately and without any previous discourse so in objects intellectual many evident truths or principles are primo intuitu assented unto as in objects of Sense the action is elicited per saltum as many times when a Horse is hungry and comes to a good pasture he falls to his food immediately without forming Mr. Chambre's Syllogism This green is grass This grass is good to eat Therefore this green is good to eat But the transitus from the Sense to the Phantasie and from that to the Appetite and from that to the motion of Eating is immediate momentaneous and per saltum In brief as the vegetable nature as hath been observed hath a kind of shadow of the sensible nature so the sensitive nature hath a kind of shadow of the truly rational nature their Reason is but a low obscure and imperfect shadow thereof as the Water-gall is of the Rain-bow and proportionable to their imaginative Reason is their animal Language which though it be a kind of natural sign of their Imagination and Passions yet it is infinitely below the perfection of humane Language For we see that those Birds who by reason of the analogy of their organs by use are taught some words or sentences yet they never proportion those words to an explication of any distinct conception signified by them nor can use or apply those words they learn to the things they signifie nor can they connex their words or sentences in coherence with the matter which they signifie and commonly have recourse to their wild natural notes when they would express their imaginations or passions which notes are at the best but like natural interjections framed by Nature not by Art to discover their passions or impressions and their artificial language or notes are no other than impressions upon their sensitive Memory by iterated use and drawn out from them upon the strength of such impression or by repetition of Objects that excite that Memory Thus much I thought good to premise concerning the vegetable and sensitive natures which may be of some use in the consideration of the rational or humane nature partly to instance what this latter includes namely the whole perfection of the vegetable and animal faculties and partly to discover the preference that the Humane Nature hath above the Animal Life in these most perfect faculties of Intellect intellectual Reason and Will I shall not here distinctly and fully examine the nature of Man in the whole compass and extent thereof but shall reserve it to a fuller inquiry I shall only instance in so much thereof in this place as may be apposite to my purpose namely to shew that he is a Creature of most admirable constitution and such as deserves our
inquiry and such whose first composure and origination requires a higher and nobler Constituent than either Chance or the ordinary method of meer Natural causes and concurrences and that it is such a piece as in its first constitution and ordination requires an Efficient of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness This is the end and scope of my present Inquiry Now to give a brief Inventory of the Excellence of the Humane Nature I shall observe as near as I can this order First I will briefly consider those Excellencies that he hath in common with the vegetable and sensible nature Secondly I shall consider those specifical or appropriate Excellencies that he hath above the former both vegetable and animal nature Under the Second general I shall consider Man singly with relation to himself and then with relation to other things without him In relation to himself I shall briefly consider these particulars 1. The excellency of his Soul or intellectual nature in its nature faculties acts and habits 2. The peculiar excellency of his Body 3. The peculiar excellency of the Compositum consisting of both his former essential parts In relation to things without him I shall consider him with relation 1. To God 2. To Mankind 3. To the other integrals of the World and therein 1. Of their serviceableness and accommodation to him 2. Of his dominion and soveraignty over them and the means and instruments thereof This is the brief Scheme that I intend of those specifical and appropriate preheminences that the Nature of Man hath above other visible Creatures First therefore touching those Excellencies that the humane Nature hath above the vegetable and animal Nature I shall subjoin these ensuing Positions 1. There is no excellent vegetable or animal Faculty in the vegetable or animal Nature as such but it is found in the humane Nature such as are attraction nutrition digestion conformation of parts digested proportionable augmentation generation sensible perception common sense estimative faculty sensible appetite locomotive faculty and animal motion I meddle not herein with all those smaller sort of Faculties which are peculiarly appropriate to Vegetables or Animals as swiftness sagacity strength and special artifices which belong not to them in the common nature of Vegetables or Animals but by certain specifical Instincts or Faculties because though it may be some of them are not found in the same kind and degree in the humane Nature yet they are such as are abundantly recompensed by that art and ingeny which appropriately belongs to the humane Nature 2. There are no Organs in the sensible Nature which yet are more perfect than those of the vegetable Nature subservient to the Faculties of Life and Sense which are wanting in the constitution of the humane Body at least in substance and equivalence 3. Those very Faculties and Organs subservient unto them in the vegetable or sensible Nature which are found in them are lodged in the humane Nature in far more excellency and perfection than they are in the vegetable or animal Nature So that if the Faculties or Organs subservient to the vegetable or animal Life in Man do differ in their state or composure from those of Brutes it differs for the better as obtaining a more exquisite perfection usefulness beauty and contexture than those of Brutes as may appear in the Hand of Man compared with the Foot of Beasts or Birds the Foot the Leg the Thigh of Man with those of Beasts and the like It is true the constitution of some Faculties and Organs of Sensibles is more accommodate to their fabrick and use than the like Organs of Man would be to the use of Brutes but simply comparing one with another the Organs of the humane Body are more curious and excellent than the Organs of the bare animal Nature And from hence it comes to pass that the full knowledge of the humane Faculties and Organs subservient to the animal Life in Man comprehends in effect all the like Faculties and Organs in the animal Nature though differing in some particular textures and positions with a proportionable advance by the access of excellence of the humane Nature 2. As to the specifical or appropriate Excellencies of the humane Nature above the most perfect Animals they come next to be considered It is true that Animals in proportion to the length of their Life attain their complement of their specifical perfection sooner in proportion than the humane Nature The animal Soul sooner expands and evolves it self to its full orb and extent than the humane Soul Therefore the Horse that lives naturally about thirty years comes to his full growth and perfect exercise of its animal Faculties in four years but Man that lives not ordinarily above seventy yeas comes not to the ripeness of his Intellectual Life 'till two and twenty or three and twenty years at least nor even to his full growth 'till nineteen or twenty So that what we say concerning Man in relation to the actings of his Mind must be applied to that state and age wherein his Soul hath fully as it were evolved it self and its Organs fully mature and disposed for the actings of his Soul He is long ripening but then his maturity and the complement thereof recompenseth the flowness of his maturation Now the Excellencies appropriate to the humane Nature are as before observed of two kinds 1. such as immediately concern the humane Nature it self or 2. such as are extrinsecal but yet relating to it Those things that are immediately residing in or part of the humane Nature come first to be considered And they are three 1. His Soul or intellectual and volitive Principle 2. His Body or corporeal part 3. The Compositum or Coalitum of both those Principles which complete the humane Nature The Soul comes first to be considered and therein these four things 1. It s Constitution or Nature 2. It s Original 3. Its Faculties 4. It s congenite Habits or rational Instincts 1. Touching the Constitution of the Intellectual Soul of Man I shall not in this place enter into a large discourse concerning it but reserve that consideration to its proper place only in general it is 1. An active principle 2. It is a substantial principle 3. It is not corporeal or material 4. It is not corruptible or mortal 2. Touching its Original whether it be by traduction or creation or participation I shall not here dispute but reserve it to its proper place for a fuller disquisition But whether the one way or the other it had its original there is no inconsistency but that it hath those essential qualifications above-mentioned 3. Touching its Faculties they are two the Understanding and the Will And here I shall not concern my self in the Inquiry whether the Faculties are the same with the Soul it self or the same one with the other and only distinct in notion whether the Will be any more than the complete or ultimate act of the Understanding determined
It is sufficient that the acting of the Soul as it relates to perception and decision and as it relates to choice and pursuit or aversation are distinguishable to us and those notions serve to explicate what we mean in the things we discourse of as the supposed Circles in the Heavens serve to explicate the appearances thereof The Understanding or the Intellective Faculty the shadow whereof only is the Phantasie in Brutes but it is but a shadow of this of Intellect is a Faculty that not only gradually but essentially differs from and exceeds the perceptive Faculty in Brutes Three things there are that give us the best notion we can have of the humane Intellect and the discrimination thereof from the animal perception and imagination 1. The Objects thereof 2. The Acts thereof And 3. The Habits thereof 1. The Object of the humane Intellect is omne intelligibile which is of a far larger extent than the Object of sensible perception or imagination which as it exceeds not the province of sensible Objects so it is in order to the convenience of a sensible Life For instance When a Brute sees a Man it sees his colour figure motion bulk and by the advantage of Memory or Instinct it comes to him or flyes from him as it hath received or thinks it like to receive good or evil by him but it perceives not substance These Objects among many other that might be instanced fall under the perception of the Intellective which seem not to be within the verge of Imagination or sensible perception 1. The Notion of a Spirit or substance void of corporeity 2. Universals or conception of things as conjoined in one common nature or notion abstracted from the Individuals thereof 3. Abstracted conceptions as entity corporeity c. 4. Though Brutes may be able to apprehend multitude as things more than singular yet they cannot have a distinct notion of Number 5. Though they may have a confused imagination of something as past or future yet it is without distinction of Time or the notion of it 6. The truth of consequence in or from the antecedent 7. The actings of the Mind or Imagination it self by way of reflection or introspection of themselves are discernible by Man distinctly but at least not distinctly by Brutes 8. The truth and evidence of Geometrical Demonstration 9. The reason or just estimate of connexion of things to their Causes 10. The moral goodness and congruity or evilness unfitness and unseasonableness of moral or natural actions which falls not within the verge of a brutal faculty 11. The Notions of a Deity and the result thereupon namely Religion is not to be found in Brutes but seems connatural to the humane Nature as shall be shewn 2. The Intellectual Acts and they are many 1. Intellectual Perception which greatly differs from imaginative or sensitive perception as far above it For in those things where the root of intellective perception is in the sense and phantasie the perception intellective oftentimes departs from and corrects the report of the phantasie as in the apparent bigness of the Sun the apparent crookedness of the Staff in a double medium of Air and Water though this kind of Intellective Perception be not without the help of Ratiocination 2. Intellective Ratiocination which infinitely exceeds that imaginative Ratiocination which some have attributed to Brutes 1. It is distinct and with a distinct knowledge of the terms which in Brutes is confused 2. It is founded for the most part in Universals which is not compatible to imaginative Ratiocination 3. The thread and train of Consequences in intellective Ratiocination is often long and chained together by divers Links which cannot be done in imaginative discourse or ratiocination by some attributed to Brutes which if the transitus from the premisses to the conclusion be not very speedy and short that imperfect Ratiocination is lost in Brutes And here I shall again a little resume the former Consideration touching the imaginary Reasoning of Brutes which I have before called the Image of Reason and not truly Reason for it is not a distinct reasoning but performed in a physical moment And though we suppose Subject and Predicate and Copula and Propositions and Syllogistical Connexions in their Reasoning there is no such matter but the entire business is at the same moment present with them without deducing one thing from another though we form them into notions of distinct acts and this acting of the sentient Phantasie is performed 1. By a presence of sense as the Horse is under the sense of hunger and that without any formal Syllogism presseth him to eat the fire burns the Cats foot and therefore it pulleth it away because the immediate sense of pain enforceth it 2. By the presence of Memory the Dog hath been beaten for taking the meat out of the dish and the next time he sees it there though he be hungry yet he dares not venture for his imaginative Memory makes the past strokes as present to him as if he felt them 3. By the presence of Instinct which puts him upon those motions that are most evidently as reasonable as any thing can be and yet without the intervention of Ratiocination For instance Every Creature almost hath certain Instruments for its defence and the offence of its enemies exactly fitted for their use and they have that singular dexterity in using them that the most disciplined Fencer cannot equal The Cock for instance hath his Spurs and he strikes his Feet inward with singular strength and order and it is not possible he should use his Spurs with greater reason for his advantage yet he doth not this by any syllogistical method or by Ratiocination but is meerly tutored to it by Instinct which is present with him and at hand without any discursive Reasoning And this appears because while it is yet a Chick and hath no Spurs nor cannot hurt by it nor yet hath seen the like motion before to imitate or learn it yet he readily practiseth it And to these three present impulses of Sense Memory and Instinct most if not all the sagacities of Brutes may be reduced without the help of true Ratiocination or discursive Reason though witty men by Analytical resolution have Chymically extracted an artificial Logick out of all their actions 3. Intellective Memory which I call an act of the intellective faculty because it is wrought by it though I do not inquire how or where because it is not solvible The specifical preferences that it hath above the sensible Memory are these 1. That it remembers and retains such things as were never at all in the Sense as the conceptions enuntiations and actions of the Intellect and Will the conviction of truth or falshood of propositions or reasonings the conceptions of universals whereas the sensitive Memory retains nothing but sensible Objects or their Images wrought by the Phantasie 2. In that it is more complicated and complex than the sensitive
latitude such as are moral and supernatural Good 3. The Acts of this Faculty are generally divided into Volition Nolition and Suspension That division that herein better suits with my purpose are these Election and Empire 1. Election or choice and this in reference both to means and end for though the Schools tell us that Electio is only mediorum non finis this is to be intended of the general end or good at large and in its universal conception for when several particular ends are in proposal there is belonging to the Will a power of Election of these as well as of the means to attain them 2. The Imperium voluntatis over the Body and the Faculties We may observe in the humane as well as the animal Body two kinds of motions or exertions of Faculties some are stiled natural or involuntary such is the motion of the Heart the Circulation of the Blood the perception of the Senses when the Organs are open and the Object applied these natural though vital Faculties and Motions are not under the command of the Will immediately for whether I will or will not while I live my Heart beats my Blood circulates my Ventricle digests what is in it my Eye sees when open But there be other Motions in the humane and also in the animal Nature that are subject to the command of the Will in Man and to the appetite in Brutes as local motion which in Animals is under the regiment of the Appetite in Man under the regiment of the Will Now this Imperium voluntatis may be considered in relation 1. To it self It can suspend its own acting either of electing or rejecting 2. To the Understanding Though it cannot suspend its perception omnibus ad percipiendum requisitis adhibitis yet it may suspend its decision or determination or at least its obsequium to such decision 3. The Passions which are as it were the Satellites voluntatis and follow the command of the Will where the Will acts according to its power and authority 4. To the animal Spirits and the Vessels in which they are received when designed to Motion namely the Nerves and Muscles those are all subject to the Empire of the Will as to Local Motion of the whole Body or any part thereof when the Spirits Nerves and Muscles are in their due and natural state 5. To the sensual Appetite And indeed herein is evident both the Empire and Sovereignty of the Will and also the visible discrimination between the Humane Nature and the Animal or Brutal Nature and its preference before it In the animal Nature it is evident that the sensual Appetite is that which hath and exerciseth the sovereignty and dominion over the spontaneous actions of the animal Nature that commands the Foot to go the Mouth to eat and all other the spontaneous motions in order to a sensible good But in Man the sensual Appetite is Regimen sub graviere regimine the government of the Appetite is under the government of the Will and controlled by it at least where the reasonable Faculty is not embased and captived by ill custom or disorder And this appears two ways 1. Sometimes the very motion of the Appetite it self is restrained by the Empire of the Will so that a man doth not appetere that sensible good which otherwise he might or would because he will not and this is the most natural and noble regiment of the Will over the sensual Appetite 2. Though it may fall out that the sensual Appetite may appetere bonum sensibile yet the Will may and doth controll the empire of the Appetite in the execution of that appetition As for instance A man sees delicious fruit and he desires it in so much that were there not a controll over the empire of his Appetite it would command the Hand to reach it and the Mouth to eat it But the contrary command of the Will supersedes the command of the Appetite the Appetite desires it but the Hand is forbidden by the Will to reach it Now if any man shall say this contradiction appears not only in the reasonable Nature but even in the sensible The sensible Appetite is checked in its execution oftentimes by sensual Fear as in Dogs and Horses and other Brutes yea sometimes by the remembrance of a former suffering for the like attempt to gratifie his sensual Appetite and yet they are destitute of any superior faculty of Will to interpose a prohibition upon the Appetite I answer this is true for in such cases the impendent Fear is either present or in memory and so expected and it being of a sensible evil hath the same influence upon the sensual Appetite as the present good and therefore if the evil feared or impendent be a greater sensible evil than the good it over-rules the Appetite to aversation as the Fish that loves the bait yet feareth the hook which it discerns as a greater sensible evil the very Appetite is thereby determined to aversation But the controll of the Will upon the Appetite in the reasonable Nature is many times and indeed most often done not upon the account of a sensible evil felt or feared which of it self were sufficient to determin the Appetite but sometimes upon the account of such hopes or fears as fall not under a sensitive notice as of the command or prohibition by God yea many times upon a bare Moral account of the indecorum unreasonableness unseasonableness or utter unfitness of the thing it self without any other motive of fear either of a present or future sensible inconvenience thereby which Moral consideration can no way move the sensible Appetite were it not for the Will which being a rational Faculty is moved by it And this is all that I shall say touching the two great Faculties of the Soul the Understanding and Will I shall not add any thing here touching Passions or Affections of the Mind 1. Because they are but a kind of appendices to the Will the Satellites voluntatis those of the concupiscible kind being as it were the flowers of the motion of Volition those of the irascible kind the flowers of the motion of Aversation 2. Because the Passions for the most part are found in the sensible Nature namely those of love hatred delight grief expectation and fear and therefore I shall not here treat of them 3. I come now to consider of those rational Instincts as I call them the connate Principles engraven in the humane Soul which though they are Truths acquirable and deducible by rational consequence and argumentation yet they seem to be inscribed in the very crasis and texture of the Soul antecedent to any acquisition by industry or the exercise of the discursive Faculty in Man and therefore they may be well called anticipations prenotions or sentiments characterized and engraven in the Soul born with it and growing up with it till they receive a check by ill customs or educations or an improvement and advancement
by the due exercise of the Faculties I shall shew first what they are Secondly what moves me to think that such are connatural 1. Touching the former I think those implanted and connatural anticipations are these namely That there is a God that he is of greatest Power Wisdom Goodness and Perfection that he is pleased with good and displeased with evil that he is placable that he is to be feared honoured loved worshipped and obeyed that he will reward the good and punish the evil a secret sentiment of the immortality of the Soul or that it survives the Body to be capable of rewards and punishments according to its deportment in this life certain common notions of Moral good and evil of decorum and turpe that faith and promises are to be kept that a man must do as he would be done by that the obscene parts and actions though otherwise natural are not to be exposed to publick view obvelatio pudendorum that a man must be grateful for benefit received These and some such common notions or intimate propensions seem to be con naturally engraven in the Soul antecedently to any discursive Ratiocination and though they are not so distinct and explicite yet they are secret Byasses inclining the humane Nature primarily to what is useful and convenient for it in proportion to the state of an intellectual Nature That as we see in Brutes besides the exercise of their Faculties of sensitive Perception and Imagination there are lodged in them certain sensible Instincts antecedent to their imaginative Faculty whereby they are pre-determined to the good and convenience of the sensible Life So there are lodged in the very crasis and constitution of the Soul certain rational Instincts whereby it is pre-disposed inclined and byassed to the good and convenience proportionable to a rational and intellectual Life a certain congenite stock of rational Sentiments and Inclinations which may go along with him and fairly incline him to such a trade and way as is suitable to the good of his Nature so that he is not left barely to the undetermination incertainty and unsteadiness of the operation of his Faculties without a certain secret and gentle pre-disposition of them to what is right decent and convenient for their manage and guidance by these common anticipations inclinations and connatural Characters engraven in the Soul 2. And that which inclines me to believe this is not only the congruity of the supposition to the convenience of the humane Nature and the instance of the sensible Instincts in the animal Nature proportionate to their convenience and the great importance of them to the convenience thereof But also that which is observable in the attentive consideration of the manners of Mankind in general which seems to have those common sentiments in them and to accord in them in a very great measure and though evil Customs and Education much prevails among men yet it doth not wholly obâ—…literate these sentiments at least from the generality of Mankind It must be agreed that these rational Instincts as I call them are not always so vigorous and uniform in their actings as the animal Instincts of Brutes are in their kind which partly proceeds from that liberty of Will that is in the humane Nature which many times suspends or interrupts their energy and operation partly from that mixture of the sentient Appetite with the actings of the reasonable Soul which oftentimes transport it Even the more simple and uncompounded any Nature is the more uniform are its motions and actings the natural Instincts and Pro-portions even of things inanimate as of heavy Bodies to descend are more uniform than the very Instincts of Brutes who have a more complicated form or nature But as this accidental interruption of rational Instincts doth not disprove their existences so Man hath a greater advantage by the exercise of his Reason and intellective Faculties to remove those interruptions and improve those connatural Sentiments or rational Instincts to his singular use and benefit which abundantly recompenceth those Interruptions And if any shall say that there are or may be other means of propagation of those motions and inclinations in Men namely 1. A Traditional traduction of them into the World and 2. The Exercise of the humane Intellectual Faculties upon the occurrence and observation of external Objects and Events I answer 1. As touching Traditional communication and traduction of those Truths that I call connatural and engraven I do not doubt but many of those Truths have had the help of that derivation But first such a Tradition possibly hath not been without interruptions by evil Education and yet these Sentiments have obtained almost in all Ages and Places though not without interspersion of certain corrupt additaments obtained likewise by evil Custom or Education But secondly it cannot reasonably be supposed that a Tradition could so constantly and universally prevail and obtain among Mankind unless there were some common consonancy and congruity of somewhat inherent in Nature which suits corresponds and suffragates to that Tradition and closeth with it and accepts it 2. As to the other concerning the Exercise and Actings of our Intellectual Faculties it must needs be agreed that those that I call Connatural Principles are in themselves highly reasonable and deducible by a strong process of Ratiocination to be most true and most convenient and consequently the high exercise of Ratiocination or intellective Discourse might evince their truth and excellency though there were no such originally inscribed in the Mind But this no more concludes against the supposition than it would conclude against the supposition of implanted Instincts in Brutes which as they are in themselves highly reasonable and useful to their ends and evincible by true Reason to be such as it may be any thing we know So also many though not all the actings of those Instincts might possibly in the Brutes themselves be elicited by a strong intention and exercise of their Phantasie and sensible Perception Ratiocination and Connatural Implantation are but several means or discoveries of the same thing which in it self is most highly reasonable only the latter is for the most part less difficult and readier at hand But to the Objection 1. Let any man but duly consider how few men there are in the World that are capable in respect of the meanness of their Parts and Education to act and improve their Intellects or Faculties to so high a strain as the eliciting of those that I call Connatural Principles by the strength of their Intellectual Operation this requires very choice Parts great attention of Mind sequestration from the importunity of Secular employments and a long advertent and deliberate connexing of Consequents which falls not in the common road of ordinary men but of Philosophers Metaphysical heads and such as have had a more refined education which is not the thousandth part of Mankind Other men require a more easie and familiar access to these Truths
and Inclinations and yet we see that these Sentiments are not confined to the Literati of mankind 2. Again I appeal to the most knowing men in the World that have but had the leisure to think seriously and converse with themselves and that have kept their Minds free from the fumes of intemperance and excess passion and perturbation whether next under Divine Revelation their best and clearest sentiments of Morality at least have not been gathered from the due animadversion and inspection of their own Minds and the improving of that stock of Morals that they there find and the transcribing of that Original which they found first written there It is true that it is with the connatural Principles inscribed in our Minds as it is with our Faculties they lye more torpid and inactive and inevident unless they are awakened and exercised like a spark involved in ashes and being either suppressed or neglected they seem little better than dead but being diligently attended inspected and exercised they expand and evolve themselves into more distinction and evidence of themselves And therefore it was not without some kind of probability that some of the Ancients thought that Science was little else than Memory or Reminiscence a discovery of what was in the Soul before But whatever may be said of other matters certainly the first draughts and strictures of Natural Religion and Morality are naturally in the Mind And hence some thinking men have thought that the specifical difference of the humane Nature is Propension to Religion and therefore define Man to be Animal religiosum which could not be from any habit barely acquisite by the exercise of Faculties unless the same were radically engraven in the very texture of his Soul I shall add but this one thing more It is plain that the existence of a Deity as a Being of infinite Perfection and consequently of infinite Goodness and Justice to reward and punish and of infinite Power and Wisdom is a truth that is highly rational and demonstrable by the exercise of intellectual Faculties upon the consideration of the Universe and its several parts and possibly the Immortality of the Soul is evincible by very great reason But these great truths are not communicated barely by one kind of means and it is needful in respect of their use they should all have all contributions and not only Brains to pursue a long train of consequences And yet we shall find in the generality of mankind especially when death begins to draw towards them a very quick and active demonstration of these convictions and possibly many times more vigorous and active than that rational conviction that is wrought by Speculation and Syllogisms which evidenceth that these Principles of the existence of a most righteous and powerful God and a state of rewards and punishments after death are more universally engraven in the Crasis of the Soul by Almighty God in its natural constitution than barely by the exercise of Faculties in Speculation and Ratiocination And herein it must be remembred that I am in this Discourse still in the outward Court of the Gentiles discoursing only as a reasonable Man and not taking in the assistance of the Christian Doctrine and those subsidia divinae gratiae that relate thereunto Therefore to conclude this point There seems to be two means of communicating and preserving in the Soul and Conscience these great speculative and moral Principles whereof I have even now treated viz. 1. That which I here call Connatural or a certain rational Instinct engraven in the very Make and constitution of it And as those that write of Conscience tell us it hath three offices or acts Synteresis Syneidesis and Epicrisis so those Principles are lodged in that Chest of the Conscience called Synteresis 2. A second means of attaining and keeping and improving these connatural Sentiments or rational Instincts both speculative and moral is that admirable adaptation of the Faculties of the humane Soul to those Principles and Sentiments that as the Eye discerns light and colour by a congruity between the visive Faculty and the visible Object and as the Palate tasts and relisheth its meat by the congruity between the Faculty and the Object whereby it judgeth of what is good and embraceth it and what is evil to it and rejects it So in the humane Faculties those of his Intellect and Will there is a proportionating of the Faculties to the Object whereby the former discerns truth from falshood and moral good from moral evil honestum decorum from indecens turpe and accordingly the Will when it acts regularly and as it should accepts or rejects it But as the estimative Faculty in Brutes is nevertheless consistent with their connatural Instincts which latter have still excellent use in the sentient Province so this adaptation of the Faculties in Man to their Objects doth not exclude those connatural implanted rational Instincts in the humane Nature but both consist together and are of admirable use to the humane Soul And thus far concerning the Soul of Man its Faculties and Instincts I come now to consider of the structure and fabrick of the humane Body and that not at large for that will be for another place but briefly and summarily to give an account of some of those appropriate and discriminating notices wherein it differs from and hath preference above the most perfect brutal Nature And they are such as either concern the entire Fabrick of the Body or such as concern some special Parts or Integrals thereof but I shall mingle them together as followeth 1. There is in the humane Fabrick a greater Majesty and Beauty than in any Animal in the World besides and that appears 1. In the erectness of his posture all other Animals have transverse Bodies as Birds and Beasts and though some do raise themselves upon their hinder legs to an upright posture yet they cannot endure it long it is unnatural and uneasie to them neither are the figures or junctures or order of their Bones Nerves and Muscles fitted to such a posture And it is observable that the structure of Man's Body is with that equilibration notwithstanding divers prominences therein the composure of his Nerves and Muscles for the due motion of his Spirits the structure of his Feet are so singularly accommodated that he maintains this erect posture standing or walking though his Feet the Basis of the Pillar of his Body be much narrower than the latitude of his Body 2. In the Majesty of his Face and Eyes 3. In the Beauty of his Face Beauty consists principally in these things Figure Symmetry and Colour No Bird or terrestrial Animal exhibits its Face in the native colour of its Skin but Man all others are covered with Feathers or Hair or a Cortex that is obduced over the Cutis as in Elephants and some sort of Indian Dogs and though in the torrid Climates the common colour is black or swarthy yet the natural colour of the
temperate Climates is more transparent and beautiful 2. There is no Animal hath any Organ of equal use to the Arm and Hand of a Man that Organum organorum an Organ accommodate to all the useful motions operations arts and uses of his life Man is born without any offensive or defensive weapons like to those of other Animals but by the usefulness and accommodation of this Organ and his Intellective faculty he maketh weapons and useth them he forgeth and mouldeth Metals builds Houses and Ships makes his Cloaths and Ornaments and exerciseth all Arts for use and ornament 3. There is no Creature that I know of hath the like structure of his Leg and Foot the former being only two to support his Body have greater and larger Muscles than any Animal of no greater proportionable bigness and the latter being the Basis of those Pillars are admirably fitted by their length and figure for his gressus progressivus 4. Since the Brain is the great Organ of Intellection in Man and of Imagination in Brutes which are the two noblest Faculties of either Nature it will not be amiss to examine the differences between the Brain of either and the Nerves proceeding from either wherein none that I know hath given more light than Doctor Willis in his Anatomy of the Head all therefore that I shall do herein shall be to gather up the most of those observable differences that lye dispersed in that Book 1. The humane Brain is in proportion to the Body much greater and larger than the Brains of Brutes having regard to the size and proportion of their Bodies and fuller of anfractus or sinuations and so more capable of greater diversity of employments and uses in the Perceptive Faculties 2. There are in the Brain certain portions called protuberantia annularis nates testes and that in those Brutes wherein this protuberantia annularis is largest in proportion those Brutes are of greatest sagacity and subtilty as Foxes Apes c. that though in Man those prominences called nates and testes are the least yet the protuberantia annularis is greater in proportion in Man than in any Animal the structure of this Organ being fitted to a greater degree of natural sagacity 3. That whereas in Brutes the only communication of the Brain with the Heart is by the nervus paris vagi derived from the Cerebellum and spreading its branches into the Muscle of the Heart in Man there is not only the same communication of that Nerve but a ramification of the nervus intercostalis is also inserted into the Muscle of the Heart whereby a greater communication between the Brain and Heart is maintained in Man than in Brutes 4. That other ramifications of this nervus intercostalis are derived into the Chest and Diaphragma whereby principally that peculiar affection of Laughter is excited more appropriate to Man together also those others of Sternutation and other natural actions common to Men and Beasts are excited but not from the like communication of that Nerve in Brutes And thus much shall serve to be spoken of the peculiarities of the Humane Body though what I before said touching the Faculties of the Animal Nature in Man must also be remembred touching the organical parts of his Body There is no Organ in the Brutal Body subservient to the Animal Faculties which is not found in the Humane Body with such variations and additions as render them more curious perfect useful and admirably accommodate to his Animal Life and Faculties But of this more fully hereafter 3. I shall now subjoin a Consideration of Man in his whole Compositum consisting of both his essential parts of Body and Soul and of the aggregation of the Faculties and Organs belonging to either so far forth as they evidence his appropriate and specifical Excellency above the Animal Nature The appropriate or specifical acts of the humane compositum are the capacity and faculty of instituted Signs expressive of the inward conceptions of the Mind which are of two kinds 1. Audible 2. Visible Signs The Audible Signs are instituted Speech or Language the formal nature whereof consists in two things 1. Articulate Voice 2. The accommodation of the Articulate Voice to the rendring or expressing of the inward thoughts or intentions of the Mind And herein is the great preference of the language of Man above that of Brutes or Birds who though they have audible signs that express something of their Imaginations or Appetites yet they extremely differ from humane speech 1. They are but short and transient like Interjections in speech whereby though they express the sudden motions of their Phantasie Appetite or Passions yet they carry not with them any distinct series or long train of their Imaginations they are short and sudden somewhat like Sighs or Ejulations in Man 2. They are not articulate nor orderly but short natural and broken 3. When Birds especially by the fabrick of their Tongue and Palate are taught to use articulate words yet they understand not their import nor do render any conceptions of their Phantasie by them nor can answer a question by them but use them insignificantly as the Organ or Pipe renders the Tune which it understands not And by the help of significant and articulate speech one Man expresseth the notions or conceptions of his Mind to another instructs another mutual commerce and society is maintained which could never be without instituted signs And this Act of instituted signs especially those of Speech or Language proceeds from the entire compositum the Mind instituting the signs and communicating its notions and desires by it and the Palate Larinx Tongue and Lips forming the Voice according to such institution whereunto they are most admirably accommodated by their Apertures Nerves and Muscles 2. The instituted visible Signs are Writings Gestures Tears Motions of the Eye Mouth and Face which were long to enumerate By means of writing former Ages transmit the Memorials of ancient times and things to posterity Men understand the sentiments purposes and desires of one another though absent and the living converse with those ancient Philosophers and others that are long since dead And now in this composition of the humane Nature we have these things observable 1. That in this contexture of the Humane Body and Intellectual Soul we have a Creature made up that is nexus utriusque mundi intellectualis scilicet corporei The next Range of Beings above him are the pure and immaterial Intelligences the next below him is the sensible Nature Man is as it were the Comes limitaneus of each Nature participating of both And we may observe that in the process of Natural Beings there seem some to be Creatures placed as it were in the Confines of several Provinces and participating something of either as in things that have life and that have not there is placed the Minerals between the inanimate and vegetable Province participating something analogical to either Between the vegetable
Mankind whether although there should be a possibility of an eternity of some permanent created Beings whether yet there be a possibility in Nature or any probability of evidence that Mankind can be eternal à parte ante or without beginning This I oppose by Arguments of two kinds 1. From the very repugnancy in Nature of successive Beings to be without an inception or eternal and upon these kind of evidences I do indeed lay the principal weight and stress of my Conclusion because though these kind of Arguments may seem more obscure yet upon a due consideration of them they are highly consequential and concludent to my purpose 2. The second sort of evidences are Moral evidences wherein I take into consideration most of those Moral evidences that have been collected by others or thought of by my self against the Eternity of Mankind Whereupon I do conclude 1. That singly and apart many of them are subject to exception yet collectively they make up a good moral evidence touching a temporary inception of the humane Nature 2. I do consider the particular deficiencies of those moral evidences taken singly and apart 3. I substitute other moral evidences that even singly and apart have each of them a great moral and topical evidence of this truth and are not capable of any considerable Objection against them though taken sigillatim and apart But when all is done I lay the great stress of my Conclusion upon the first sort of Evidences natural or metaphysical which seem to me no less than demonstrative and therefore if no other moral evidences were added thereunto or if those moral evidences should be capable of exception as some of them are yet the truth of the Conclusion against the eternity of Mankind is sufficiently supported by those that I offer in the first place which I call Physical and Metaphysical 2. Again I then come to consider that Opinion which supposeth an Inception of the Humane Nature I consider the various Hypotheses that the Ancients entertained touching the manner of that Origination and shew the absurdity of them in their several orders I then consider the Mosaical Hypothesis and the great reasonableness thereof upon a bare Natural or Moral accompt without taking in the Infallibility of Divine Revelation In order to that I consider the whole Mosaical Systeme or History of the Creation of the World the admirable congruity it hath both with it self and with a due and unprejudiced and considerate Reason And lastly I deduce certain Corollaries or Consequences from the whole Discourse both Theoretical and Moral and this is in effect the whole Method of what these Papers contain Wherein I proceed meerly upon an account of Natural Reason and Light because in this Discourse I deal with such as are either only or most commonly guided and governed by such Sentiments and therefore I do not call in to my assistance the Authority of Divine Revelation though that of it self doth and ought to carry the full and unquestionable Assent of all good Men that are acquainted therewith CAP. III. A brief Consideration of the Hypotheses that concern the Eternity of the World ALthough I intend not a large Discourse touching their Suppositions that hold the Eternity of the World yet it will be convenient a little to consider it for the better application of what follows in the ensuing Discourse touching the Eternity of the Successions of Mankind and the possibility or impossibility thereof The Supposition of the Eternity of the World is considerable under a double relation 1. With relation to the Notion of Eternity 2. With relation to the Subject it self which they would have eternal namely the World either wholly or in some parts thereof In relation to Eternity it self two things are to be premised 1. What it is 2. What its Kinds are 1. As to the former in all this Discourse I call that Eternal which is without beginning or eternal à parte ante 2. Things thus supposed Eternal may be of two kinds either such as have an Eternity simply independent upon any thing without it or from which it should derive that Eternal Being as we and all good Men say that Almighty God is Eternal Or else such an Eternity as yet supposeth its dependence upon Almighty God as its Cause And they that attribute the first kind of Eternity to the World must do it upon one of these two grounds viz. That there is no other first Being no first Cause no God upon whom the World should depend or from whom it should derive this its Eternal Existence And this is the grossest and most irrational Supposition as well as the foulest Atheism that can be imagined Or else That although there be in truth such a Being as God yet the World had not this its Eternal Existence by any derivation or influx from Him but hath it absolutely and independently This is the Epicurean Atheism which though it oppose the Eternity of the World in that consistency that now it hath yet it asserts the Eternity of those small and infinite particles of Matter and the coalition of them into that state wherein they now are in process and succession of time and motion yet without any dependence of the one or the other upon Almighty God whom he totally secludes from the concerns of the World Others there are again that attribute an Eternity to the World but yet withall acknowledge Almighty God and also Him to be the Efficient thereof And therefore though they attribute an Eternity to it yet it is but a dependent Eternity and so though it be Eternal yet it is but an Eternal Effect of an Eternal Cause These are much more tolerable than either of the former for they assert a God and likewise the dependence of the World in its Eternal Existence and Duration upon Almighty God as the Cause and Root of that Being of the World But among those that thus assert this dependent Eternity of the World upon Almighty God as its Cause or Efficient there seems to be two Parties namely 1. Such as suppose Almighty God the Necessary Cause of the World as his Necessary Effect 2. Such as suppose Him meerly the Voluntary Cause of the World and of its Eternity Of the former sort that suppose Almighty God the Necessary Cause of the World and of its Eternal Existence there seem to be these two Parties or different Opinions 1. Such as suppose the World a meer natural and necessary Emanation from God as its necessary Cause without any manner of intrinsecal freedom in Himself to do or be otherwise and consequently it being a necessary and connatural Effect of the first Cause it must be necessarily as ancient as Himself and if Almighty God be as He is most necessarily so upon the same necessity He is the Cause of the World and the World a necessary and consequently Eternal Production necessarily flowing from the same as if the Sun be Eternal his Light which necessarily
eternal but must be done gradually and successively and from one degree of bigness to another and since that augmentation could never be of an infinite procedure but being successive we must come to the beginning of that increase within the measure of such a portion of time as we now find sufficient for such a production or increase it may be two or three hundred years which being but a finite duration can never be eternal And this necessary Supposition of a successive alteration or increase utterly destroys the possibility of an eternal duration in any thing capable of such alterations 1. Because it necessarily supposeth somewhat precedent to that state wherein it is namely a precedent alteration of it whereby it is now become what it now is and what before it was not so that it had somewhat before its present state which stateth it to be what it now is namely that alteration or augmentation which so preceded its present state and consequently that present state wherein it is could not be eternal for it had somewhat before it 2. Because that very alteration that anteceded that state which it hath cannot possibly be eternal but must be perfected within a certain portion of time destined to it and consequently must have beginning within the compass of a determinate time and cannot be eternally moving to its accomplishment And as this Instance gives the impossibility of an eternal Existence in any thing essentially alterable or corruptible so it would be possibly more conspicuous in the Contemplation of the Humane Nature If we should suppose a Man to have been eternal Was that Man ever an Embryo a Child a Youth a ripe Aged Man Did he grow from a smaller stature to a greater had he vicissitudes of temperaments and distempers did he eat digest c. If he did not then those eternal Men were not of the same Make with the Men that are now but quite another thing which we know not what it was or where to find it But if he had all those changes he could not be eternal he should be eternally a Child and eternally a Man eternally young and eternally old yea eternally living and yet eternally dead for all these must fall within the compass of Eternity 2. But let us now consider how the Case falls out in relation to alterations and corruptions occasioned ab extrinseco and we shall find 1. That as the World is framed and as those that suppose it eternal must suppose it to have been always so framed there must necessarily be incessant mutations alterations generations and corruptions by the invasion and juxta-position of contrary Natures Agents Patients Qualities Motions the Earth naturally dry is moistned by the vicinity of the Water and again dryed by the heat of the Sun the Earth obstructs the fluidity of the Water by mingling its grosser parts with it all things as it were in continual motion and agitation and mutual preying as it were one upon another which as necessarily occasioneth mutations alterations generations and corruptions as the very intrinsecal dissolubility of the natures of mixt Bodies 2. And as we find this now so we must suppose that this hath been always so since the World had a being unless we shall suppose as I have often said another kind of World than what we see And although we are not acquainted with the state of things out of or beyond this sublunary World in which we see this vicissitude of alterations yet whether there may not be some such mutations in the Ethereal World we know not but there may be such though we cannot certainly know them 3. And yet it is most certain that it is impossible that any thing that is capable of these mutations and changes can be eternally under them but must of necessity if it were eternal consist in such a state of fixedness and permanency that were not obnoxious to these changes 4. And since it is not possible for the inferior World at least to be de facto one moment of time without these changes and variations alterations generations and corruptions which as before are not at all consistent with an eternal duration à parte ante of that that is so subject to changes we have just reason to deny and disesteem this imaginary Eternity can belong at least to the sublunary World The late Author of a Book De Aetate Mundi hath given us an Instance herein that if it would hold we need not go farther namely That the great Rocks in the Sea are yet many of them eminently visible to this day and yet daily experience shews us that those Rocks are gradually diminished by the beating of the Sea against them which had they been so dealt with from Eternity though they lost but one grain in a million of millions of years they would not have been but would have been consumed an indefinite time long since elapsed But the Supposition fails because it may be that these Rocks have at least vicissitudes of increase and diminution by the very alluvion of the Sea or which seems far more easily supposed that the Earth and Seas might notwithstanding have been eternal but yet the Sea might not have kept the same Channel where these Rocks now are from eternity but gained it in time the Ancients telling us that the great Atlantick Sea was for the most part of it anciently a Continent or at least a great Island as big as Europe and Asia and after swallowed up and corroded into that vast Sea called the Atlantick Ocean leaving behind it only those reliques now called the Canary Islands I will therefore take my Instance in some other things 1. It is evident that divers Minerals are bred in the Earth from an earthy consistence by the heat of the Sun and other concurrent causes successively as may appear to any man's observation touching Coals Rocks especially of Stone which from a sandy kind of Earth gradually concoct into Free-stone when they were before Earth as may be seen in many Quarries by those pieces of unconcocted Earth not yet perfectly digested into Stone If the Body of the Earth were eternal either these concretions were also as eternal as the Earth gradually and successively digested into these concretions or else the Earth must have had an eternal permanency in that state of simple natural Earth without any such concretions or alterations in it If we shall say the latter we make the Earth another thing than what in truth it now is which by the aid of the Sun hath these concretions and alterations even by a kind of necessity of Nature wrought in it And besides if in that portion of eternal duration wherein the Earth and Sun were in that very same natural state wherein they now are the one active piercing and digestive by its heat the other passive receptive and stored with materials for such a production What should hinder but that there should be such production gradually and successively
of the World but also of Mankind they are of two sorts viz. 1. Such as have affirmed that the successive Generations of Men have been eternal not only without any beginning but without any first Parents of Mankind and that they have been always geniti ex genitis 2. Those that have supposed that there were some first Parents of Mankind which by a natural and univocal generation multiplied their Species but yet that those first Parents of Mankind were eternal Individuals having an eternal existence in their individual nature and in relation to them the rest of Mankind were geniti ex non genitis As to the former of these Opinions they seem to be divided into these ensuing Parties or Opinions 1. Such as think the successive Generations of Men were eternally so and independent upon any Efficient and necessarily by the eternal established course of Nature independent upon Almighty God or any first Efficient of the Species 2. Such as think the successive Generations of Men were eternally so but dependently upon Almighty God yet as a necessary Effect produced by Almighty God as a necessary or natural Cause as the Light is a coexistent Effect of the Sun 3. Such as think the successive Generations of Men were eternally so but dependently upon God as an efficient voluntary Cause of them by eternal Creation yet suppose that Will intrinsecally determined to such an eternal Creation of Mankind by the indispensable benignity and goodness of his nature 4. Such as though they take Almighty God to be under neither of the former necessities but an Agent purely voluntary and determining his own Will by it self only and that deny the eternal successions of humane Generations as to the fact but yet affirm it possible that Almighty God might if he pleased have created the World and Mankind eternally Having thus stated the Opinions of the Assertors of the Eternity or Beginning of Humane Generations I shall pursue this Method 1. In this Chapter I shall consider the possibility or impossibility of eternal Generations of Mankind with relation to the four preceding Suppositions that assert it 2. In the next Chapter I shall consider the possibility or impossibility of any one Man or Woman eternally existing from whom Mankind had their production by univocal generation 3. I shall afterwards consider of those evidences of fact and probability that de facto may seem to prove that Mankind had their beginning in time and the Objections against it 4. I shall then descend to the Consideration of the various Suppositions of those that have supposed a temporary Origination of Mankind At the present therefore I shall propound those Reasons that to me seem concludent that although it might for Arguments sake be supposed that some parts of universal Nature namely such as are permanent and fixed and not in fluxu might be eternal yet it is simply impossible that the Generations of Mankind can be eternal in any of the four foregoing ways And before I come to give my Reasons I shall premise two things 1. In relation to the four foregoing Opinions there seems to be this implyed in them 1. The two former do most clearly take up the entire collection of Mankind and the Generations of them to be a meer natural Effect or Work with this odds that the former acknowledgeth no Efficient at all the latter acknowledgeth God the Efficient or first Cause of the eternal World and the Generations of Mankind as a natural Cause And consequently they must needs hold that as Man is now generated so he was eternally so and as he is now so he always hath been and the measure that we take of him now will fit to all those innumerable Men that have been within the vast compass of Eternity As Man is now a compound Body of the four Elements so he always was as he is now nine Months in utero matris such was the method and the mora of every Man's production for the Effect is a natural uniform Effect whether independent upon God as the Efficient thereof or dependent upon Him as a Natural Effect And therefore whatsoever is impossible to be attributed to Peter or John or any other individual Man is incompetible to every Man in all this infinite Collection within the unlimited extent of Eternity But the two latter though both suppose an eternity of Generations and though in Eternity there cannot be supposed well a first yet do what they can if they suppose a production of Man by eternal Creation they cannot deliver themselves from these consequences 1. That there must be some Man or Men that had his or their beginning in some other way then other persons had it namely by Creation for although Creation be an instantaneous act of the Divine Will and Power it must of necessity be terminated in some individual determinate Person and it cannot be quid vagum the consequence whereof must necessarily be That if there were an eternal Creation of any Man or Men they that were thus created had their production if we may suppose such a production by a different way from the production of those that had their being by generation and herein this Supposition of the Origination of Humane Nature differs from the two former Suppositions 2. And consequently that if the Creation of Man and of the rest of the World must be in the same point as I may call it of Eternity the rest of the World or any part thereof could not be precedent to the Creation of Man for then they have lost what they contend for namely an eternal Creation of Man If it were but one imaginable moment after then the World might indeed have had an eternal existence but it would be impossible for Man to have had that eternal existence by Creation unless in the same first imaginary conceptible moment of Eternity an expression improper enough I confess Man and the rest of the World were concreated The consequence whereof as I before said is that those Men must not as the former suppose all Individuals of Mankind had the same natural manner of production for among the whole Collection some one or more had a supernatural manner of production namely by Creation 2. This being premised concerning the different states of the two former and two latter Opinions somewhat I shall say in general touching the Reasons I use against all these Suppositions 1. In general That that kind of reasoning which reduceth the opposite Conclusion to something that is apparently impossible or absurd is as much a Demonstration in disaffirmance of any thing that is affirmed as can possibly be in any case if the Conclusion of the affirming party doth necessarily inferr an impossibility or absurdity in the nature of the thing affirmed it is a Demonstration Argumentum cum contradictione conclusionis and such will those be which I shall bring 2. Because the former Suppositions touching the Eternity of Mankind though they conclude in the same
se cannot be infinite but that successive Individuals or Causes and Effects per accidens might be infinite and eternal is in truth a Supposition not fitted to the truth of things or grounded upon any rational difference between the things but a Supposition fitted merely to serve that other precarious Supposition which Aristotle and his followers had taken up touching the Eternity of the World And these shall be all the Reasons that I shall trouble my self withall against the Eternity of Mankind or the successive Generations and Individuals thereof having willingly declined those many other Ingenious Reasons given by others as of the Impertransibility of Eternity and the impossibility therein to attain to the present term or limit of antecedent Generations or Ages the necessity of every posterius to have a prius that there be an equal number of priora and posteriora which either are so many various Explications of the Reasons going before or at least are not so evidently concludent or are subject to Exceptions in some particulars The Objections both against the Reasons before given and against the Supposition it self I shall take up after the next Chapter wherein I shall examin the other Supposition before mentioned namely The eternal existence of some first Man and Woman and the successive Generations from them wherein because it is touched before I shall be brief CAP. V. Concerning the Supposition of the first Eternal Existence of the common Parents of Mankind and the production of the succeeding Individuals from them I Come to that other Supposition namely of the Existence of some one Man and Woman the common Parents of Mankind eternally and the successive multiplication of the Race of Mankind from them by the ordinary course of generation And although this Supposition carries with it the clear evidence of its absurdity and therefore may seem to be scarce worth the pains of a Confutation yet because it lyes in my way and the Observations upon it may be useful for other purposes I shall say somewhat concerning it This first eternal Pair we cannot conceive to have an existence by a bare course of Nature without an eternal Creation of them by Almighty God and an unintermitted Influence from him to support them in a state of Incorruptibility through the vast abyss of Eternity For he that will suppose things purely under that course of existence that is proper to them by the course of Nature must needs suppose the Individuals of the humane Nature to have been always such and of such a Frame as now they are that is mortal and corruptible Beings and though their Ages might anciently be of a longer continuance than now they are yet upon a bare natural account they could not be conceived immortal incorruptible immutable no more than they are now Therefore since the great admirers of Nature do therefore frame their Hypotheses of an eternal Succession of Men because they think themselves bound to think that all things have ever been as now they are and because they will not substitute other Hypotheses of the Origination or Existence of things in any other manner than they now see them Certainly as to these and ad hominem it is an Evidence beyond contradiction that there never was any such pair of Man and Woman that eternally existed but that all Men and other perfect Animals if they were eternal in their Species were eternally produced ex prius genitis as now they are and that there was no one first individual of Man or Beast that had an eternal Existence because such a Supposition equally crosseth that course of the nature of things which now they see which therefore they make the standard and their measure of things that are past They therefore that must support an existence of the first individual Parents of humane Nature and that those Individuals had an eternal existence must necessarily suppose that they had that existence by an eternal Creation of Almighty God and an eternal Influx and Support from him in that incorruptible estate through all the vast extent of an eternal duration And by this means they do think and that truly that they assert a dependence of the Species of things upon Almighty God which cannot possibly be supposed to be dependent upon him unless they had in their individual nature their existence from him since it is impossible there can be any Supposition of the existence of any Species as for instance the Species of Man unless it be supposed to exist in Individuals nor consequently a dependence of the Species of Mankind upon God as its Cause unless there were a dependence of the first Individuals thereof upon him in fieri as their Cause And they likewise hope but vainly hereby to avoid the inconveniences of successive eternal Generations without any first Caput or Radix of those Generations though they fall hereby into the same difficulties and others that are equally intricate and inexplicable And although in this Supposition we must admit the first pair that were the Roots of Mankind did herein differ from the state of Mankind now that whereas now Men live ordinarily seventy or eighty years and are subject to Death yet those first radices humani generis were by the Influence of the Divine Power immortal and not confined to the age incident now to Mankind but were able to endure the immense duration of an eternal being yet we must also suppose that in other respects they were of the same Make with these individuals of Mankind that are now For otherwise instead of a supposition of an eternal being of the first individual Man and Woman that had their being by eternal Creation we shall fall into a supposition of something that was not in truth Man And therefore as according to the Doctrine of Moses and the Truth Adam the first created Man though consisting of a composition intrinsecally dissolvable had he continued in Innocence should or might have held by the continued Influx of the Divine Will and Power a state of immortality and indissolubleness of his Composition yet as to the Essentials of his nature and the Integrals thereof he should have been and continued like other Men. And therefore those first imaginary eternal Individuals the Root of Mankind should have consisted of Flesh and Blood and Mind and Soul and Body as other Men do they must have the support of their Lives by receiving of nourishment by digesting thereof according to the various process of Digestion as we do they must draw in their Breath or Air and emit it again as we do they must have had the like successive motion of the Heart and the like circulation of their Blood as we have the like local motion of their Bodies the like variation and succession of Thoughts as we have and though the supposed Eternity of them should have excluded from them corruption or dissolution in that vast Period of Eternity yet even that duration of his must be in this respect
like ours that it was a successive duration a duration that was measured out by the supposed coexistence of the eternal succession of days and months and years And such a duration as though there had been no such collateral or coextended extrinsick measure yet it was intrinsecally successive and not indivisible because he was in his nature a corporeal successive Being as well as we and as we in the very Constitution of our Automaton have certain successive gradual marks and signs and operations whereby though there were no external successive measure by comparison whereto the succession of our duration might appear as the Motion of the Heavens and Heavenly Bodies and the like yet by those connatural successive marks and signs our beings and durations would be measured and the successions thereof would appear as the vicissitudes of Respiration the Pulses Palpitations of our Hearts the variety and succession of acts of Sensation the succession of our Thoughts and Cogitations whereby it is apparent we have not only intrinsecal marks and distinctions of our successive duration but also that our operations are various I do I think and speak that to day which I did not yesterday the number of my Respirations or Pulses were thus many yesterday and as many to day and it may be more upon the variety happening in my Body by local motion repletion or any casual perturbation And as all this I find in my self and other men so I must needs conclude the very like was in these first Individuals that are supposed to be eternal For though they had ex suppositione an immortality and preservation from putrefaction or corruption by the eternal and continued influx of the Divine Goodness and Power yet they were not in a state of perfect immutability in their actions operations or existence For then we must suppose them not to have been Humane Creatures but Gods or at least Angels which nevertheless are not wholly exempt from their degrees of mutability and variation at least in their intrinsick operations it being the sovereign Prerogative of Almighty God only to be without variableness or shadow of change And now I shall not inquire what are become of those eternal pair of first Parents where they are or if they are dead how it came to pass they could weather and stand the shock of an eternal duration and yet be at any time subject to a dissolution It may be said they were translated into Heaven or possibly they may be since dead the Divine Beneficence subducting in this or that point of time that Influence which it communicated from the time of their first Creation whereby they were kept in a state of immortality till that moment of the subduction thereof wherein they began to undergo the common Laws of Dissolution But I do say that there is the same impossibility that any corporeal Individual of such a Make and Constitution as Man is should be eternal in hoc individuo as there is in the eternal succession of several Individuals Such a kind of duration cannot be sustained by succession of Humane Individuals much less can it be sustained by any single Individual of Humane Nature 1. The same absurdities and impossibilities would follow upon the admission of the Eternity of one single Humane Individual as of successive because that Individual hath necessarily a concomitant succession of interpolated Motions namely the Pulses of the Heart and the successive Motions of Respiration and divers others All which will produce multitudes uncapable of Infinitude as much as the several individuals of Mankind And among all these Pulses and Respirations some one will be necessarily infinitely actually distant from some other Pulse within the limits of time whereupon all those former heaps of incongruities and impossibilities before observed will be consequential 2. It is impossible that any Being can be eternal with successive eternal Physical changes or variety of states or manner of existency naturally and necessarily concomitant unto it But if we should suppose any one one Man eternal yet he must in the very constitution of his being necessarily have Physical changes and variety of states and manners of existence accompanying him or else we must unman him and make him another thing Therefore no individual Man can be eternal The Major Proposition is evident to any that consider it For let us suppose the first Man created eternally in a state of Childhood Youth or Rest it is necessary that he continue eternally in that state and the first moment he moves or alters that state must be on this side the uttermost limits or compass of Eternity namely within such a compass as is finitely distant from this hour for two Causes Because Rest must needs be antecedent to his Motion his Childhood antecedent to his Youth and that to his Manhood and therefore if his Rest Childhood or Youth were eternal his motion or alteration of his state cannot be eternal for then this contradictory Proposition should be true That Man did eternally rest and eternally move or which is all one eternally move and eternally not move for Rest in Bodies is but an absence or privation of Motion That he was eternally a Child eternally a Youth and eternally a grown Man But let us suppose that it were possible that he might be created eternally in a state of Rest or yet in some determinate point within the extent of Eternity he should begin to move that interval that anteceded his Motion must be either in a finite or infinite distance from us If we should suppose it infinite we contradict our selves for we shall make the first Motion eternal and consequently infinitely distant from us and yet to have a beginning and such a beginning that was infinitely later than the Eternity of Rest And if we shall suppose the interval between the first imaginary beginning of that Rest and the beginning of that Motion finite suppose for the purpose the time of a Month then we shall upon the very same account make the beginning of that Motion to be less than eternal because begun a Month after what was eternal and consequently also we shall make the beginning of that Rest to be not eternal because that first Motion having a beginning after Eternity could not be eternal nor consequently the beginning of that Rest could not be eternal for ex suppositione it is but a Month ancienter than that Motion which was not eternal and a finite duration added to a finite duration cannot make an infinite duration Therefore if Man ex suppositione were created in any state whether of Motion or Rest Childhood Youth full grown Age or whatever other state it be he must necessarily so persist an infinite duration and if he undergo any alteration from that state that alteration must be in time or of a puisne date to Eternity The second Proposition is this That Man in his very Constitution is such that there is uncessantly and naturally concomitant with him Physical
of Sense either immediately or at least mediately and therefore are not proportioned to the nature of Eternity and Infinitude And therefore our Reasoning touching these matters is as if he that were born blind should Philosophize touching Light or Colours whereunto he hath not nor never had a Faculty accommodate I answer It is true that there is something which I may call Positive in the conception of Eternal or Infinite which the Understanding cannot master But since it is very plain that all things in the World come under the distribution of finite or infinite or that which hath a beginning or that which hath not a beginning and is consequently eternal If I can as most certainly I may have a conception of what is finite and what are the Laws and necessary Connexions of it I can by that Notion conclude that whatsoever is finite or that must be under the Laws and Rules of finite Beings cannot be infinite I have a Globe in my Hand though I know not the Eternity yet I know that whatsoever hath or must necessarily have limits or fines is not cannot be infinite and therefore this Globe cannot be infinite And if I can find in any other thing a parity of Reason I do and may remove infiniteness from it as reasonably and evidently as I do from this Globe I hold or this Hour I write or this Life I live I do therefore certainly know that whatsoever is limited or bounded by somewhat that necessarily anteceded it cannot be eternal I do not determin what Eternal or Infinite is in the Positive nature of it only I remove Infinitude from what I find to be necessarily finite and determin that whatsoever hath bounds or limits to it is quid finitum and not quid non finitum and whatsoever hath necessarily a beginning is quid temporale and not quid aeternum And all my endeavour hath been to shew that the things before disputed are and needs must be of such a nature as comes under the notion of what I know namely finitum or temporale and not under the negation thereof namely infinitum or non finitum or fine principio 2. Object That by denying the possibility at least of Eternity to created successive Beings I put a restraint to the infinite Goodness of God who thereby is straitned in the communication of his Goodness coeternal to his being which is part of his Divine Perfection and also to the extent of his Power and Omnipotence which is too bold and adventurous I answer Touching the Goodness of God and the necessity of his communication thereof I have before said enough in the Second Chapter I shall not repeat it But as touching the other restraint upon his Omnipotence I say the denying of Power in God to make a Creature especially a successive created Nature as ancient as himself is no more a derogation from his Power than to deny him Power to make a Creature as great and as good and as powerful as himself The Infiniteness of his Duration is a part of the Divine Perfection in my judgment incommunicable to any created Being and it is part of the eminence and excellence and transcendence of that Divine Perfection as well as others that are not communicable to any created Being But secondly Suppose that Eternity might be communicated to any created Being as for the purpose to the more pure Mental Natures yet I do not disparage the Omnipotence of God when I say it is not communicable to a successive Being that is in fluxu not for want of Power in God but for want of Capacity in the nature of the thing to sustain such a duration upon the intrinsecal discongruity of the one to the other It would not be a derogation to the Divine Omnipotence to deny that the Diagonal of a Square should be commensurate in length to the Sides for the nature of the thing will not bear it 3. Object But a late Author hath with ostentation enough produced an Argument whereby all those Reasons and Instances concerning the impossibility and absurdity of infinite Generations infinite Individuals and infinite Motion supposed to have actually existed are easily discharged and therefore he concludes that notwithstanding all that hath been said the Generations of Men might have been actually eternal and that there may be infinite numbers of successive Men Generations and Revolutions and that consequently it is not repugnant that infinite may be greater than infinite that there be infinite Days and Years and Men and yet in that infinite 365 times more Days than Years yet both infinite the number of Men infinite and yet the number of their Hands or Eyes double to the number of the Men That the Supposition that these are contradictions are but mistakes and delusions of our Understanding not able well to digest the business of Eternal Immense or Infinite And this he thinks he proves by two principal Instances which he thinks are unquestionable 1. That there is and would be such a thing as Duration and that duration would be successive though there were no being in rerum natura which he calls tempus aeternum 2. That there is unquestionably an infinite Space actually And yet all these imaginary consequences and absurdities follow upon that Supposition which are urged as the Reasons against the successive eternal duration of Individuals above mentioned For in that infinite space there are infinite Miles and infinite Leagues and yet thrice so many Miles as Leagues The extent at both the extremes of East and West infinite yet each extreme divided infinite and many such the like Instances which yet notwithstanding avoid not the truth of an infinite extension To this I answer briefly in this place for I have elsewhere examined at large the truth of both these Hypotheses I do in the first place premise That as the excess as I may call it of Being namely Infinitude is difficult to apprehend so the defect of Being namely Nothing is very difficult to apprehend When we go about to apprehend simple Nothing yet our Imagination clothes it with something like Existence and gives imaginary being to Nothing before we can come to shape a thought concerning it And certainly Duration and Space are in themselves relative to something that doth durare and something that is spatiatum namely something extended And if any thing I cannot say but if any Conceptible is more nothing than another Duration without a thing that dureth and Space without a thing that is extended in it is the veriest the absolutest Nothing that can be While they are in conjunction with the thing that sustains them they are the meanest Being that is for they are but modes of being and therefore when the things that must sustain them are not they are the purest nothing that can undergo the notion of Nothing To say there is a duration whether successive or permanent or indivisible when there is nothing that doth sustain that duration is a Phantasm
discovered ex praenotis per viam rationalis discursus Thus probably Men by the Signatures Tasts and Colours of Herbs bearing analogy to other things they knew concluded fairly touching their Nature and Use which by Tryal and Experience they improved into more fixed and stable Theorems and Conclusions And upon this account also many Practical Arts especially relating to Numbers Weight Measure and Mechanism had their production for the Rudiments of Proportion being lodged in the Mind they seem to have grown intentionally and ex industria into those various practices of Arithmetick Geometry and Mechanicks resulting from those principles per media processus rationalis and thus those practices of the Rules of Proportion Mechanical Motions Staticks Architecture Navigation Measuring of Distances and Quantities and infinite more did arise 4. Some things in their first discovery seem purely accidental and although possibly the operation of Reason and Tryal and Experiment might or may carry on the Invention into farther Improvements and Advances yet in the very first primo primum of the Discovery it may be accidental The old whether true or fabulous Discovery of Fire may serve to explain my conception wherein it is supposed that one sitting upon a Hill and tumbling down Flint stones upon the collision thereof he observed sparks of Fire which nevertheless he after improved by adding combustible materials to it and doubtless upon such and the like occurrences many Chymical and other accidental Discoveries have been made besides and beyond and without the intention of the Operator And I well knew a Person that had not capacity enough to deduce any thing of curiosity per processum rationalem yet by accidental dealing with Water and some Canes did arrive to a most admirable excellence in some Mechanical Works of that nature though he never had the Wit to give a reason of his performance of them 5. Some things have been found out by a kind of necessity and exigence of Humane Nature such as Clothes Societies Places of Defence and Habitation and possibly much of the plainer sort of Tillage and Husbandry Venter magister artis ingeniÃque largitor and commonly these were the earliest Inventions because Nature stood early in need of them And hence it came to pass that they who had Coelum clementius that afforded them necessaries without the assistance of considerable Industry continued longest rude and uncultivated And therefore if the Husbandry of Ceres or Triptolemus came late into the World it was because those Eastern Countries then inhabited abounded with plenty of Fruits which supplied the defect of Husbandry till the World grew more dispersed and fuller of Inhabitants and transmigrated into parts of less natural fertility 6. Some things have been discovered not only by the Ingeny and Industry of Mankind but even the inferior Animals have subministred unto Man the invention or discovery of many things both Natural and Artificial and Medicinal unto which they are guided and in which they are directed by secret and untaught instincts which would be infinite to prosecute The Fable or History of Glaucus observing Fishes to leap into the Sea upon tasting an Herb by the shore the Weasel using Plantane as an Antidote the wounded Stag using Dittany to draw out the Arrow if true and divers others give us some Analogical Instances And these are ordinarily the Methods of Discoveries The Things or Objects discovered are principally of two kinds viz. 1. Such things as are already lodged in Nature as Natural Causes and Effects and those various Phaenomena in Nature whereof some lye more open to our Senses and daily observation others are more occult and hidden and though accessible in some measure to our Senses yet not without great search and scrutiny or some happy accident others again are such as we cannot attain to any clear sensible discovery of them either by reason of their remoteness distance and unaccessibleness as the Heavenly Bodies and things closed up in the bowels of the Earth or by reason of their subtil and curious texture escaping the clear and immediate access of Sense as Spiritual Natures the Soul and its various Faculties and Operations and the Reasons or Methods of them wherein for the most part our acquests touching them are but Opinion and Conjecture wherein Men vary according to the variety of their Apprehensions and Phantasies and wherein because they want that manuduction of Sense which is our best and surest Guide in the first Instance in matters Natural Men range into incertain inevident and unstable Notions 2. Such things as are Artificial wherein some Discoveries are simply new others are but accessions and additaments to things that were before mentioned Some things are of convenience utility or necessity to Humane Nature or the condition of Mankind some things are of curiosity some things are found out casually or accidentally some things intentionally and out of those Principles or Notions that seem to be lodged originally in the Mind Now upon these Considerations premised it seems that the late Discovery of many things in Nature and many Inventions in Art are not a sufficient Evidence of the Origination or late Origination of Mankind at least taken singly and apart 1. In things Natural the variety is so great and the various combinations therein so many that it seems possible that there should not have been a full discovery of the whole state of things Natural unto the Minds of Men although there were supposed an eternal duration of Mankind We may give our selves a Specimen hereof if we look but back upon that one Piece of Nature with which we have reason to be best acquainted namely our selves which by reason of our vicinity to our selves our daily conversation with our selves and others of the same Species our daily necessities and opportunities of inquiring into our selves and the narrowness of our own nature in comparison of the vast and various bulk of other things seems to render us a Subject capable of being very fully discovered And besides all this the more inquisitive and judicious part of Mankind have industriously set themselves for many Ages to make the best discovery they could of the nature of Man Hippocrates the Father of Physicians who lived in the 82 d Olympiad and above 2000 years since busied himself much and profoundly in this Enquiry and a succession of industrious observing and learned Physicians and Naturalists have pursued the Chase with all care and vigilancy and by the help of Anatomical Dissections have searched into those various Maeanders of the Veins Arteries Nerves and Integrals of the Humane Body Yet for all this in this sensible and narrow part of Humane Nature the husk and shell thereof how much remains after all this whereof we are utterly ignorant So that notwithstanding all the Discoveries that have been made by the Ancients and those more curious and plentiful Discoveries by the latter Ages there still remains so much undiscovered that leaves still room for Admiration
and Industry and gives us a powerful conviction of our Ignorance that the things we know in this little narrow obvious part of Nature the Body of Man is the least part of that we know not touching the same But when we yet consider how small a part of the Humane Nature is that which is the Corporeal part and how little we know with any tolerable certainty touching the more noble Parts Acts and Operations of the Humane Nature the Principle of Life Sense and Intellection we have still reason to conclude that this little narrow near Subject of our Knowledge is yet very difficult for us actually and fully to comprehend and furnisheth our search with more Materials than we are possibly able to exhaust with all our Industry Care Study and Observation When I consider those difficulties that occurr touching the Production of that we call the Soul whence it is what it is what power it is that performs the processus formativus that digests disposes models the prima stamina naturae humanae that acts with most admirable skill dexterity infallible order and in the most incomparable way of Intelligence and yet wholly destitute of those Organs whereby we exercise the operations of Life Sense and Intellection That incomparable accommodation of all parts and things fittest for use for time for convenience Again when I consider those various powers of the Sensible Nature that Regiment that it performs and exerciseth by the Spirits Nerves and Muscles the admirable powers of Sensation of Phantasie of Memory in what Salvatories or Repositories the Species of things past are conserved Again when I consider the strange powers of Intellection Ratiocination Reminiscence and what that Thing or Nature is that performs all those various operations And when I consider how little how incertain how contradictory those Sentiments of Mankind have been touching these things wherein nevertheless they have searched and toyled Age after Age I must needs conclude That if we had no other subject of our search and enquiry besides our selves we should have for ought I know for infinite Ages a continued stock for our discovery and when we had learned much yet still even in this narrow Subject there would be still somewhat to be learned and we should never be able actually to overtake the plenary discovery of what would remain Sic rota posterior currit sed in axe secundo And if this one small near piece of Nature still affords new matter for our discovery where or when should we be ever able to search out all the vast Treasuries of Objective Knowledge that lyes within the compass of the Universe So that the new Discoveries that have been made in Natural things is not a sufficient evidence of the newness of the existence of Mankind because of that inexhaustible Magazin of Natural Causes and Effects which possibly will store Mankind with new Discoveries unto an everlasting continuance 2. And the same that is said for the redundance of matters intelligible and cognoscible in things Natural may be also applied to things Artificial There are these things that render Artificial Inventions prodigiously fertil and various 1. The variety of the materials of things that may be applied to Artificial ends and uses as we have Iron Brass Wood Stones Sounds Light Figuration Tactile qualities some things of a more active some things of a more passive nature some things diversified in degrees of heat cold dryness moisture various Elements Meteors and infinite variety of these Materials we have which may be the material constituents or ingredients into Artificial Structures Engins Motions or Effects 2. The variety of the Apprehensions and Fancies of several Men in the destination and application of things to several ends and uses and this arising in them partly by the various texture and frame of their very temper of their Brains Blood and Spirits partly by variety of Education partly by Necessity partly by Accidental Emergency by this means possibly the same Material is variously managed into various Artifices according to this variety of Phantasy or Imagination As take the same Wool for instance one Men felts it into a Hat another weaves it into Cloth another weaves it into Kersey or Serge another weaves it into Arras and possibly these variously subdiversified according to the phantasy of the Artificer For it is most certain that there is not greater variety in the figures and complexions of Mens Faces and Features and in the contemperations of their natural Humours than there is in their Phantasies Apprehensions and Inclinations And hence it is that for instance the texture of Zeuxes or Apelles inclines him to the invention or improving of Painting Archimedes to Mechanical Motions Euclid to Geometrical Conclusions and hence it must necessarily come to pass that according to the variety of Men that either casually or industriously apply themselves to Artificial Discoveries or Inventions there will ensue variety of Inventions That Invention that did arise from the Genius or temperament of the Phantasie or Imagination of Apelles would probably never in the same individual Invention have been found out before him though the World of Men had lasted millions of Years before him because perchance in that long Period no Man had ever the same Syntax of Phantasie or Imagination that he had and consequently though some Artificial Inventions are as it were of that common congruity to the general Phantasies of Men or seem to arise upon a common sutableness to the use or exigence of Mankind as digging planting ploughing sowing making of Apparel and Houses yet some have that particular respect or cognation to the Phantasie of this or that particular Man that they would never have been found out till such a Man had had his being in the World and consequently the Invention was not found sooner because the Man to whose Phantasie this Invention was accommodate was not born nor lived sooner 3. The variety of Application and Combination of several Materials of Artificial things in their several Artificial Complements For it is very plain that even where things are finite and determinate in their number yet they arise to a strange and prodigious multitude if not indefinitude by their various Positions Combinations and Conjunctions The Letters of the Alphabet which arise from the several apertures and conjunctions of the Tongue the Teeth the Palate the Lips the Throat are but 24 in number yet various combinations of these Letters are the formal constituents of all the Words and Languages in the World And yet all the Words and Languages in the World do not amount to the hundredth part of those other articulate Languages that might be made out of the remaining combinations of the Letters of the Alphabet which are not in use in any or all the Languages of the World The general division of Lines in Geometry is into streight and crooked but the various combinations and positions of these two sorts of Lines would make more Figures of
the condition of Greece the Learned Part of the World after their subjugation by the Turks and this possibly may be the condition of China in a few years after the great Irruption and Devastation by the Tartars wherein possibly if an Age or two hence the state of things should be judged according to the present appearance it would be looked upon as if it had never been the habitation of those Curious Arts which some time dwelt there and possibly the setting on foot some of those very Arts that were once well known in those parts would be looked upon as the Natales of those Arts or the first Inchoation of them Wars and Desolations having obliterated the Monuments of their former practices which yet nevertheless would be in truth but the reviving of those Arts which were long before practised though intermitted and interrupted by the vicissitudes of Wars And upon the same account are those alterations that have hapned in the condition and state of People by other accidents as Inundations Epidemical Diseases Corruption of the Air in some Parts and Continents either by some eruption of pernicious Vapours or other Inclemency of the Heavens Plato in his third Book de Legibus in the beginning though he suppose an interminate Beginning of Mankind and that there were successively Cities Laws and Arts yet he supposeth that upon these and the like Occurrences those that escaped these common Calamities betook themselves to the Mountains kept Sheep and preserved the Species of Mankind but most of those Arts and Sciences which formerly were common became disused and forgotten among them But after Mankind multiplying they descended into the Vallies and by degrees mutual conversation the necessity of their condition and the due consideration of things did gradually revive those Arts which Men had formerly lost by long intermission For such is the indoles of the Humane Nature where it is not strangely over-grown with Barbarousness that it will by a kind of Natural Sagacity discover things especially necessary for the use of Humane Life and Society as Husbandry Laws Government Architecture Clothing and the like as Bees or Ants provide for their common habitation and supply Upon all which it may seem that we are over-hasty when we conclude That because Arts or Sciences do perchance discover themselves first to our view in such Places or Ages that therefore this was their first and primitive production or that they were never before For it may very reasonably be that those or the like Arts might have been either in other places and by a kind of migration or circulation be transmitted to those new places either by Armies or Colonies deduced hither or that even among the same People or Nation these Arts were sometimes flourishing though possibly having received some intermission by great Accidents and Occurrences they again do repullulare and revive upon the opportunity of Peace Trade Commerce and Popular Increase Nay many times it comes to pass as is before observed That when People are multiplied so that their places grow strait and narrow and their supplies not proportionable to their number necessity and exigence it gives an edge to their Industry and Invention and produceth new Discoveries of things that were either not known before or forgotten And even this one thing hath advanced the Dutch to that eminence of Manufacture Industry and Arts that they exceed the rest of the World therein We may have an Instance of this Circulation of Arts even in this Kingdom of England in that which is our great Manufacture namely Woollen Cloth It appears very plainly by those ancient Gilds that were settled in England for this Manufacture as at Lincoln York Oxford and divers other Cities that in the time of H. 2. and R. 1. this Kingdom greatly flourished in that Art but by the troublesom Wars in the time of King John H. 3. and also in the times of E. 1. and E. 2. this Manufacture was wholly lost and all our Trade ran out in Wools Wool-fells and Leather carried out in specie and the Manufacture during those Warly times held its course in France the Netherlands and the Hans Towns but by the Wisdom and peaceable times of E. 3. and his fair treating of forein Artists which he invited and entertained in this Kingdom he regained that Art hither again which for near one hundred Years had been for the most part intermitted which hath hitherto continued to the great Wealth and Benefit of this Kingdom So that we are not to conclude every new appearance of any Art or Science is the first production of it but as they say of the River Tigris and some others they sink into the ground and keep a subterranean course it may be 40 or 50 miles and then break out above ground again which is not so much a new River as the continuation and new appearance of the old So many times it falls out with Arts and Sciences though they have their non-appearances for some Ages and then seem first to discover themselves where before they were not known it is not so much the first production of the Art as a transition or at least a restitution of what possibly was either before in another or in the same Country or People And thus some tell us that Guns and Printing though but lately discovered in Europe yet were of far ancienter use in China So that notwithstanding this Consideration of the late Invention of Arts or Discoveries of things Natural or Artificial Mankind might have had an infinite succession or at least such a continuance as surmounts all those Accounts which the most prodigal Computations have given and that Saying of the Wise Man may be verified Ecclesiast 1.9 The thing that hath been is that which shall be and that which hath been done is that which shall be done and there is no new thing under the Sun Is there any thing whereof it may be said See this is new It hath been already of old time before I shall here add a farther Consideration because it hath a cognation with the Subject of this Chapter There seems to be very probable Conjectures made touching the Origination of Mankind because there seems to be one Radical Language from which all others have their derivation though some carry in them more some less Memorials of their Original as they were more or less remote in their Inception The Languages of the World may be aptly enough divided into the Primo primae the Primo secundae and the Secundo secundae The Language which I call Primo primae must needs be but one if the Original of Mankind were but two common Parents of either Sex as the Holy Scriptures teach us and this one Language they must needs learn either from a conformation of Voices by the Angels such might that vocal Language be between Almighty God by the ministration of Angels and Adam whereof we read in the first and second Chapters of Genesis or it
as I remember that in Rome it self in process of time the Latin Language was so altered that the Priests could not readily understand the Hymns composed for their Idol-Service by the ancient Priests of Rome 4. As succession of Ages so variety of places in the same Country and Nation gives such variety of Dialects in the same Language that one side of a Kingdom scarce understands the other witness the four Dialects of the Greek Language and the several Pronunciations of the French in several parts of France and the various Dialects of the English in the North and West that render their Expressions many times unintelligible to the other and both scarce intelligible to the Midland various Provinces of the same Kingdom and that at first used the same Language in process of time use various manners of Pronunciation which in time also alter the structure of the Words as they are spoken or written which in farther process of time alters the Language into several Dialects as it did in Greece and other places 5. Every Nation hath a certain humour or disposition appropriate to it which by a kind of Natural necessity frames the very Air of Words Speech and Accents accommodate and similar to that Natural humour or inclination Graiis dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui In the very frame of the Speech of the Spaniard Italian French Dutch Welsh English we may find a kind of Image of their Complexions and Tempers suiting and framing their Speech Accents Tone Pronunciation Vowels conform thereunto no less than in their Gate and Gesture and this very Account would in a little time diversifie one and the same Language in the Mouths of several Nations so that in a little space they would not be the same 6. Commerce and Trade with forein Nations gives great alterations in Languages each Country borrowing some Words Accents or Expressions from the other whereby in a little time it is quite altered and becomes a mixt confused Language made up of the Ingredients of several Languages 7. As in Clothes so in Words Phrases and Expressions there commonly grow new Fashions whereby it comes to pass that the same Words and Phrases that were not used or scarce understood in former Ages become in Fashion Reputation and Vogue in another Age and this obtains sometims from the Courts of Princes wherein a Word a little in request soon grows in fashion with the Gentry and from them at the third hand passeth over to the Tradesman or Countryman 8. Many times the Literati and Scholares coyn new Words and sometimes in common Speech or Writing in their Native Language give Terminations and Idiotisms sutable to their Native Language unto Words newly invented or translated out of other Languages which is sometimes done out of Affectation sometimes out of Necessity by reason of the want of sufficient significancy in their own Language and when such Phrases or Words come abroad in printed Books in Sermons or Orations they become more general and incorporate into the Native Language 9. Many Languages of Countries are greatly altered and mingled and sometimes totally eradicated and lost by Invasions and Victories or by transmission of Colonies by Forein Princes of a different Language Thus by the chacing the Britons out of England into Wales their Language was wholly exterminated from hence with them and by the successive Incursions and Invasions of the Saxons Danes and Normans the English Language grew a kind of mixture of them all which yet in process of time hath been so much varied that the English that was written in the time of H. 1. is not now intelligible It is true that those Languages that are not now Native though sometimes they were but are preserved in Writing or Rules or Canons have long kept their simplicity as the Hebrew Greek and Latin which have been indeed preserved from being lost by vulgar use but when a Language once becomes of vulgar use it soon loseth its integrity thus the Latin degenerated into the Italian and the very Hebrew and Greek more barbarous by much where they are popularly used than in the ancient Writings wherein they have been preserved and kept to their ancient integrity Considering therefore the great instability of Languages the great variations and changes to which they are subject the great alterations that they have had the great difficulty of finding any Language which upon grounds barely of Reason without Divine Revelation we can safely call Original and the great difficulty of deducing other Languages entirely from it It is hard for us singly to lay any weight upon this Instance to prove the Origination of Man upon a meer Moral Account or Topical Ratiocination thereof CAP. V. The Fourth Instance of Fact seeming to evince the Novity of Mankind namely the Inceptions of the Religions and Deities of the Heathens and the deficiency of this Instance REligion seems to be as connatural to Humane Nature as Reason and possibly a more distinguishing property of Humane Nature than it For almost in all sensible Creatures especially those of the more perfect kind a certain Image or weak Adumbration of something like Reason appears yet we find in no Creatures below Mankind any thing like Religion or Veneration of a Deity And those faint Conjectures touching something analogical to Religion observed in Elephants are too weak to give any reasonable admission thereof in them Religion therefore seems as ancient as Humanity it self at least of some kind of dress or fashion or other therefore if we can arrive at the Inception of Religion Veneration of a Deity and those Rites Adorations and Services that result from thence we have reason to conjecture that the Inception of Mankind was not long before And because the Inception of Mankind is not doubted by Jews or Christians who acknowledge the Truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures that reveal and discover the Origination both of Mankind and the World but the doubt only resteth among those of the Gentile World it hath been thought a reasonable Argument to convince the Heathen World of the Origination of Mankind by discovering the Origination not only of the Religious Worship of the Heathens but even of those very Deities which they celebrated and venerated and paid that Religious Worship unto And this Discovery of the Origination of their Heathenish Deities hath been endeavoured by two Methods First by following the ancient Histories of the Phenicians Egyptians Grecians and Romans by which means they have traced up most if not all their Heathenish Deities to their Original and their first Inauguration into Deities whereas they were in their original for the most part but Men of great Note and Merit or Power in the Ancient World or such who outgoing the ordinary rate of Mankind by some signal Excellence Learning or Industry were by the admiring inferior sort of Men translated into the Opinion and Veneration of Gods and then there wanted not Poets and Priests to derive from them a
had its successive Alterations and Seasons according to certain Periodical Revolutions of the Planets to the first Ages of the World he assigns the Presidency of Saturn in matters of Religion and so downward according to several successive assigned Periods These are vain Conjectures but they serve to explain what I mean namely That there may be successive Alterations and Changes in the professed Religion of the World in successive Ages and successively in the same and other places of the World whereby it will be hard to determin the Epocha of the Commencement of Mankind by any one Form or Shape of Religion professed in the World for there may be some Religion antecedent to that which to us in this Age appears to have been the ancientest but still with this probable Conclusion That since Truth is more ancient than Errour it seems that if there were any Religion that was Primitive in the World it was the true Religion and true Worship of the true God and not Idolatry or worshipping of Men or Idols or the Works of Nature and consequently that although we had no Monuments extant of any Religion ancienter than Idolatry yet we had no reason to conclude that that Idolatrous Religion was the most ancient or coeval to the Origination of Mankind but rather that Mankind had an Existence in the World much antecedent to such Idolatrous Worship wherein the true God was for many Ages and Generations truly worshipped and that partly by the subtilty of the Enemy of Mankind partly by the apostacy and corruption of Humane Nature and partly by the gradual decay of that true and ancient Tradition of the true Worship of the true God Idolatry and Superstition prevailed and obtained in the World So that although it be a most certain Truth that Mankind had an Origination and was not without Beginning yet the Evidence of the Origination of their Idolatry and Idolatrous Deities is no sufficient Proof or Evidence of the Origination of Mankind CAP. VI. A Fifth Consideration concerning the Decays especially of the Humane Nature and whether there be any such Decays and what may be collected concerning the Origination of Man upon that Supposition THis Argument hath been excellently handled by Dr. Hakewell I shall therefore be the shorter in it yet somewhat I shall say concerning it Some of those that have been inquisitive into the Nature of Man have observed two things which if they were true would certainly give us an irrefragable Argument against the Eternal Succession of Mankind viz. 1. That the Ages of Men grow gradually shorter and shorter 2. That the Quantity of Humane Bodies was ordinarily heretofore much larger than they are now and by a kind of gradual decay of that Natural Vigour and Strength they decline to a smaller Stature Thus Plutarch inter placita Philosophorum tells us out of Empedocles Nostrae aetatis homines priscis comparatos infantium instar esse and yet Empedocles lived upon the point of 2000 Years since and Plutarch near 1500 Years since and Pliny in the 7 th Book of his Natural History cap. 16. tells us the same In plenum autem cuncto mortalium generi minorem indies fieri propemodum observatur rarósque patribus proceriores consumente ubertate seminum exustione in cujus vices nunc vergat aevum and some Instances are given there and by the Additional Notes thereupon of the great Sceletons of Mens Bodies found in several Ages and that Jam ante annos mille vates ille Homerus non cessavit minora corpora mortalium quam prisca conqueri And indeed if this natural Decrease of the Ages of Mens Lives and their Bodily Statures had held such a proportion it would not only avoid the possibility of an Eternal Succession of Mankind but would also give us a very late Epocha of their first Origination For a very ancient Original accompanied with such a natural Decrease of Age and Stature by reason of that insensible but unintermitted decay of the strength and stature of Nature would have long since reduced Mankind to be but Ephemeraes in duration and little other than Insects in extent or rather wholly determined and put a Period to the whole Species infinite Ages past But it seems that these are mistaken complaints both of Empedocles and Homer for surely in so great a Period as 2000 or 1500 Years elapsed since the death of those Men the experiment of that Decrease would have been much more obvious and observable than we find it at this day And although the nature of Mankind and of other Creatures subject to corruption if left to it self without the continued Subsidium and Influence of the Divine Providence would soon have faln into dissolution per saltum and without the incessant and corroding invasions of so long a time yet that same Power that first gave Being to things hath supported their successive Generations in the same state and natural vigour that it ever had abating those accidental occurrences that Sin Excess and other occurrences have brought into things First therefore as touching the Decays of the Age of Man's Life we do indeed learn from the Sacred Scripture for no Humane History reacheth so high That the Lives of the Ancients were very long especially before and for some time after the Flood and this the Divine Wisdom Providence and Goodness ordered for most excellent Ends namely the Peopling of the New World and that without any other means than his own Will or at least by means unknown to us in Arphaxad the Son of Shem the great Age of the Ancients was cut to halves namely to 440 Years and in his Grand-child Peleg it was again cut to halves for he lived but 242 Years and it is also true that afterwards gradually to the days of Moses the Lives of Men became shorter and shorter till they fixed in that common Period of the Life of Man of 70 or 80 Years and although it be true that the Histories of former times give us some account of longer Lives of Men as the Lives of Moses Aaron Phinehas and some others and those mentioned by Pliny lib. 7. cap. 48. and some in our own Experience yet Moses himself states the ordinary Standard of the Life of Man to be 70 or at most 80 Years Psal 90.10 2 Sam. 19.32 35. And this we shall find true upon the consideration of the Chronological Account of the Years of the ancient Patriarchs and Kings that succeeded Moses as likewise of the time that the Israelites lived in the Wilderness all which that were twenty Years old and upwards at the coming into the Wilderness when the Spies were sent into Canaan which was shortly after their coming thither all these I say except Joshua and Caleb dyed within the 40 Years Peregrination in the Wilderness and at this stay the ordinary Age of Men hath been for these 4000 Years abating those casualties either of Diseases or other Accidents that have shortned the ordinary complete
Ages of Mens Li 〈…〉 2. As touching the Stature of Men it must be agreed that in former Ages there have been Giants and Men of extraordinary Stature some Instances we have in the same Pliny and other Heathen Authors and many more in the History of the Old Testament But these were out of the ordinary and regular course of Nature But it seems that ordinarily in all Ages the Statures of Men have little differed from what they now are though according to the difference of Climates and situations there hath been ordinarily and regularly a difference in the Stature of Men many times Marsh-Countries and those that are of a temperate heat producing Men of a larger size than Mountainous or those Parts that are nearer the Sun as some parts of Spain and Galicia And that the ordinary Stature of Mens Bodies is much the same now as anciently in the same Places or Regions appears by undeniable Experience 1. The Bodies of the Egyptians that have been exsiccated into Mummy and lain some thousands of Years are found to have the same Stature or very little differing from what they now have neither could they shrink into a shorter dimension by the length of time considering that the Bones of all parts are joyned in their extremities and could not become shorter without putrefaction which occurrs not in those exsiccated Bodies 2. As the first practical Rudiments of Arithmetick were taken from the Parts of the Humane Body in the Numeri primarii or Digitales so in Geometry it is evident that the first notation of Measures was taken from the Parts of the Body of Man and very ancient both among the Hebrews Greeks and Romans and these hold still the same proportion as they did anciently These Measures according to the Jewish Arabian and Egyptian Account are as followeth 6 Barley-corns make 1 Digit An Inch consisted of 8 Barley-corns or which is all one one Digit and ⅓ of a Digit The Palm consisted of 3 Inches or 4 Digits or 24 Barley-corns mentioned Exod. 25.25 Spithama a Span consisted of 9 Inches or 12 Digits the half of a Cubit namely the utmost extent between the extremity of the Thumb and the little Finger extended to their greatest dimension This was the Measure of Aarons Breast-plate Exod. 28.16 A Foot consisted of 4 Palms or 12 Inches or 16 Digits or 96 Barley-corns A Cubit the interval between the Elbow and the extremity of the longest Finger this was the Ordinary Cubit it consisted of 6 Palms which allowing 3 Inches to a Palm is 18 Inches or a Foot and a half vid. Kircher in Oedipo Tom. 2. Class 8. where writing of the Egyptian Cubit Habet autem omnis Cubitus sex Palmos Palmus quatuor digitos Digitus sex grana hordei This was the usual Mosaical Legal Cubit which they used in Measures of Building the length of Ehud's Dagger Judges 3.16 and that measure whereby the dimensions of the Ark are measured though besides that common Cubit they had among the Jews and Egyptians two larger sorts of Cubits one called Cubitus Regius which was 3 Inches longer than the ordinary Cubit and the other called Cubitus Geometricus which was double to the common Cubit viz. 3 Foot or according to others 6 common Cubits viz. 9 Foot These Measures according to the Roman or Latin Account are as followeth 4 Barley-corns breadth make 1 Digit An Inch Uncia consisted of 5 Barley-corns and ⅓ of a Barley-corn or which is all one the breadth of the Thumb or 1 Digit and ⅓ of a Digit The Palm consisted of 3 Inches or which is all one of 4 Digits or 16 Barley-corns Spithama the Span consisted of 3 Palms or 9 Inches or 12 Digits or 48 Barley-corns Pes a Foot consisted of 4 Palms or 12 Inches or 16 Digits or 64 Barley-corns Cubitus a Cubit consisted of 6 Palms or 18 Inches or 24 Digits or 96 Barley-corns Gressus a Step two Foot and a half in Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Passus a Pace consisting of 2 Steps or of 5 Foot according to the Roman Account but according to the Greek Account 6 Roman Feet and ¼ so that the Grecian Pace was longer than the Roman by a Foot and quarter Orgya or a Fathom the distance between the extremities of the Fingers of each Hand the Arms being extended which very near answers the length of any person from Head to Foot and to reduce it to a certainty the usual estimate thereof is 6 Foot Vide de hac re Danielem Angelocratorem de Ponderibus Mensuris The usual Computation according to a medium or proportion of the height of a Man is 6 Foot or a regular Fathom or 4 Cubits So Vitruvius Pes est sexta pars altitudinis corporis Cubitus quarta with this agrees Kircher ubi supra Altitudo humana è quatuor communibus Cubitis Egyptiacis unus quoque Cubitus sex Palmis Palmus quatuor digitis So that the ordinary height of a Man is 96 Digits which the ancient Egyptians estimated to be equal to that Mystical Cubit among them stiled Passus Ibidis or the Trigon that the Ibis makes at every step consisting of 3 latera each 32 Digits amounting in all to 96 Digits the common Measure of the procerity of a Man or 4 common Cubits These were the very ancient estimates of distances taken from the Parts of a Man and their extent namely the Finger the Thumb the Span the Cubit the Fathom the Foot the Step and these were the estimates and reduction of them to known and certain Measures and these Proportions are still even in our Age in Men that are of an ordinary stature The Fingers breadth now as anciently 6 Barly-corns breadth the 4 Fingers or Palm about 3 Inches the Span the Cubit the Foot the Step the Fathom of the same extent and dimension now as anciently and the ordinary estimate of a tall Man 6 Foot now as then Witness our Qld Statute called Compositio Ulnarum Perticarum Tria grana hordei sicca rotunda viz. in length faciunt pollicem duodecim pollices faciunt pedem tres pedes faciunt ulnam quinque ulnae dimidium faciunt perticam quadraginta perticae in longitudine quatuor in latitudine faciunt acram Whereby we have very plain reason to conclude that Empedocles and Pliny were mistaken touching the gradual diminution of Humane Stature since those Measures that took their denomination and extent from the Parts of Men held anciently that extent and length that the very same Parts in Men hold in these times And truly if we look upon the progressive Growth and Periods in Humane Nature as also in all other perfect Animals they hold regularly the same state and order as they held in the most remote Ages whereof we have any Memorial in Ancient Writings or Histories The same time for the Formative process of the Humane Embryo now as is recorded to have been usual in the times of
Aristotle and Hippocrates viz. ordinarily in the beginning of the tenth Month. Aristot Hist Animal cap. 3 4 Hippocrat de Carnibus in fine The proportion of Stature the same now as anciently they bred Teeth at 7 Months Aristot Hist Animalium l. 2. cap. 10. shedding and new breeding of Teeth at 7 Years Censorinus de Die Natali cap. 14. and again breeding of the novissimi maxillares or genuini dentes at 20. Arist Hist Animal l. 2. cap. 4. At 5 Years of age in an ordinary growth the procerity is half of that which will be attained at full age Aristot de Generat Animalium l. 1. cap. 18. though Pliny l. 7. cap. 16. assigns that proportion to trimatos or 3 Years of age but mistakenly as it seems The ordinary Period of the Humane Procreative Faculty in Males 65 or at most 70 in Females 45 or at most 50. Arist Hist Animal l. 5. cap. 14. The several Periods of the Ages of the Life of Man according to Hippocrates divided into 7 viz. at 7 at 14 at 22 at 35 at 42 at 61 and from thence to the end of Life which at most is 81 or 84 upon the greatest ordinary Account Vide Rhodogin l. 19. cap. 21. So that although the Humane Nature as to that part of it that is Corporeal is subject to changes and corruptions and not of so firm and stable a consistence as the Heavenly Bodies and consequently not so capable of a permanent and fixed constancy and continuation as they yet by the constant and unintermitted Influx of the Divine Providence this corruptible and mutable Nature of Mankind yea and of the other perfect Animals is admirably preserved in the same measure of extent regular procedure and length of duration as it hath been many Thousands of Years since Indeed it may be possibly true that Accidents accidental Occurrences Intemperance ill and noxious Effluvia from the Earth Waters and intemperature of the Air and other Accidents may in these latter Ages of the World produce some such Diseases and accidental Disorders as may possibly more infest Mankind and occasion more Mortality than in former Ages But as to the regular and ordinary course of Natural procedure and state of things with Mankind yea and other Animals there seems to be little or no decay or variation from what hath been formerly abating that Concussion which the Perfection of the Humane Nature suffered by the first Fall and the shortning of Mens Lives which is of another Consideration And therefore I am not so apt to attribute that firm Consistency of the Heavenly Bodies their constant uninterrupted and invaried Motion and those other Indications of Permanency and Perpetuity barely or singly to the singular and indissoluble Texture of their Nature or Composition as to that incessant Influx and unintermitted Causality of the Divine Power and Providence which I so plainly see conserves almost an equal regularity in the Motions Processes Succession and Condition of poor frail Sublunary Bodies which in their little Period belonging to their specifical and individual Nature have the same regularities and orders now as formerly and in the whole Systeme of their specifical Nature preserved in the successive Individuals for many thousands of years obtain the same regularity order and method of Existence without decay as it hath always held This Supposition therefore of the gradual decay of the state of Humane Nature though in hypothesi it would strongly infer a late Origination of Man yet it is false in thesi and so concludes nothing touching the Argument in hand namely the Origination of Mankind in some determinate Point of Finite Duration An Ingenious Person in a new Essay of Natural Philosophy Entituled New Principles of Philosophy Part. 2. Cap. 22. tells us That the Sun or Fiery Region gains gradually upon the Inferior Elements so that the greatest Declination of the Sun in the time of Hipparchus and Ptolemy was observed to be 23 deg 52 min. but is since found to be reduced to 23 deg 30 min. or 28 min. which is a necessary Consequent of the Suns gradual approximation towards the Earth And if that should be so it were a necessary Argument of the Origination of the World and with it of Mankind within a certain Period of Time But we must not be over hasty in allowing of that Position for every Day gives us Instances how difficult it is exactly to find out the Distances of the Heavenly Bodies Lines and Motions especially when we come to measure them by Minutes or Parts of Minutes which cannot be effected but by Mathematical Instruments which can never reach to a perfect exactness in this nature CAP. VII The Sixth Evidence of Fact proving Novitatem generis humani namely The History of the Patres familiarum and the Original Plantation of the Continents and Islands of the World IN Profane Authors and Historians we may find the Roots and Founders of many Kingdoms Monarchies and States either by Victories or by Emigrations or by Intestine Commotions or by common Consent of the People or Inhabitants Thus we find the Foundation of the later States or Monarchies in that Constitution at least wherein they now stand or in some former Ages stood As the Foundation of the English Monarchy in the Norman Conquest and before that the Foundations of the Saxon and Danish Monarchies in this Kingdom in the old Histories of Hoveden William of Malmsbury and others The like might be found for the Foundation of the French Spanish and Danish Kingdoms the Empire of Germany of the Grand Seignior and others And ancienter Histories give us an account of the Foundation of the Roman Empire in Romulus of the Grecian in Alexander of the Persian in Cyrus of the Babylonian in Nabonassar of the Assyrian in Belus Ninus Semiramis But yet as is formerly observed the Discovery of these Originations of Civil Coalitions into Kingdoms and Empires do not lead us up to the Origination of Mankind in the material Constituents of these Kingdoms and Empires for the Men that made up these Civil Bodies or at least their Ancestors had a Being before though perchance under a different form of Civil Government or under some other Names or Governour As the several States of Greece before their coalition into one Kingdom under Alexander or Philip his Father subsisted in several smaller Principalities or Commonwealths For these kind of Histories though they afford us the Inception of new Governors or Governments the Capita Regiminum yet they give us not the Capita Familiarum For though Romulus for Instance laid the Foundation of the City and Monarchy of Rome and became as it were the Parent of that City and State yet he was not the Parent of the Men that were the material Constituents of it for they were a Farrago or Collection of many people that had their Existence long before in themselves or their natural Progenitors And upon the same account it is that although many Histories as Diodorus
the Seas and established it upon the Floods So that there are greater Store-houses of Water than appear visible to the World If we could suppose that the incumbent Superficies of the Earth should subside and press upon those Store-houses of Water within its bowels it might afford a competent store to drown the Earth without a new Creation 2. Again we may easily compute that the quantity or extension of the Body of the Air even that which is commonly called the Atmosphere which at the lowest account extends seven Miles in height might by condensation into Water afford a competent store for the drowning of the World and yet be again rarified into the same dimension and consistence which before it obtained for there is that vicinity of Nature between those two Elements that we daily see considerable proportions of the one by condensation changed into the other 3. When we consider those immense Inundations that are Annually and with some constant equality occasioned by great Rains as for Instance in the River Nilus which by the Annual Rains in Ethiopia is raised almost every Year twenty Cubits and overflows a considerable part of Egypt yearly between the Months of June and October and the like Inundations yearly hapning by Periodical Showers in the great River of America called Orenoque between May and September whereby it riseth upright above 30 Foot so that many of the Islands and Plains at other times inhabited are 20 Foot yearly at that time under Water And when we see that even the Ocean it self in its daily Tides especially those that happen about the Equinoxes caused as the Copernicans say by the Intersections of the Annual and Diurnal Motions of the Earth we need not have recourse to a new Creation of Waters to perform this Office of the Divine Providence and Justice He might by a stronger elevation of Vapours or by an extraordinary motion of the Seas perform his purpose which though probably it might not at the same time drown Asia and America yet by the successive peragration of these Waters they might drown the whole Earth as the Inundation of Nilus by the Showers of Ethiopia make the Flood there a Month sooner than it happens in Egypt 2. As to the Second Objection I do confess it to be most true that the Universal Deluge was a Judgment upon the Old World for their intolerable degeneration from their Duty to God But I do not think that was the only Reason thereof for the Infinite Power of God might have destroyed those Evil Men by a Pestilence as well as by a Flood without detriment to the harmless Brutes or Birds But as God Almighty is of Infinite Wisdom so it is the high Prerogative of that Wisdom to have variety of Excellent Ends in the same Action I do really think that this Universal Deluge was not only an act of his Vengeance upon Evil Men but possibly an act of Goodness and Bounty to the very Constitution of this Inferior World though the particulars thereof be hid from us And if as some would have it it should be coextended only to the places that were then inhabited and so the Flood particular yet most certain it would be even in such a particular Flood many great Spots of Ground would be necessarily drowned where never any Men were or inhabited 3. And it seems it is too hastily concluded That in the Period of 1656 or as the Septuagint whom he follows 2256 Years between the Creation and the Flood that only Palestine Syria or Mesopotamia were inhabited For considering the longevity of Mens Lives in that Period a small skill in Arithmetical Calculation will render the Number of coexisting Inhabitants of the Earth more than six times as many as would have hapned in 5000 Years when Mens Ages were abridged to that ordinary dimension which now they have and the strait bounds of Syria and Mesopotamia would not have held one fortieth part of the Inhabitants all Europe Asia and Africa were not more than sufficient for them So that as the World grew full of Sin so it grew full of Men and Beasts and stood in need of a Deluge to make room for its future Inhabitants And this is as much as I shall say in this place for the Vindication of the Possibility and Reasonableness of the Universality of that Deluge recorded by Moses And if any shall doubt of the Capacity of the Ark of Noah for the Reception of Brutes Birds and the Family of Noah with the necessary Provisions of Livelihood for them let him but consult Mr. Poole's Synopsis and he will find that which may reasonably satisfie him touching it And now I shall briefly consider the Method and Means and Manner of the Peopling of America and storing that vast Countrey with Men and Beasts and Birds so far forth as we may reasonably conjecture And herein I must confess that I only make an Abstract or brief Collection of what hath been done to my hands by those that had better Opportunities and Abilities to do it as namely Grotius Laetius Breerwood Hornius Josephus Acosta Mr. John Webb Martinius and others who have professedly written De origine gentium Americanarum First therefore I shall consider the Manner of Traduction of Men into America Secondly The Manner of Traduction of Brutes into America Touching the Traduction of Mankind into America I do suppose these things following 1. That the Origination of the common Parents of the Humane Nature hapned in some part of Asia 2. That though the Origination of the common Parents of Mankind were in Asia yet some of their Descendents did come into America 3. That such Migration into America by the Descendents from Adam was not only possibly but fairly probable notwithstanding all the objected Difficulties 4. That the Migrations of the Descendents of Adam and Noah into America was successive and interpolated 5. That although we cannot certainly define the Time or Manner of all these Migrations yet many of them were long since or as we may reasonably conjecture some Thousands of Years since but yet after the Universal Deluge The Means of Transmigration of the Children or Descendents of Adam and Noah from Asia into America must be either by Land or by Sea or by both and if by Sea then it must be designed and ex proposito or casually I think it probable it may be all of these ways but especially by Sea Touching the Transmigration by Land it seems very difficult because though it may be possible that there may be some junctures between the North Continent of America and some part of Tartary Russia or Muscovy yet none are known unless the Frozen Seas in those Parts might be a means to transport Men thither which is difficult to suppose those Parts being unpassable by reason of the great Snows that happen so far Northward though some have thought that Groenland is one Continent with America and that in its farthest North-east extent it is joyned to
Pamphlets which give a greater Demonstration of the Gradual Increase of Mankind upon the face of the Earth than a hundred notional Arguments can either evince or confute and therefore I think them worthy of being mentioned to this purpose Upon all which and much more that might be said it is evident That according to the ordinary course of Nature though those common and usual Accidents of common Sicknesses ordinary Casualties and common Events are incident to Humane Nature the number of Mankind doth and must necessarily increase in the World and the Natural Supplies of Mankind are greater and more numerous than the Decays thereof I now therefore come to the Second Consideration namely The Examination of the extraordinary or more universal Correctives of the Multiplication of Mankind which because it will be large I shall allow unto it a distinct Chapter CAP. IX Concerning those Correctives of the Excess of Mankind which may be thought to be sufficient to reduce it to a greater Equability I Come now to the Second premised Consideration and Inquiry viz. Whether there may not be found some extraordinary Occurrences and Correctives that may reduce that otherwise Natural and ordinary Increase of Mankind to an Equability And I call them Extraordinary not simply in respect of themselves but in opposition to those daily and ordinary Casualties which happen to Humane Nature and in respect of those great Distances and Periods whether certain or casual wherein they may be supposed to happen And I shall improve this Objection against the Increase de facto of Mankind with the greatest impartiality and advantage that may be It is certain that the Increase of Brutes and other Animals which are perfect and univocally generated is very great in the World Aristotle that inquisitive Searcher into Nature in his 4 th Book of the History of Animals hath given us an Account touching most Animals of the length of their Lives times of their Breeding intervals of their Birth wherein though possibly there may be variation in several Climates yet his Account may give a near estimate proportionable also to other places For Instance the Cow breeds in the second Year brings forth the tenth Month lives 15 or 20 Years the Mare breeds the third Year brings forth in the twelfth Month lives 25 30 and sometimes 40 Years the Sheep and Goat bear in the second Year bring forth in the beginning of the sixth Month sometimes two ordinarily but one lives 10 12 or 13 Years Sows breed in the second Year bring forth after four Months their Young numerous Bitches breed in the latter end of the first or beginning of the second Year bring forth after threescore Days or in the ninth Week their Young many 5 6 or sometimes 12 they live 10 or 12 sometimes 15 or 20 Years Wolves breed and bring forth as Dogs only their number fewer sometimes 2 sometimes 3 sometimes 4 the Doe brings forth after eight Months complete but one and sometimes two and live long the Fox breeds 4 the Cat 5 or 6 and lives 6 Years many times more the speedy and numerous increase of Mice is prodigious Aristotle mentions 120 produced of one Female in a very little time Pliny in his 11 th Book Cap. 63. hath in effect transcribed Aristotle herein By this it appears That the Natural Increase of these Animals is much greater than of Men yet their numbers have not arrived to that great excess because those that are for food have their reduction by their application for that purpose those that are domestical and not for food as Cats and Dogs are kept within compass by drowning or destroying their Young and those that are noxious as Wolves and Foxes are reduced by that common destruction that Men pursue them with Touching Birds their Increase seems to be much greater than of Men or Brutes but they have those reductions that bring them to a fair equability unless it be in those Islands and Rocks in the Sea unaccessible by Men where Sea-Fowls breed First their number is reduced by Man for food 2. For destruction as in Birds that are noxious 3. By the natural shortness of the Lives of many that are yet numerous breeders 4. By the mutual destruction of the weaker by Birds of prey whereof more particularly hereafter 5. By the Winter cold which starves very many either for want of heat or food and of this more hereafter Fishes are infinitely more numerous or increasing than Beasts or Birds as appears by the numerous Spawn of any one Fish though ordinarily they breed but once a Year and if all these should come ro maturity even the Ocean it self would have been long since over-stored with Fish Now the Correctives and Reductions of these are very many 1. Aristotle observes in his 6 th de Historia Animalium cap. 13. Those Eggs that are not sprinkled aspergine seminis genitalis maris prove unfruitful a great part are devoured by the Male and much more by other Fish some of their Eggs are buried in the slime and corrupted 2. Many are taken by Men and employed for food 3. As among Birds and Beasts they are Beasts and Birds of prey which are less numerous than others so especially among Fish And though the Wisdom of Providence hath given certain Expedients to Animals especially Fishes of the weaker nature to escape the voracious as swiftness to some smalness to others whereby they escape to Shallows and Shoars unaccessible to the greater and to those that are not able to move or at least not to move swiftly the protection of Shells as Oysters Escalops Crabs Lobsters and other Shell-fish yet a very great number are devoured by the voracious kind I do remember that a Friend of mine having stored a very great Pond of 3 or 4 Acres of ground with Carps Tench and divers other Pond-fish of a very great number and only put in two very little small Pikes at 7 Years end upon the draught of his Pond not one Fish was left but the two Pikes grown to an excessive bigness and all the rest together with their millions of Fry devoured by those pair of Tyrants 4. Birds also of prey as Storks Herons Cormorants and other Fowl of that kind destroy many both in the Sea Rivers Ponds and Lakes 5. Extreme Frost especially in Ponds and Lakes make a great destruction of Fish partly by freezing them partly by the exclusion of the ambient Air which insinuates it self into the Water and is necessary for the preservation of the Lives of those watry Inhabitants 6. By great Heats and Droughts not only drying up Lakes Ponds and Rivers but also tainting the Water with excessive heat and though these two do not so much concern Sea-fish who have more scope and room yet they have a great influx upon Rivers Ponds and Lakes Again to say something of Insects whether aiery terrestrial or watry they seem to be more numerous than the common sorts of univocal Animals who have
Sea that though they held the World eternal yet supposed the first Man Adam to be begotten in the Moon of a Father and Mother and from thence he came into this lower World and was called Apostolus Lunae and taught Men to worship the Moon and for this he cites Maimonides l. 3. cap. 29. though the late Translation mention nothing of his proceeding from the Moon but of his coming out of India into Babel and teaching Men the Worship of the Moon this Fable the Rabbi confutes Diodorus Siculus gives us an Account of the Opinion of the Egyptians lib. 1. cap. 2. who though they pretend a vast number of Years to have passed since the Origination of Mankind yet they suppose it had an Original Et ab orbis initio primos homines apud se creatos and they inferr it from the Fertility of their Soil by the Inundation of Nilus which at its recess leaves so fruitful a Tincture that thereby and by the heat of the Sun Animals have their visible production part after part And yet both Aristotle l. 2. Meteoron and Herodotus in Euterpe do with great probability evince that the fruitfullest part of Egypt namely the part called Delta where the Nile overflows is an Exaggeration or Ground gained by the Inundation of Nilus Herodotus ubi supra tells us That in the time of Psamniticus sometimes King of Egypt there was a Competition between the Egyptians and Phrygians who were the first People or the Terrigenae and that by the Experiment of the Education of two Infants which should not be instructed by their Natural Speech in the Language of Phrygia the Phrygians carried the priority The thing is fabulous all the use that is to be made of it is That there was a common Opinion in the Nations of the World that there was some Inception of Mankind otherwise than by the way of Natural Procreation Laertius in Prooemio supposeth the Grecians to be the first Men A quibus nedum Philosophorum sed hominum genus initium habuit The above named Diodorus Siculus lib. 4. cap. 1. tells us that the Ethiopians claim a greater Antiquity than the Egyptians who borrowed many of their Laws and Customs and Religion from them that as Ethiopia was the fittest and most congruous place for the first Production of Men and Beasts in respect of the vicinity and constancy of the Sun so de facto the Ethiopians were the first Men that were on the Earth and Terrigenae Ferunt Aethiopes primos hominum omnium creatos esse cujus rei conjecturam ferunt quod non aliunde homines in eam accesserunt sed in ipsa geniti meritò Indigetes omnium consensu appellentur Et quidem verisimile est eos qui sub meridie habitant primos è terra suisse homines genitos nam Solis ardore terram quae humida erat arefaciente atque omnibus vitam dante decens fuit locum Soli propinquierem primò naturam animantium tulisse De Laet in his History of the Original of the Americans pag. 178. tells us of the Perswasion of divers of the Americans that held there is one God Qui omnia creavit dein plures in terram defixerat sagittas è quibus hominum genus ortum propagatum fuit though they also held other inferior Deities And Pag. 106. Alii narrant è quadam specu per fenestram exiliisse sex aut nescio quot homines eósque initium dedisse humano generi in loco qui ob eam causam dicitur Pacari tampo atque ideo opinantur Tambes esse hominum antiquissimos Vide Acost l. 1. cap. 25. ad idem Thus it seems there hath been in all Nations that have had any manner of Order among them a common Opinion of the Origination of Mankind though they have dressed up the Supposition with various Fictions and Imaginations no less vain than the Poets who supposed Men to grow of the Serpents Teeth sown by Cadmus or the Stones thrown over their Heads by Deucalion and Pyrrha This perswasion and opinion of Mankind of their Original might be conveyed to the generality of Nations by some of these ways 1. By some Tradition derived down unto them from those that lived before them but then if we look after the original or first head of this Tradition it may be hard positively to define from whence it began but it seems probable that it was from those first Parents of Mankind and so the Tradition founded in the Truth of the Fact and originally delivered by them that perfectly knew it to be so It is true there are and have been very many things entertained as true by Traditional Derivation which either have not any sufficient evidence of their Truth or it may be some things that do oppose the credit of it and it were a piece of vain credulity to believe every thing that either vulgar Tradition or the Artifices of Men have imposed upon over credulous succeeding Ages and Persons And we see that as the Origination of Man hath been traditionally received so those Adjuncts and Fables with which it hath been dressed up have been also received and believed with it But to this I say 1. That the Origination of Man as a Matter of Fact could hardly be thought of but either by very considering and thinking Men whereof hereafter or by such as being the first Parents of Mankind knew their Original And if it be said they could no more know their Original than a Child new born It is true if the Production of Mankind were such at first as it is now or as some of the mistaken Heathen thought it viz. in Infantia it may be so But we shall see that if Mankind had their Original ex non genitis as most certainly they had then the Formation of Mankind was in his full and perfect Constitution and not by a gradual progress from Infancy as now 2. That the Tradition of the Origination of Mankind seems to be universal but the particular Modes or Methods of that Origination excogitated by the Heathen were particular and not common and therefore though these be fabulous and deserve not our credit yet they do not abate the credibility of the universal Tradition The common Tradition and consent thereunto of the Existence of a Deity carries in it a great moral Evidence of the Truth thereof although the particular superadditions and multiplications of Deities by the Fancies and Traditions of particular Ages or Nations are fabulous and untrue Quod ab omnibus ubique semper creditum est pro veritate habendum est though the various particular Modes and Methods and Hypotheses are or may be fabulous 3. That Mankind had an Original might be known naturally and without a Revelation to the first Individuals of Humane Nature and consequently might with evidence and certainty enough even upon a moral account be communicated by them to others and to pass into an universal Tradition But the Manner of the
and like itself which could not be such if Mankind had any other Method of Origination than now it hath And in Natural Appearances Causes and Effects they thought it not becoming the Genius or Spirit of a Philosopher to call in any other Assistant or Producent than what was and is the ordinary Rule Course and Law of Nature as they now find it And by this means they thought that they proceeded consonantly both to Nature and to themselves 2. Because that among those ancient Philosophers that either supposed the Origination of Mankind to be either casual as Epicurus Democritus c. or to be natural from the Earth and conjunction of the Influences of Heavenly Bodies in some Periodical Aspects or partly natural and partly fortuitous or at least spontaneous as Insects arise I say in and among these various Suppositions of an Origination of Mankind yea and perfect Animals ex non genitis they found so much incertainty improbability and repugnancy that they threw them all aside together also with the Beginning or Origination of Mankind and took up that more compendious and more sutable as they thought to the Laws which they observed in Nature and concluded That the Generations of Mankind and of perfect Animals were without beginning but always obtained in the same manner as now they are Of this Opinion was Ocellus Lucaenus and likewise Aristotle though in some places he seems to be doubtful and although Plato in his Timaeus seems to assert an Origination of Mankind yet in some other places his Expressions are doubtful and therefore Censorinus in his golden Book de Die Natali reckons as well Plato as Aristotle Ocellus Lucanus Architas Tarentinus Xenocrates Dicearchus Pythagoras Theophrastus to be Assertors of the Eternity of Mankind And this Opinion I have examined in the Chapters of the Second Section of this Book and offered Reasons Physical Metaphysical and Moral against it The last Moral Reason which I offered was The received Opinion of Mankind asserting the Origination of Man and that as well of the common sort of People as of the Tribe of the Learned Philosophers The former I dispatched in the last Chapter but the Suffrage of the Gens literata I reserved to this Section because thereby at once I may with the same labour shew the Opinions of Learned Men among the Heathen asserting the Origination of Mankind and what their several Sentiments were concerning the manner of it And therefore I shall be constrained herein to mention the Opinions of some of those Learned Philosophers above-mention and to add some others of the contrary Perswasion which out-ballance the former 2. The second general Opinion was of those Learned Philosophers that held an Origination of Mankind ex non genitis and the Reason moving them to this Perswasion was not only the great Tradition that obtained generally in favour of it and the great reasonableness of the Supposition it self but also the many absurd Consequences and indeed irreconcilable Contradictions that they found in the Hypothesis of an Eternal Succession of Humane Generations without beginning Insomuch that the Assertors themselves of Eternal Generations were doubtful of the truth of their own Perswasions as will hereafter appear And those of this latter sort were even Epicurus himself Anaximander Empedocles Parmenides and Zeno Citicus the great Founder of the Sect of the Stoicks with those that followed or favoured it But above all the great Law-giver Moses who was divinely inspired and yet if he had not that advantage of Divine Infallibility but stood barely upon the great credibility both of his Person his Learning and the Hypothesis it self which he delivered he hath as great a weight even upon a natural moral and rational account as any or all the rest put together But because I intend a particular Explication of the Hypothesis Mosaica I shall not mingle this among the other Opinions but reserve it for the next Section The Heathen Philosophers that held the Origination of Mankind ex non genitis have these things in general wherein they agree one with another and with the Truth it self and some things wherein they differ among themselves and in some things from the Truth 1. They herein agree both among themselves and with the Truth and with that excellent and divine Relation of Moses Gen. 1. That Mankind is not Eternal but had a Beginning ex non genitis 2. They herein also agree among themselves and with the Truth That it is most absolutely necessary if Mankind had a Beginning or Origination it must needs be in a differing kind and manner from that common course whereby Mankind is now propagated This is asserted by those that hold the Origination of Mankind by the Efficiency of Almighty God consonant to the Mosaical Hypothesis either immediately or partly by the Instrumentality of Angels as Zeno Citicus Plato and others it is also asserted by them that hold the Origination of Mankind to be at first fortuitous as Epicurus and Democritus And therefore as to these Perswasions and Suppositions it is not only necessary that they should suppose a differing manner of the first Origination of Mankind from what now obtains but it is consonant also to their Principles and the grounds of their Supposition that it must be so This is also asserted by those that suppose the Origination of Mankind to be purely natural and according to the constituted Rule of Nature But yet this Supposition though most necessarily true where an Origination ex non genitis is once supposed yet it seems less sutable to the Principles of those Men that assert such a natural Production of Mankind as is by them asserted because they mancipating all Productions and Effects to the Laws of Nature and governing their thoughts and taking their measures barely by it have no reason to think or believe any other Method of Production of Mankind to have at any time been any otherwise than as they see it now to be which as is before shewn was the reason why Aristotle inclined to the Opinion of the Eternity of Humane Generations because Nature is presumed to be consonant to it self and always to have been what once it was 3. But in the Explication of the Cause and Manner of this Origination of Mankind therein they differed very much among themselves This difference consisted principally in two great Considerations 1. In the true stating of the efficient Cause of this Origination of Mankind 2. In the Manner Method and Order of such Origination As to the difference touching the Cause of such Origination and the nature of that Cause thereof 1. Some assigned a bare fortuitous Cause of the first Origination of Mankind as Epicurus and his Explicator Lucretius for although in some places they are driven to assert some determinate Semina of Mankind and perfect Animals to avoid that indefinite and unlimited excursion of Atoms yet they that suppose these Semina do suppose a fortuitous Coalition of Atoms to the
enim orbis parte accidit eo modo animaliae creari I have transcribed it at large as Eusebius did before me Lib. 1. Praepar because it contains a large and full Exposition of the Hypotheses of those Philosophers that thus suppose an Origination of Mankind and that by a spontaneous Production In these precedent Opinions of Anaximander Empedocles Epicurus and the Egyptians there is something that agrees with that Truth that I have asserted namely The Origination of Mankind ex non genitis And for this purpose these Instances are especially given by me But there is something that I shall in what follows impugn namely The Method or Manner of such Productions which according to these Mens Opinions is either purely Casual as Epicurus and his followers held or at least Natural and Necessary as Anaximander Empedocles and some of the loose passages of Aristotle seem to import viz. by some great Conjunction of the Heavenly Bodies and some great Natural Mutation in the Elementary World 5. I now come to the farther Examination of the Hypothesis of the Stoicks who also agree in this main Truth That Mankind had an Original ex non genitis and the Founder of that Sect hath given a rational and true Method thereof namely That this Origination was by the Power and Will of Almighty God But when those of this Sect came to give a more particular Explication of the Manner of this Production they seem to differ Tully was generally well inclined to the Stoical Sect yet sometimes he is a Stoick sometimes an Academick sometimes an Epicurean and indeed in some of his Discourses which he hath digested in Dialogues he seems to be every thing In his first Book de Legibus he hath this passage touching the Origination of Man Nam cum de natura omni quaeritur disputari solent nimirum ista perpetuis cursibus conversionibus coelestibus extitisse quandam materiam serendi generis humani quod sparsum in terras atque satum divino auctum sit animorum munere Nam quod aliquibus cohaerent homines è mortali genere sumserunt quae fragilia essent caduca animum esse ingeneratum à Deo ex quo verè vel agnatio nobis cum coelestibus vel genus vel stirps appellari potest Itaque ex tot generibus nullum est animal prater hominem quod habeat notitiam aliquam Dei de ipsÃsque hominibus nullagens est neque tam immansueta neque tam fera quae non etiam si ignoret qualem habere Deum deceat tamen habendum sciat Ex quo efficitur illud ut is agnoscat Deum qui unde ortus sit quasi recordetur ac noscat By this he supposeth that there might be as it were a Prosemination of the Humane Fabrick by the Conversion of the Heavens and then the same were stored with Souls immediately produced by Almighty God Seneca following the received Opinion of the Vicissitudes of the Destruction of the inferior World by Floods and Conflagrations and the Restitutions thereof by the Power of God though he seems to admit Eternal Vicissitudes of such Making and Unmaking and Restitutions of the inferior World in the latter end of his third Book of Natural Questions before cited Sect. II. Cap. 9. speaking of the Destruction of the World by Universal Floods Qua ratione inquis eadem qua conflagratio futura est utrumque fit cum Deo visum ordiri meliora vetera finire aqua ignis terrenis dominantur ex his ortus ex his interitus And in the end of that Book Nec ea semper licentia undis erit sed peracto exitio generis humani extinctisque pariter feris in quarum homines ingenia transierant iterum aquas terra sorbebit natura pelagus stare aut intra terminos suos furere coget rejectus è nostris sedibus in sua secreta pelletur Oceanus antiquus ordo revocabitur omne ex integro animal generabitur dabitúrque terris homo inscius scelerum melioribus auspiciis natus sed illis quoque innocentia non durabit nisi dum novi sunt And with this seems to accord the Judgment of Plutarch 2. Symposiac quaest 3. and out of him Macrob. in 7. Saturnal cap. ult where in the dissertation of that seeming ludicrous Question Ovúmne prius an Gallina the Disputant for the latter concludes Natura primum singula animalia perfecta formavit deinde perpetuam legem dedit ut continuaretur propagatione successio And Plutarch Probabile est primum ortum ex terra temporis perfectione absolutum fuisse nihÃlque indigentem hujusmodi instrumentis receptaculis vasis qualia nunc ob imbecillitatem natura parat machinatur parientibus This was the Sentence and Judgment of the Stoical Philosophers touching the Origination of perfect Animals and Men. Upon all which foregoing Discourse it should seem That the generality of the Learned World rather supposed an Origination than an Eternity of Mankind and this upon two great Motives 1. A Tradition which seems generally to have been derived unto Mankind from the first Parents thereof and so generally believed and entertained 2. A great congruity of Reason that attended this Hypothesis and an extrication thereby of the Minds of considering Men from infinite difficulties which the Supposition of Eternal Generations doth necessarily produce I should now come to those Philosophers and Learned Men of later Ages Avicen Cardan Pomponatius Cisalpinus Berogardus and others which nevertheless I shall referr to the next Chapter to be examined to another purpose CAP. II. Touching the various Methods of the Origination of Mankind HItherto I have endeavoured to shew those Evidences both of Reason and of Fact which seem to assert the Origination of Mankind and I have concluded with that last in the two precedent Chapters namely The Opinion and Perswasion of the Unlearned and Learned part of Mankind that have supposed such an Origination of Mankind the weight or authority of which rests in the consideration of those Means whereby this Opinion or Perswasion hath been ingenerated in Mankind For the Opinions or Perswasions of Men concerning especially a Matter of Fact have their weight or authority in argumentation from that Principle or Motive of such a Perswasion and this I have reduced to one or both of these 1. Some Tradition that hath been derived and derived in probability from the first Parents of Mankind that best knew their own Inception which hath since accordingly prevailed almost in all Places and Ages 2. The congruity of such a Supposition to Reason and the Solution of those Difficulties which must needs arise from an Eternal Succession of Mankind And this Motive of this Perswasion though it began with the more thinking and considering sort of Mankind yet from them hath been insinuated and derived unto the rest of Mankind and by them entertained as consonant to the common Reason of Humane Nature I have laid the weight of my reasoning touching the
been the immediate Constituents of Men and Animals they could never have salved that specification of things in their several kinds and the continuation of them in that constancy and order which is evidently found in the natures of Men and Animals but either there would be an utter incertainty in the first Constitution of them quidlibet ex quolibet or at least it were impossible that they should continue their Propagation of their kind but the constituent Atoms that should make up a Man might have fallen into the Constitution of a Horse or a Lion Lucret. ubi supra Atque hac re nequeunt ex omnibus omnia gigni Quod certis in rebus inest secreta voluntas And again Lib. 2. Non tamen omnimodis connecti posse putandum est Omnia nam vulgò fieri portenta videres Semiferas hominum species existere Quorum nil fieri manifestum est omnia quando Seminibus certis certa genitrice creata And again it were never explicable by the various concourse of Atoms that there could be such an orderly constant and admirable accommodation of the parts of the Body to their use or one to another It is truly said by Galen in his 9 th Book De Hipp. Platonis decretis l. 9. Quippe cum artem raro fine suo frustrari fortunam raro eundem assequi nemo sit qui nesciat quocirca temerariam fortuitam neque artificialem causam fabricae nostri corporis existimare absurdum And again in that divine Book De Usu Partium but especially Lib. 11. that excellent Philosopher shews the gross absurdity and impossibility that any happy concourse of Atoms can ever fit and settle that congruity in the Parts of the Humane Body that is there There needs no other Confutation of the vanity of that Opinion than that excellent Expostulation in that Book fit for the matter but too long for the tenth of it to be here transcribed And therefore to avoid that insuperable absurdity they have substituted a Medium between the Atomical Principles and the constitution of the spontaneous Birth of Men namely these Semina made up to be the immediate Principle of these spontaneous Productions of Mankind as also of perfect Animals in their first production What Semina there were in the first Constitution of Mankind I shall have occasion at large to examin in the next Chapter But at present it shall suffice to say and prove That there is as great an absurdity and impossibility to suppose a casual production of such Semina as there is to suppose an immediate casual production of any Man or Animal omnibus numeris perfectum For this Seminium humanae naturae must have in it the Vital Nature the power of attracting to it self that substance which must serve to make up the Individual It must have the power and energy of that formative act whereby the Matter is conformed to its specifical Nature it must have potentially at least the whole Systeme of Humane Nature or at least that Ideal Principle or Configuration thereof in the evolution whereof the complement and formation of the Humane Nature must consist and besides this it must have in it at least potentially all the Faculties of the Humane Soul not only the vim altricem but the vim sensitivam intellectualem and all this drawn from a fortuitous coalition of senseless and dead Atoms Whereby these two grand Absurdities would ensue 1. That a sort of dead senseless unintelligent Particles of Matter should by their Coalition be advanced into a Being that at least potentially hath all the Faculties of Life Sense or Intellect and so arise to a perfection beyond the Sphere and Circle of their own Nature or Power 2. That though it might be possible that by skill and the wise conduct of an Intelligent Being these Atoms might be so marshalled or qualified that they might advance to be a fit Seminium of a reasonable Creature yet it is not possible to suppose that meer Chance or Fortune should make up these Seminal Rudiments of the Humane Nature because the Actions of this Seminal Principle must be so noble and high and yet so various and complicated so curious and choice that it is never possible for Chance to make it up and yet if the least stamen of this Composition be out of order the whole office and use thereof is disappointed And therefore the same Galen makes the processus formativus foetus to be no less admirable than the goodly structure of the Humane Body and as impossible to be the work of Chance as the other And therefore in his Book de formatione foetus he saith Ego vero sicut fabricam nostri Corporis ostendi summam Opificis sapientiam potentiam prae se ferre ita demonstrari à Philosophis velim utrum is Opifex Deus aliquis sit sapiens potens qui prius intellexit quale uniuscujusque animalis corpus esset fabricandum deinde quod proposuerat potentia fuerit assecutus an Anima aliqua à Deo diversa Neque enim naturae quae appellatur substantia sive corporea sive incorporea ea sit ad summum sapientiae dicent pervenisse quam ne ulla sapientia esse praeditam inquiunt unde eam tam artificiose in foetuum formatione se gessisse credendum non est Hoc enim ab Epicuro aliisque qui sine providentia omnia fieri opinantur audientes nullam fidem adhibemus And in the Conclusion of that Book he as well blames the Platonicks Dicentes Animam mundi foetus formare nunquam tamen adduci potui ut crederem Scorpiones Phalangia Muscas Culices Viperas Vermes Lumbricos Pytalas ab eadem fingi formari prope ad impietatem accedere hanc opinionem ratus So far was he from thinking it possible for the Nobler Natures of Mankind or perfect Animals to be the work of the Anima mundi much less of Fortune that he could not suppose it a sufficient Cause of the Generation of Insects And besides all this although a Man that hath received the Principle of Believing that Almighty God might indeed ad beneplacitum mould up certain semina humanae naturae and endue them with that admirable Formative Power Yet surely for a Man that as Epicurus did pretends to be guided by the Conduct of Nature only to suppose a thing so strange to the nature of things as they now appear that there should be another kind of semen humanum or animale than what is moulded in the Bodies of Men or Animals and elicited from them by a coincidence only of stupid dead and senseless Atoms seems below the Genius of a Philosopher Oportet enim Physicum similiter se habere in omnibus 5. And as his Supposition of these Semina thus casually produc'd seems unconsonant both to the Reason and Course of Nature so his Supposition of the Manner of the Generation and Production and Nourishment of this Foetus
Position of Cardanus and contends not only that it is possible but that de facto it is true The sum of his Opinion seems to be this That although the Soul of Man be of a higher nature and extraction yet the Body and these Powers or Faculties of Life and Sense may be and have been formed ex putredine without the conjunction of Sexes as Weeds Vegetables and Insects And that he meaneth such a Production to be by an ordinary course of Nature he largely insists upon that Axiom of Aristotle Sol homo generant hominem which he understands in sensu diviso and that there is in the heat of the Sun an active generative Principle which in Matter prepared for its operation commonly called Putrefaction produceth a Seminal Formative Seed sufficient of it self for the production of the Humane Nature as also of the nature of other Animals That the Species of Animals are eternal not upon the account of an eternal succession by ordinary propagation but by that succession that would arise in certain great Conjunctions of the Heavens and the heat of the Sun which would be productive of the Individuals of the several Species though all the Species of Animals were destroyed by Floods or other accidents as possibly they might be That although the ordinary Method of preserving the Species of Men and Animals by ordinary Generation be fitted for the ordinary continuation of the Species yet without this Method of production out of prepared Earth Nature were defective and wanted a sufficient Expedient for the preservation of Species upon great Occurrences That although this production of Men and perfect Animals ex putri be not obvious to our ordinary Experience it is not because the Supposition wants truth but because 1. Every place is not fit for such a production but where there is a constant and sufficient heat duly to prepare and digest the Matter But the likeliest place for such production is some unknown place between the Tropicks where the heat is great and constant 2. Because the maturation and ripening of such Productions require longer time than that which is sufficient for the production of Insects for we see greater Animals even with all the advantages of the calor uterinus require a longer time for their formation and maturation as a Man nine months an Elephant two years and consequently their productions without this auxilium uterinum must require longer time Then he gives us a large account touching Insects that arise ex putredine and yet are of the same Species with those that are produced per coitum and that when they are produced ex putri materia yet they propagate successively Individuals of the same kind and that if greater Animals were thus produced they would be of the same Species with the like Animals propagated per generationem ordinariam and would accordingly propagate their kind as many Herbs and Trees arise spontaneously yet are of the same Species with others that are per seminationem and produce Seed and thereby continue their Species as well as others that arise per proseminationem This I take to be the effect of his Position and his Reasons which are very learnedly and smartly refuted by Fortunius Licetus in his first Book de Spontaneo Ortu But yet there was one difficulty which Caesalpinus doth not at all as I remember obviate which yet renders his Supposition utterly inexplicable namely since the Heat and Influences of the Heavens even in their supposed extraordinary Conjunctions must needs be uniform at those times and in or near those Climates wherein they happen how comes it to pass that the same univocal Heat doth produce at that time any variety of Animals why should it not produce only Men as the best of Animals rather than Horses Tigers Lions c. Again on the other side since the disposition of all the parts of Terrestrial Matter is so divers and qualified with infinite combinations of Qualities and Particles how it comes to pass that in these great Conjunctions there are not infinite varieties of things produced but they are determinate in certain Ranks and Species of Being whereas the modifications of the Matter are so various and infinite that the Species of things would be infinite irregular Humano capiti cervicem equinam So that there seems necessary some superintendent Intellectual Nature that by certain election and choice determined things in those determinate Ranks and contained them within it For the heat and influence of the Heavenly Conjunctions and of the Sun being common and universal and the various Particles of the Earth variously modified and qualified there could never only by these means be any determining or containing the Species of Animals within any determinate constant figures or bounds And this we shall hereafter find necessary when we come to consider the determination of Insects also in their several Species Again he gives us not any reasonable Explication by this Hypothesis how the discrimination of Sexes happen how all things thus produced come to propagate their kind and to contain their Productions within the specifick limits of the natures of such Animals all which were necessary to be done to render his Supposition of this natural production of Men or Animals ex putredine to be any way tolerable Beregardus therefore in his 10 th Circulus Pisanus hath refined and rectified this Hypothesis of Caesalpinus and of Pomponatius that went before him and though he can never make out the truth or probability of his Supposition yet he hath rendred it more tolerably explicable especially in relation to the forementioned deficencies I will give the sum of his Supposition briefly as I understand it And it seems thus That the Calidum innatum is that Altrix anima and Princâ—pium seminale sine quo nihil gignitur and is the Basis of Life in all things that have it but yet it is never single and by it self but is the first Rudiment of Life and determined by the particular Species of Life in every Individual that hath Life for there is no vivens that is not either Equus or Canis or Vitis or some other determinate Vegetable or Animal That there are three kinds of this Life wherein it is specifically determined viz. Vegetable Sensible and Rational That at least the two former he means the latter also if he durst speak out are raised out of certain Seminal Principles whereby the Calidum innatum is specifically determined to this or that Specifical Life That these Semina are not eternal because made up of things or Principia that are pre-existing this seems perfectly to agree with the Doctrine of Epicurus before mentioned whose Patronage he seems to take in the Person of Aristaeus yet with some Correctives as is hereafter shewn That there were in Nature various kinds of Calida or Fiery Particles or Spiritus ignei and various kinds of Humida and Frigida these were eternally floating up and down in small Particles and
Summer will remain fruitful and produce the Insect this Spring and possibly some time after so that they are in the next degree above Vegetables and have a nature very analogal to them But these things are not so in greater Animals of an univocal generation this also appears in the great disparity of these degrees at least of perfection in the perfect Animal above that of Insects of a spontaneous production For though as before is said these little Animals have Faculties conformable to the Sensitive Life so that we may plainly discover at least in many of them the Faculties as well as the Organs of Sense Phantasie Memory Common Sense Appetite Passion Local Motion yet the more perfect and univocal Animals have greater strength and perfection in these Faculties their Phantasie and Memory more exact their Appetite more perfect and free if I may so call it they are capable of Discipline which these smaller Animals are not There is greater variety complication and curiosity in the state frame and order of their Faculties and a greater distinction and variety of operation in them than in the smaller Pieces of Nature There are more Wheels more variety and curiosity in their motions more variety of ingredients into the Constitution of the Automata of the more noble Animals than in the Insects that are sponte orta so that for the Constitution of their Souls the Principle of their Faculties and Motions there is required a more curious elaborate and elevated Composition and Fabrick than in these minute Animals And hence it is that though it be not only possible but frequent that these Insects and minute Animals may thus spontaneously arise yet it hath never been known so according to the setled Laws and Order of Nature It is impossible these greater and nobler Animals can arise spontaneously nor otherwise naturally than by the mixture of both Sexes and a Semen formatum and prolificum received and united in utero foemineo and impregnated as it were with that Specifical Idea and Formative Power derived from the Parents and those other accessions which may elaborate rectifie and advance the Soul and its Faculties and the Body and its Organs to their due proportion and perfection And therefore there is no parity Reason in the production of Insects and perfect Animals nor any Consequence to be drawn from the spontaneous production of one to the like production of the other in any natural course without the intervention of a Supernatural free Cause effecting the same besides and out of the road and course of Nature And what may be said upon this account against the Consequence of the spontaneous production of other Animals from the spontaneous production of Insects may with much more advantage be said against the Consequence of the production of Mankind by any natural spontaneous production because the perfection of his nature and the specifical excellence thereof doth exceed the greatest excellence of other Animals far more than the noblest Animals exceed the Insects And therefore as the spontaneous production of these Insects no way concludes the like production naturally possible in greater Animals so if it were naturally possible and de facto true that the greater Animals themselves were sponte producibilia producta it were not at all conclusive nor deducible from thence that Mankind were producible naturally upon the like account The nobleness of the structure of the Humane Body the great curiosity and usefulness of most of his Organs especially of his Tongue and Hand the curious and useful configuration and disposition of his Nerves and Brain the admirable variety and quickness of his Phantasy the great retentiveness of his Memory but especially the admirable power of his Intellect Reason and Will give him a far greater specifical perfection above the most perfect Brutal Nature than that hath above the meanest Insects And therefore certainly according to the ordinary Observations in Nature and the Rules and Methods observable therein requires the noblest and most advanced Method to produce it that Nature can afford But against these Reasons it may be and is urged That all these Observations and Inferences are bottomed upon the state and course of Nature wherein we see things are in the state of things already setled but in the first production of things it might be otherwise and must be otherwise if we admit an Origination of Mankind ex non genitis And though in the ordinary course of Nature as now things are constituted the production of Mankind is ex semine formato ab utroque parente deciso that his nourishment is per venam umbilicalem that it cannot be otherwise now but in utero foemineo that the state of Infancy now requires those adventitious helps that are above remembred Yet in the first state of Humane Production all these Suppositions must be laid aside as unaccommodate to that state another Seminal Principle another method of Nutrition another state and habit of the Foetus must be and may be supposed in the first production of Mankind than now is to be found in the World wherein the order of things is setled in a regular Method If it should be supposed that a Mouse or a Rat were produced ex putri we cannot suppose any such Semen or Vena umbilicalis or that it lived upon the Dams Milk all which are notwithstanding supposable and necessary when that equivocal Animal afterward propagates its kind I answer That as it is true that Mankind and other Animals had an Original and an Original in quite another way than now it is and ex non genitis so it is unquestionably true that those Processes Principles and Methods which now serve in the production of Humane Nature or other perfect Animals are no way conceptible or applicable unto the first production of Man or Animals And therefore I must not only grant that these Modes of Production Nutrition c. are utterly ineffectual and unapplicable to the first Origination of Humane Nature But I must suppose quite contrary that in truth it is impossible they should be the Modes or Order of that first Origination But it must be remembred whom it is that I am here contending against namely not against those that do and that truly referr the Origination of Man to the Divine Power and Will and a Supernatural production but against them that are the great Venerators of established Nature that think it below their Gravity and Wisdom to recognize any other Efficient but what they find in Natural Causes and Effects nor any other Rule of things but what they see that take their Measures of their Conceptions and Sentiments from what is obvious to Sense and the common Observation of things as they now appear and for the most part frame all their Conclusions accordingly And therefore that which I herein contend for by these Arguments is this That a Man that duly considers the natures of things and makes the course of Nature and the Observation
and fitted for this production which could not be but after some great and long continuing Flood or Inundation that might prepare and dispose the Matter for the Activity of that great Revolution and if these should not meet together or in some convenient nearness the production of Mankind and perfect Animals would be frustrated 3. That in as much as provident Nature hath had for many Ages and yet hath a sufficient Seminium and stock for the preservation of the Species of Men and perfect Animals raised by propagation and the mutual conjunction of Sexes Nature is not necessitated to have recourse to this extraordinary way of peopling and furnishing the World and therefore it cannot be expected but after some vast devastation that may endanger at least the extinguishing of the species of things To these things I say first in general That if Men shall upon such a Method of Arguing go about to establish a Supposition that neither they nor any else have ever known or experimented and make a Conclusion of a thing as natural upon such Suppositions as never any Man knew or heard to produce such effects Men may assume any thing to be natural which yet hath not footsteps in Nature bearing any analogy to it But to the particulars As to the first it is unreasonable to make such a Supposition for since it is not possible for any Man to know whether there be any such Influence of the Heavens to effect such productions unless by Experience and Observations of some Men or some other way the notice thereof were given to Mankind it being a Matter of Fact that can no other way be known but by Experience or Revelation and since the bare beholding of those Heavenly Bodies being of that distance can never without Observation of Events give us any natural estimate of their Effects what they are or may be and since it must needs be granted that such imagined Conjunctions as may be effectual for such productions are at vast unknown distances and such as no Age before hath or indeed can leave us any Memorial of it must needs be a vain and precarious assumption to attribute any natural Efficacy to any Conjunction whatsoever for such a production The Ancient and Divine Historian Moses gives us indeed an account of the Origination of Man and all other Animals but not upon any natural causation or activity of the Heavens or Heavenly Bodies but as he gives us the History of the Things so he gives us the true Resolution of the Cause not a natural but a supernatural Cause namely the Intention and Volition of the Great and Wise God and to exclude any imagination of a natural or necessary Cause of these productions doth not only tell us in express terms that the production of them was by the Energy of the Divine Fiat but also that the production even of Vegetables themselves that seem to have the greatest dependance upon Celestial Influences was antecedent to the Constitution of those Heavenly Bodies 1. As the Supposition of such a Natural Causality in the Heavens is meerly precarious so it seems even to our Sense apparently false for we see every year without any other than an ordinary Conjunction by the Access of the Sun Insects and Plants sponte nascentia do arise and we know that ordinarily in the compass or revolution of 800 or 1000 years very great and considerable mutations happen in the Position and Conjunction of the Heavenly Bodies and we know that within the compass of Authentick History these Revolutions have happened above thrice and since the latest Epocha of the Worlds Inception above five times yet none of these great Revolutions have for any thing we ever knew or heard produced any one Horse or Lion or Wolf much less any one Man as a Terrigena And therefore Experience the best means to settle such an Hypothesis doth not only not warrant it but is evidently contrary to it and denies it 2. As to the second the Mosaical History gives us an account of an Universal Deluge about 4000 years since which lay long upon the whole Earth and the Grecian History gives us an account of two very great Floods namely the Ogygian and the Deucalian Floods and every Year gives us an account of the Inundation of Nilus in Egypt a most fruitful Continent and near the Sun whereby the Soil is made admirably fruitful and there is scarce any Age but some great portions of Land are laid dry by the recess of some parts of the Ocean which had lain covered for many thousands of years before with the sea And as the universal Deluge was as great a preparation of the whole Earth so these particular Inundations and Recesses of the Sea left particular Spots of Land as well prepared for such productions as can well be imagined and yet in no Age have we any Instance of any such production abating the Story of the Egyptian Mice which concrete after the recess of Nilus which yet of most hands are agreed to be Insects and sponte nascentia ex putredine Indeed Beregardus tells us ubi supra out of Camerarius that about Cayro after the reflux of Nilus there are often seen divers Limbs or Parts of Mens Bodies whether this be true or no or if true whether they are not only relicks of some Bodies swept away by the Inundations of Nilus out of their Graves or Sepultures and torn asunder by the furious Cataracts of Nilus is not clearly evident But be they what they will or whether the Lusus naturae yet they make nothing to this matter unless Camerarius or some other had seen those divulsa membra come together and configured into an humane Shape and animated with a humane Life which neither he nor any other have yet affirmed or pretended 3. As to the Third I say 1. If by Nature they intend the great and glorious God that most wise intelligent powerful Being they do indeed in effect affirm what I have designed to prove but do not make good their Supposition of such a Natural Cause as they declare in their Hypothesis wherein they mean only that natural connexion and series of Causes whereby Natural Effects are naturally produced And if they intend by Nature that unintelligent series or order of Natural Causes or the blind and determinate Cause of Natural Productions How comes that Nature to know when and where this necessity of Spontaneous Productions doth happen or in what proportion measure limits or place it is necessary to be done Such a provisional care requires a knowing and perfectly intelligent Being that operates ex cognitione intentione voluntate which is not to be affirmed of Agents purely natural who do therefore act according to a Law of necessity and determination non ex consilio cognitione 2. It is plain that Insects and Vegetables spontaneously produced are produced every Year and their production is as natural as the access of the Sun and the constitution
Vocal Command given out to the Matter but the secret Command and Determination of the Divine Will governed the Matter into an immediate conformable Production according to the Idea residing in the Divine Understanding He spake and it was done be commanded and it stood fast This best became the Majesty and Sovereignty of the Lord of all things CAP. III. Concerning the Production and Formation of Man HAving taken the former brief Survey of the History of the Creation and Formation of the rest of the Universe I shall now proceed to what I principally intended in the discussion of that History namely the Formation of Mankind Gen. 1.26 And God said Let us make Man in our own image after our likeness and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth so God made man in his own image in the image of God created he him male and female created he them and God blessed them and said unto them Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fishes Touching the Creation of Man I shall observe these things 1. The Efficient of this first Production of Mankind was Almighty God by the counsel and determination of his own Will The Creation of Man is ushered in with a Prologue unlike the Creation of other things viz. by a kind of deliberation not as if the Divine Wisdom stood in need of counsel advice or concurrence of others or of a mora deliberativa with himself for known unto him were all his Works from the beginning and by one simple instantaneous and indivisible Act he foresees what is fit to be done and judgeth and determineth the same but it is added as a Mark of Attention and an Elogy of Prelation of this Work of the Creation of Mankind above the rest of the visible Creatures Some of the Ancients have thought this Deliberation was real and to have been made with the superior World of Heavenly Intelligences Nec si fas sit ita loqui Deus quicquam fecerit donec illud expenderit in familia superiori and it should seem that the Opinion of Plato in his Timaeus That Almighty God did advise with the Dii ex Diis or the Intelligences or Angelick Natures and used their assistance in the Creation of the Bodies of Men though he himself formed their Souls seems to be derived from the inspection of the Mosaical History or Tradition of it whereof he gave us his Sense or Exposition that this faciamus hominem was by the concurrence or subordinate cooperation of Angels Others with far greater evidence do think it was the Deliberation and Conclusion of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity And some again interpret it to be only a Majestick Expression touching Almighty God more regali in the Plural Number but touching these Conjectures I shall say no more but only this That the first Origination and Production of Man was by the immediate Efficiency of Almighty God not as if God Almighty used any Manual or Physical Plasmation of a Man as the Statuary makes his Statue or as the Poets feign Prometheus moulded up his molle lutum into the Humane Shape and animated him by diffusion of Fire into him fetcht from Heaven but by the Word or Determination or Fiat of his Omnipotent Will Man was formed and made 2. The constituent Components out of which he was made were of two kinds 1. His Corporeal and Animal Nature was the same with the Matter of other Terrestrial Animals namely the Elementary Matter whereof Earth was the predominant 2. His Spiritual Constituent as I may call it though in union with the Sensible Power it be his constituent Form was a Spiritual Substance created and infused by Almighty God Gen. 2.7 And God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul This Text gives us briefly 1. The Matter of his Corporeal and Animal Constitution the Dust of the Ground or as elsewhere Red Clay 2. The Nature or Kind of this other constituent part the Breath of Life a Vital Spiritual Intellectual Substance or Nature 3. The Union thereof to the Body and Animal Nature breathed into him 4. The result from that Union Man became a living Soul the whole Composition taking denomination from his nobler essential Constituent And this short History gives us the best account that can be of the true Nature of Man namely that he consists of two essential constituent Parts 1. His corporeal and animal nature which though it were not only gradually but specifically different from and advanced above the Brutal Nature both in the Elegance and Usefulness and Majesty of his corporeal Fabrick and in the excellency and perfection of his animal Faculties as in due time shall be shewn Yet in his essential part he seemed to have a nature in some way common with them both being material and both their Faculties of the Animal Nature directed and subservient to a Life of Sense and therefore corruptible and mortal in it self 2. His Intellectual Nature which is spiritual immortal created immediately by Almighty God that as in his Animal Natureâ— he was the highest of living corporeal and visible Creatures so in his Soul or Intellectual Nature he seems to be constituted in the lowest rank or range of Intellectual and Immaterial Beings by this means he seemed to be Nexus utriusque orbis I have before observed in the Order of Natural Beings with which we are acquainted that there seems to be an admirable gradation in things and the lower rank of Natural Existences have some rough draughts and strokes and shadows of those perfections which are in the superior Minerals are a degree below Vegetables yet they seem to have some shadow of the Vegetable Life in their growth increase and specifick configurations The lowest degree of Life seems to be the Vegetables yet in many of them and their Faculties they seem to have some kind of rough strokes or draughts of the Sensitive Nature and the highest advances of the Vegetable Nature seem to come up to the confines and borders of the lowest Form of Sensible Beings and to participate of somewhat of Sense which appears not only in the natural production of Insects out of the finest parts and effluxes of most Vegetable Natures but also that some such things there are that seem in their very nature of Plants to have a kind of lower connexion of the Animal Nature in them as appears in the Sensitive Plant or Planta modesta and those Canes in the Kingdom of Angola that are filled with a Worm growing from and continuous with it called Trombe Again in the Animal Province there are divers sensible Insects both aquatil volatil and terrestrial that seem to be in the very next Rank of Nature to Vegetables and
again some of the superior sort especially of Terrestrial Animals have quandam imaginem umbram rationis and are advanceable by Industry and disciplinable Acts to a great perfection and seem to be the next rank of natures below the animal nature of Man as Elephants Horses and some others but the nature of Man though in the animal part of him he is the highest rank of visible Animals yet in his intellectual nature he seems to participate of the angelick nature and is next below them in the specifical existence of Soul Psal 8.5 He was made a little lower than the Angels and participates of the highest degree of Animals and the lowest degree of Intelligences participating of both natures to keep as it were a continuity between the upper World and the lower and to maintain a communion with them and between them 3. We have here also the Idea or Model according to which the Humane Nature was framed namely after the Image and Similitude of God wherein we are to take in Man constituted in his full and compleat nature namely in the union of his two Essential Parts his Animal Nature and his Intellectual What this Image and Similitude of God was or wherein it consisted is variously disputed I shall first consider what it was and then what it is and was 1. It was not 〈◊〉 any corporeal Similitude or Image for the Divine Nature is incorporeal and invisible and therefore hath no Image or similitude of that kind 2. It was not any Image adequate to the Divine Perfection and Excellence as the Impression in the Wax is the adequate Image or Representation of the Seal and as large as it for God's Perfections are infinite both in extention and intention and no finite Being can be an adequate Image of an infinite Being or Perfection 3. It was not an Image that takes in all the resemblance of the Parts of Divine Perfections or Excellences as the little Image upon Caesar's Coyn resembled Caesar's Effigies or a new born Infant resembles a full grown Man for neither the Perfections nor the Being of God do convenire in uno aliquo genere univoco with those of Man the Perfections of God are not representable by any created Being in a true propriety of their nature no more than in their degree of intention or perfection 4. Neither do I take it that this Image or Similitude is only meant of that Idea of the Humane Nature in the Divine Understanding conformable to which Man was made for though this be true yet it is not all it says nor all that is meant because it would give Man no greater preference than the very Vegetables that were made the Third Day which were made according to the Ideal Image thereof in the Divine Intellect 5. Neither do I think it was meant of the Second Person in the Trinity who was the express Image of the Father the brightness of his Father and the express Image of his Person for although Christ assumed Humane Flesh yet it was many Ages after and in the Language of the Scripture and the Ancients in the Creation Man was made like unto God but in the Work of Redemption the Son of God became like unto Man Phil. 2.7 Made in the likeness of Man 6. Neither do I think that the Image of God here meant was the greater World the Universe which though it be an excellent Image of the Divine Excellency namely of his Majesty Power Wisdom and Goodness and sets it out far more than any single created Nature can especially if we take the Universe in its full comprehension both of the visible and intellectual World And though it be true that Man is a kind of Abridgment a little Abstract of that greater World in his Intellectual Nature resembling in his Soul the Mundus intelligibilis of created Intelligences and in his Animal Nature bearing an admirable Analogy to the Mundus aspectabilis and so in both Natures conjoyned being the little Image or Portraiture of the great and universal World for though this is a Truth yet it seems it was not the Truth intended 7. Neither do I think it was intended of that resemblance which in his Intellectual Part he bore to the good Angels who of any particular created Natures best resemble Almighty God being pure immaterial intellectual powerful immortal wise and benevolent Beings though this be also a Truth that the Soul of Man seems to be the lowest rank of Angelical Natures yet it seems not the Truth that is here intended for it is plain that the Image of God here meant is spoken with respect to the intire Humane Nature and of the whole Compositum as appears in the reason after given by God upon the interdiction of Murder Gen. 9.6 which had been an improper reason if applied to the Soul which is immortal and uncapable of death But the meaning of this Image of God seems to be this That as all Excellency comes from that most Excellent Author of all Beings in whom all Excellencies are lodged formally or essentially or virtually so this Excellent Author did these things in relation to the Humane Nature viz. 1. He gave him a capacity greater than any other visible single created Being to receive the noblest Excellencies 2. That he gave him as great a Capacity as possibly might be consistent with such a nature to receive Divine Excellencies 3. That he filled that Capacity with all those Excellencies that he was thus capable of saving only that of a necessary immutability in the fruition of all those Excellencies Now these Excellencies with which the Humane Nature was filled and which made him as much as was possible for such a created Being to resemble his Maker were these 1. In the structure of his Body and Animal Nature most singular Majesty Beauty Strength and Usefulness 2. In his Soul a whole Constellation of Divine Excellencies viz. in the Nature of it Immortality and Spirituality in the Faculties of it a light and clear Intellect a free and incoacted Will in all which he highly resembled the most intellectual and freest Being in the Habits of it Knowledge in the Understanding enabled by the noblest Object God himself and all other Objects of use and conveniency to him in his Will rectitude 3. In his whole Compositum perfect fruition of all that sutable good to his nature wherein he consisted in Happiness Immortality or a possible persevering in Life without dying Power and Authority over this inferior World and all things therein as God's Vicegerent upon Earth in which respect Governours are said to be Gods a sufficient power and strength as well in the Frame of his Animal Life as in the sagacity and advantage of his Understanding to exercise that Dominion and Sovereignty and lastly a due Order Subordination and Regiment of all his Faculties Of these Perfections some were accidental or adventitious to the Humane Nature by the Benignity of Almighty God and concredited thereunto upon
which we also admit as to all his Constituents at least but his Soul and therefore the great Debate hath been touching the Efficient or that Being or Nature or whatever we shall call it that first compounded formed and constituted the first Parents of Mankind in that essential and individual state consonant to that specification of Humane Nature which we daily now see Every thing that hath a beginning of Being must either have it from it self or from some other active efficient and constituent Power or Nature antecedent to it in time or at least in Nature or both To suppose that the Humane Nature at first constituted it self were to suppose it to have a propriety of existence to it self which were a palpable absurdity and contradiction for then it should be before it was Therefore it is necessary that the first Origination of Humane Nature should be from some other beginning or cause antecedent to it besides the Matter out of which it was constituted And whatsoever the Being or Cause originating Humane Nature was it must be in nature of an Efficient namely something that did actively put together the constituent parts thereof and formed it into that consistence and existence whereby he became Man We cannot by any means suppose any such Efficient or Being or thing that did subire rationem efficientis but one of these four 1. An uncertain casual conflux of Particles of Matter that casually compounded a Semen humanae naturae and so though the immediate Semen thus constituted may obtain the Name or Notion of the immediate Efficient yet the true Efficient of that Semen if we may be allowed to call it by that name was Chance or Fortune 2. An implanted blind determinate something which we call Nature which by a fatal and necessary connexion of surd and irrational Causes and Effects produced the first Parents of Mankind as the like Nature by the like necessity produceth yearly Worms and Flies and other Insects that have not their existence by univocal Seed Both these two Suppositions have been before examined and rejected as impares huic negotio 3. The illapse of some pre-existent or animating formative Principle which we may well call the Soul or Anima that as in the Generation of Mankind by ordinary procreation we see the formative power is some refined active Spirit or Soul in semine delitescens that fashions the Matter and actuates it with vital sensible Faculties and Operations so the illapse of some such active substance or powerful Being illapsing into Matter and united to it might form it into that constitution which it enjoyed 4. and Lastly Or some superior powerful wise and intellectual Being that did form fashion actuate and constitute the first Parents of Mankind The two former being as before laid aside I shall use a few words touching the third Supposition of which little hath been before said and so pals to the fourth and last and true Supposition of the First Efficient of Humane Nature 3. Therefore touching the third Supposition concerning the production of Mankind by virtue of such Illapse of Forms we may suppose it to be intended one of these two ways 1. Either that with Origen we should imagin a Mundus animarum that had real and individual Subsistences Or 2. that there were some common Element of animate Existence not divided into individual Existences but one common rational and vital Nature whose Particles illapsing into Matter might produce such first Existences of Mankind and so though in their union to Matter they do subire rationem formae yet they do likewise subire rationem efficientis as to the formation of Mankind as the vital Principle in the Egg becomes not only the form of the Chick but also in the first formation thereof is the disposer of its Organs and exercise of its Faculties and so doth subire rationem efficients immediati in the formation of the Foetus As to both these in general I say 1. That they are precarious Suppositions without any just reason to evidence either that there were such pre-existing individual Souls or a common reasonable Spirit Again 2. The Supposition that these should be the immediate Efficients of the Humane Nature is likewise precarious and inevident 3. Even they that suppose either such an individual or common pre-existing Nature must be forced to suppose them eternal independent Beings and this will have as many difficulties in it as the Eternity of Mankind or else if they be supposed created Beings yet still there will be a necessary recourse unto an infinite uncreated eternal Being that must create them And 4. consequently the Framers of these Suppositions do with much more difficulty and laboriousness form intermediate Principles of the Origination of Mankind which with less difficulty and greater congruity may be resolved into the immediate Efficiency of Almighty God according to the Divine History 5. And besides all this if Men will needs suppose a Formation of Man by the illapsing of Souls into prepared Matter because they see this is the Method of Formation in the ordinary course of Generation now they must also suppose the progress of the Formation and Maturation of the Humane Nature This way must be gradual and successive which will be attended with all those difficulties which are before observed in the Supposition of casual or natural production of Man in his first Origination But in particular to those several Suppositions and First touching the first of these The Opinion of the pre-existence of Souls of Men and their descent into Bodies though it hath been countenanced by Plato and some that follow him hath chiefly as it seems been entertained by some of the Jews and some few Christians both recognizing the true God the Immortality of the Soul and future Resurrection For the ancient Jewish Opinion vide wisdom 8.19 20. For I was a witty Child and had a good spirit rather being good I came into a Body undefiled Among Christians Origen much asserted this Opinion But whatever may be said touching the truth or falshood of the Opinion it self it can no way support the primitive Origination of Mankind by the illapsing of such Souls into elementary Matter First It exceeds the power and activity of such imagined pre-existent Souls to form and animate Matter into the consistence of a Man without the intervention either of the immediate power of God or at least without that instituted Method fixed by God in the Generation of Mankind ex semine And that it doth so exceed the activity of Souls thus to do appears in this that although there is according to that Supposition of a Mundus animarum a sufficient stock of existing Souls and if there were not yet those that once informed humane Bodies survived after the dissolutio compositi and yet we never heard since the first formation of Man that any such new formation hath been made nor any illapse of any such Soul into any other Foetus but what hath
been formed according to the established Law of the successive production of Mankind ex mixtione seminis utriusque sexus Nay the more considerate Pythagoreans and those Jews that held the Transmigration of Souls never supposed any transmigration into any spontaneous production of Man or Animal but only into such as proceeded ex univoca generatione and what hath never been done yea never supposed to have been done we have no reason to suppose possible to be done by any natural and finite Efficient for such these Souls must be whether they pre-existed or not And therefore though in the Resurrection the separated Soul is supposed to reassume his own Body again yet this seems not to be by any natural power residing in the Soul to form the Body and reunite it self to it but must be attributed to that Almighty Power of the Glorious God and to the working of His Mighty Power whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself and by the very self-same excess of power whereby he first created Man upon the Earth shall he form raise and reunite the Humane Nature in the Resurrection vid. 1 Cor. 15.1 Thess 4. Mat. 13. Mat. 24. Christ the Son of and raised himself but in the Resurrection the Dead shall be raised by the Power and Command of the Glorious God Secondly It is not supposed by those that the Souls of perfect Brutes had any existence antecedent to their first production for their Souls are not of a self-subsisting nature they cannot exist out of them but begin with them and dye with them so these in their first production could not arise by any such illapsus animarum into elementary Matter but we must attribute their primitive Formation or Creation to the Command of the Divine Will and so if we give them any Origination we shall upon this Supposition give them a nobler Origination and by a more immediate interposition of the Divine Power and Will than to that of Man which seems unreasonable As to the Second It is true the Platonists attributed an Universal Soul to the Universe the Anima mundi which though they sometimes suppose it a created Intelligent Nature yet in other places we shall find them attributing so great power and energy to it that it seems they made it to be no other than God himself But when they held their Supposition of an Anima mundi as a created Existence subordinate to Almighty God although they attribute many of the great Appearances of Nature both in their production and government to this Universal Spirit yet they dare not assert unto it the Efficiency of the first Original of Humane Nature by it and if they should yet this their Supposition would have this flaw in it that they take greater pains and run the hazard of more difficulties by supposing the Origination of Man from this Anima mundi than if they should with us suppose the immediate Origination by the Divine Power neither do they gain any thing by it But this I may possibly resume again hereafter But the Supposition whereof we took notice before is this That there is a threefold created Universal Nature viz. a Natura mentalis common to Men and Angels a Natura sensitiva common to Animals and a Natura ignea which is the common Principle of Vegetation And therefore as the communis natura ignea is dispersed through the Universe and by participation thereof to particles of Matter gives an existence to the Vegetables of several natures so the communication of the communis natura sensitiva might at first give an original to perfect Sensitives as perchance it now doth to insecta sponte nascentia so the participation of the Natura mentalis to some portions of elementary Matter may also give the origination of the first Men and Women in the World Two things I should say to this First Although it be true that the abstraction of the Understanding ranging the Souls of living things under these Distinctions and generical Notions hath given us the Notion of one common Mentalis natura and one common Sensitiva natura and one common Ignea natura yet it will be hard to prove that there are any such real common Natures really existing but in the Individuals thereof We have the common Notion of Natura animalis and yet never any Man could make out that there was any Animalis natura but what existed in the Individuals or that here ever was or can be really existing any Animal with it not determined in some more contracted existence than an Animal Secondly I must needs confess there is a fair probability of Reason offered by many Learned Men of this triplicity of existing common Natures and it carries a great analogy with many other Phaenomena in Nature and therefore I dare not generally deny it though the explication of the manner of their Existences their particular Natures and Uses be difficult But if it be admitted as possibly it may be that there is some common Element of Mental Nature another common Element of Sensitive Nature and another common Element of Ignea Natura and that the several Ranks of Beings Rational Sensitive and Vegetable participate of these respective Natures as their common Store or Element from whence they are derived and therefore for instance the Rational Soul in Man were a participation of that common Element or Stock of the Mentalis natura yet still we must go higher for the Origination of Mankind for this would be no other than as it were the Materia prima or communis of the Souls of Men. 1. Either this Natura mentalis is indivisible and communicated intirely without any distribution of several divided parts of it to all Men as the common Heat of the Sun is communicated to a thousand Men together and then all Men will have one common Soul and there will be no individuation nor principle of individuation between Mankind for the same universal indivisible Soul reasons and wills in every Man which would be unintelligible and absurd 2. Or to uphold Individuation in the Persons and Souls of Men this common Natura mentalis must be either truly several divided Souls with Origen's Mundus animarum or else though this common Nature be actually one at first yet it is divisible and potentially many and so the several Souls of several Men must be so many several Particles or Ramenta of this Universalis natura and either this portion thereof must be by the superior Activity of Almighty God or else it must have a kind of natural division of it self according to the division of Matter qualified and organized to receive it If the former still there is dignus vindice nodus for God Almighty must be called in to distribute and participate the portions of this Mental Nature if the latter then what shall become of the Individuation of the Soul after Death It will return back and be drowned as it were in the Natura mentalis or be
annihilated and if it keeps its Individuation it must be by the Power and Interposition of Almighty God 3. But be it what it will suppose it be the common Matter as it were of the Souls of Men and therefore now in the ordinary course of Propagation by a kind of setled Law in Nature may communicate it self or any portion of it self to the natural productions of Mankind yet where do we find that either it ever did or can of its self form a Body out of Elementary Nature and unite it self unto it Or how could that be done without the ordinary method of Generation to dispose and organize the Recipient or organized Body or the interposition of a superior Intelligent Nature that must form and unite it and if it ever did or could do the same by its own immediate Activity why do we not see the same thing done daily without the course of ordinary Generation ex Semine since this commune Elementum mentale still is supposed to exist and of the same efficacy as ever it was 4. It is observable that in all these kinds of Suppositions either of one Mundus animarum individualium with Origen or of a common Elementum mentale whether divisible or indivisible nothing can be done without taking in the Power of an Omnipotent God either in the first Creation of these Souls or Elements or in the direction ordering and governing of their illapses into Matter or of the preparing and organizing of Matter in the first Origination of Men or in the separating or individuating of these Elements or in the uniting of them to Matter or in giving the Law and Rule and Institution of their future Regiment or indeed in all of these And so Men have needlesly and without sufficient evidence multiplied Entia and yet such as are not effectual to the solution of the Phaenomena nisi Deus intersit and all this plainly expedited with the same ease and less perplexity and multiplicity by the immediate Command of the Divine Will and Power in the first production of Things according to the plain explicable and intelligible System given us by God by the hand of Moses namely an immediate Formation of Man an immediate Creation of an Immortal Intellectual Soul and an immediate Union of both Parts of the Compositum by Almighty God 5. Indeed if it be supposed that one common Mental Nature may be specifically appropriate to the Humane Nature not taking in the Angelical the difficulty of the specification of Humane Nature by that common Mental Principle may be removed because the Humane Nature is but one Species yet the Supposition of one common Sensitive or Vegetable Nature as the common Constituent of Animals and Vegetables leaves us under this perplexity and difficulty namely How from that common Sensitive Nature there ariseth diversity of Species of Animals and Vegetables or since the Principles are but of one kind how comes the Species to be several And on the other side if the variety of Species arise from the different modification or qualification of the Matter How comes it to pass that there is any fixedness and determination of the Species of Animals or Vegetables or that they are contained and conserved in the same Species since the modifications and qualifications of Matter are various and irregular and infinite neither do they keep in one fixed modification or qualification but the same is hourly changed It remains therefore that although we should admit such a Natura sensitiva or ignea either in some common Masses or interspersed and diffused through the whole Mass of Elementary mixed Matter we must be fain to suppose something else that must determin these common and Homogeneal Principles into determinate Species or at least that there are as many Sensitive Natures specifically distinct as there are Species of Animals in the World These Suppositions therefore are not sufficient to explicate the first productions of perfect Animals at least without multiplication of inevident and unexplicable Suppositions 6. I therefore come to that true and plain and necessary Conclusion That the first production of Mankind yea and of perfect Animals was wrought immediately by the Efficacy of an Intelligent Wise and Powerful Being distinct from the things produced and this is the great Truth that in all this Discourse I aimed at and am now arrived at And I shall not need go any farther for the evidence of this Truth than the Contemplation of the Thing it self Man in which we shall find so many clear Evidences of an Intelligent Efficient that we need no other and the common Instances will evidence the Reasonableness of such a Consequence If I should behold a House with several Rooms and Stories excellently contrived with all Offices and Conveniences for Use Doors Windows Chimneys Stairs and every thing placed and digested with Order Usefulness and Beauty a little Logick will induce me to conclude that it was the Work of an intelligent and skilful Architect though I did not see him building or finishing it If I should see a curious Watch curiously wrought graved and enameled and should observe the exact disposition of the Spring the String the Wheels the Ballance the Index and by an excellent orderly regular Motion described discovering the Hour of the Day Day of the Month and divers other regular and curious Motions Or if I should see such a goodly Machina as some ascribe to Archimedes whereby in distinct Spheres or Orbs the situation of the Elementary and Celestial World were represented and all these put into their several Motions consonant to that we see in the Heavenly Bodies by the means of Springs or Weights artificially placed I should most reasonably conclude that these were neither Casual not simply Natural Productions but they were the Work of some intelligent curious Artist that by design intention and appropriation wrought and put in order and motion these curious Automata And certainly if I or any Man of Reason should in this moment behold a parcel of red Clay and in a moment should see that arise into the Figure of a Man full of Beauty and Symmetry endued with all those Parts and Faculties which I see in my self and possibly far more glorious exquisite and beautiful and I should observe him presently after this Formation use all the Operations of Life Sense and Reason and this kind of production never seen before That common Reason which should tutor me to think that that Watch that Machina before mentioned was the Work of an Intelligent Nature would much more enforce me to believe that this admirable and stupendious production of such a Nature unexampled before would enforce me to believe and confess that this were the immediate Work not only of an Intelligent Being but of a most Wise and Powerful Being that could thus in a moment frame animate and endow such an excellent Creature as this And yet certainly the first created Parents of Mankind were constitute in a Nature specifically
conformable unto that Nature which Mankind now hath and as we have no reason to believe they were any way inferior to the present Perfection of Humane Nature so we have very great reason to suppose them constituted in a greater degree of Beauty and Perfection than the most perfect Man that hath been ever since their Formation except the incarnate Son of God Although I do not intend in this place to take a large Survey of the Perfection of the Humane Nature because it is in part done already and I shall reserve it God willing for its proper place and season yet because my Scope here is to evince that the Supposition of the first production of Mankind is an unquestionable Evidence of the Existence of a most Wise and Intelligent Being and that the strength of that Evidence rests in the due Contemplation of the Excellence of the Humane Nature and Faculties and those other Appendices thereunto and that it is not possible to conceive any other but an Intelligent Efficient working by Choice Wisdom and Appropriation should be the first Producent Former and Constituent of such a Nature I shall take a short Survey of the Humane Nature Perfections and Appendices which may give any Man a handle to improve it farther to the same end leaving the fuller Discourse of the Humane Nature as a Reserve also whereupon a fuller Improvement may be made of this Consideration and Conclusion And upon the diligent Observation of this Argument it will evidently appear That the modelling framing compounding ordering and endowing the first Prototype and first Copy of the Humane Nature was neither an Act or Event of Chance or of a Surd Inanimate Unintelligent Nature but was a Contrivance and Work of Design Skill and Intention a Transcript of that Idea which resided in an intelligent Being a Work of a wise and powerful Being yea such a Work as could never have been made by any less than the most intelligent wise and powerful Being exceeding the more single Wisdom and Activity of any created Intelligence at least unless acting in and by the Commission Virtue and Strength of the Almighty God Now these Excellencies in Man that demonstrate an Intelligent Efficient are of two kinds 1. Such as immediately concern his nature 2. Such as are distinct from it but relating to it 1. Therefore concerning those Excellencies that concern immediately his Nature and these discover themselves and the Wisdom of their Efficient And these Excellencies are considered either simply in themselves or 2. Compositè and with the several Subserviences and Accommodations to their Ends and Uses As to the first Consideration there are many Excellencies in the Humane Nature which manifest a far more eminent Excellency in his first Efficient The Symmetry Beauty Majesty and admirable Composure of his Body to which there can be nothing added nor detracted without a blemish to it The admirable Faculties of his Soul those that concern him in his lowest rank of Life the Faculty by which he is nourished those that concern him in his middle rank of Life Soul and Sensation Memory and Appetite those that concern him in his supreme rank of Life Intellect and Will those that concern him in his whole Compositum the Generative Faculty The admirable Union of his Soul to his Body whereby he becomes one Intellectual Being though consisting of Principles of differing natures These and such as these would be largely prosecuted for they do evidence an intellectual most wise Efficient that could thus erect and thus endow such a Fabrick But that which I most reckon upon is that admirable Accommodation that is found in the nature of Man which doth most undeniably demonstrate an intellectual and wise Efficient working by Intention and Design for instance It is indeed a very great evidence of an Artist that can make the Wheel of a Watch or the Spring or the Ballance but the destination of the Spring to the String and the String to the Fusee and the accommodation of every Wheel and their position and fabrick one to another and the Ballance to correct and check the excess of the Motion and the Index to the Table and to fit the Table with Divisions suitable to the Hours and to put all into such a regular Motion as demonstrates the Hour of the Day This adaptation of things of various and several Natures and Structures one to another and all to some common End or Design is so great an evidence of an Intellectual Being that works by Intention by Election by Design and Appropriation that nothing can be opposed against it And therefore I rather choose to prosecute this compound Consideration of the Humane Nature the adaptation and appropriation of things therein one to another and to common Use which is the most evident Argument of such an Efficient as I have before described in the first Fabrication of Humane Nature It were the business of a Volume to pursue all the Particulars of this kind I shall only instance in some 1. The admirable accommodation of the several Parts of the Humane Body to make up one Continuum yet consisting of divers Parts distinct in their individuals and kinds the mortising of the Bones one into another the binding them together by Nerves and Muscles and Tendons the Veins and Arteries for the carrying of the Blood diffused by several Ramifications from their Roots to the uttermost extremities of the Body their differing Coats Anastomoses and means of Communication for the Circulation of the Blood the distributions and ramifications of the Nerves indeed the whole Frame of the Humane Body is an Engin of most admirable contrivance and mutual accommodation of Parts which is so much the more admirable because many of the Parts are distinct not only in the Roots and Numbers but in their Nature and Constitution yet make up one most beautiful Continuum by the mutual accommodation and admirable contignation of the several Integrals thereof 2. The admirable accommodation of Faculties to the convenience and use of Humane Nature for Instance the Digestive Faculty to preserve Life the Generative Faculty to preserve the Species his Faculties of Sense are accommodated to a Sensible Being for as much as he is to converse in a Corporeal World and with Corporeal Beings there is no one quality of Corporeal Nature that he hath occasion to use or converse with but he hath a Faculty by one of his five Senses to receive and discern Again in his Intellective Faculty it admirably serves him for the Ends and Uses of his Being he was appointed to govern direct and rule other Animals and therefore he hath the advantage of a superior Faculty above them whereby he is able to exercise that Direction and Government He was made to be the Spectator of the great Work of God to consider and observe them to glorifie and serve that God that made them and he is accordingly furnished with an Intellective Faculty answerable to his condition 3.
The admirable accommodation of Faculties with subministring Faculties and Organs subservient appropriate and convenient for their exercise For Instance Local Motion is necessary to Mankind and accordingly he is furnished with Animal Spirit Nerves Muscles Tendons and Limbs admirably contrived and destined and fitted to Local Motion The Intellective Faculty is furnished with the organical Fabrick of the Brain and the subordinate Power of Sense Phantasie and Memory to assist it in its exercise while it is in the Body Facultati generativae prolisicae subministrans facultas seminificationis ac organa eidem deservientia appetitus naturalis voluptas quaedam alliciens organa generationi dicata distinctio sexuum sine qua juxta legem in natura post primam humanae naturae formationem insitam hujusmodi speciei propagatio fieri nequivit The Digestive Faculty furnishing the Blood the Blood increasing the Body and supplying the Treasuries of the Spirits the Spirits again supplying and maintaining the Offices of the Faculties So that not only the Blood but the whole Corporeal and Animal Nature is in continued motion and mutual subserviency I might be endless in this Contemplation but because it is evident to any Man that considers and I design a larger discussion of this Business when I come to consider the Parts and Faculties of the Humane Nature I shall not give farther Instances therein And the Use that I make of it is this That although it might be supposed possible that either Chance or Nature might in some simple narrow things produce very curious Appearances as the Configurations of Asterites of Crystals of Salts in their several shapes yet when in such a complicated Nature as Man is consisting of so many various Parts various in their position nature and use there shall be found such an exact adaptation of every thing one to another as to serve the whole and every part this in the primordial Constitution and Formation must needs be the Work of a most wise intelligent powerful Being that operates secundùm intentionem appropriationem intelligentiam 2. Let us come then to those Appendices and relative Respects of other things to the Humane Nature we shall easily find in it this Consideration also the Footsteps and Evidences of an Intelligent Nature in the Constitution of him by that admirable accommodation of things without him of different nature from him to his use and convenience In the Operations or Works of Intelligent Agents we may easily see that according to the degree or perfection of such Intelligence there is variety in their Work or Production An Intelligent Agent that is but of a narrow Intelligence as his Prospect is commonly short and weak so his Work seldom attains more than a narrow and single End But if the Agent be of a large and comprehensive Intelligence and Wisdom his ends are great and most times various and complicated and the same Operation or Work may have divers many 〈◊〉 Ends and Uses Almighty God therefore being of infinite Wisdom and Power foresees and effects great and various Ends in one and the same Work or Operation Take for Instance that goodly Creature the Sun What a complication of excellent Ends and Uses there are in that glorious Body It is the Fountain communicating Light to the Earth the Air and all the Planetary Bodies it is that which derives Heat and is the great Instrument of deriving Fruitfulness and Fertility to the inferior World it distinguisheth Times and Seasons by its Motion it raiseth and digesteth and distributeth the Watry Meteors for the benefit of this inferior World and infinite more advantages of this kind And therefore it is the narrowness of our Understanding that when we see one excellent End or Usefulness in any thing to conclude that God Almighty intended no other And therefore it is too hasty and vain a Conclusion to think that the glorious Bodies of the Celestial Host were made meerly for the service of Man and it is also folly and presumption to conclude that even the things of this inferior World though principally designed for the use of Man were meerly and only destined for the service of Man Almighty God hath the Glory of his own Greatness and the Communication of his own Goodness as the great End of all his Works Yea and we have reason to think that even in these inferior Beings of this lower World which are delivered over to the use and service of Men God Almighty had other Ends that possibly we know not nay possibly in the Effection of the least minute Animal Almighty God intended a Communication of so much of his Goodness and Beneficence to it as might give it a kind of complacency and fruition suitable to the capacity of its Existence though subordinate to other Ends. And yet not only in these inferior Existences of this lower World but even in the Fabrick Order and Oeconomy of the superior World there is to be found an admirable accommodation of them one to another and to this Steward and Tenant of Almighty God of this inferior World called Man 1. If we look upon the Celestial World we have an admirable accommodation thereof to the convenience of Mankind it presents to his View and thereby to his Understanding the most noble Spectacle of the Celestial Bodies their Order Beauty Constancy Motion Light conducting to the knowledge and acknowledgment of the Power Wisdom and Goodness of God it gives him an account of the progress and parts and succession of Time these are advantages that no Irrational Nature can make use of But the Influence of the Heavens are a common Benefit to Man and all Sublunary Natures but yet the inferior World seems in a great measure directed for the benefit of Mankind some in common to him and the Brutes as the Air for Respiration the Fire for Warmth the Water for Drink the Earth for Fruit and Habitation But in this lower World there seems many things directed to the special use of Mankind for besides Domestick Animals especially allowed for his Food there are some that serve for his Employment Motion Exercise and Food as the Tillage and Planting of the Earth for his Food some for his Medicine as Herbs and Gums and Minerals some for his Clothing as the Furrs Wool and Skins of Beasts some for his Habitation as the Timber and Stone some for his Fewel as Wood Coals and Turf some for his Defence and Manufacture as Iron and Steel some for Commerce as the Metals of Silver Gold Copper the very Situation of the Seas the Magnes some for his Ornament as Silk and Jewels some for his Journey and Labour as Horses Oxen Camels some for his Necessity some for his Delight Infinite more Instances may be given whereby it will evidently appear that this lower World is accommodated to the use and convenience of Mankind in a special and remarkable manner whereby it may be evident to any considerate Man that the Formation of the World and
Will of God was sufficient to bring Being out of Nothing so the like determination of the same Will was sufficient to form Man out of the Dust of the ground without taking in a subordination or instrumentality of Angels Again if we should suppose the cooperation of Angels in the Formation of the Body of Man it must be in the strength virtue and efficiency of the first Cause which as it gave the Angels their Being so it must give them the efficacy power and virtue to be instrumental in this Formation which as we have no warrant so we have no probable reason to admit since the first Cause was all sufficient for this Effect without their assistance 4. The admirable Structure of the Body of Man the accommodation of it to Faculties the furnishing of it with Faculties accommodate to it even as its Animal Nature though we take not in the reasonable intellectual Soul imports in it a Wisdom Power and Efficacy above the Power of any created Nature to effect If it should be in the power of an Angel by applying actives to passives to produce an Insect nay a perfect Animal yet the Constitution and Frame of so much of that in Man that concerns his Animal Nature were too high a Copy for an Angelick Nature to write unless thereunto deputed and commissionated by the Infinite God which Commission we no where find and I am very sure a bare Naturalist will not suppose 5. Again there is that necessity of a suitableness and accommodation of the Parts of the Body to the Faculties of the Soul and è converso that any the least disproportion or disaccommodation of one to the other would spoil the whole Work and make them utterly unserviceable and unapplicable one to the other It was therefore of absolute necessity that the same skill and dexterity that was requisite to the first Formation of the Soul must be used and employed in the Formation of the Body and if an Angel were unequal to the making up and ordering of the Soul he could never be sufficient to make a fit organical Body exactly suitable to it Upon the whole matter I therefore conclude That not only the Soul but the very Animal Nature in Man and not only that but the Formation and Destination of his Bodily Frame was not only the Work of an Intelligent Being but of the Infinite and Omnipotent Intelligent Being who in the same moment formed his Body and organized it with immediate Organs and Instruments of Life and Sense and created his Intellectual Nature and united it to him whereby Man became a living Soul And this as the necessary Evidence of Reason doth first drive us to acknowledge a Being or first Formation of the Humane Nature ex non genitis and secondly to acknowledge that this first Formation of the Nature of Man was not by Chance Casualty or a meer Syntax of Natural Causes but by an Intelligent Efficient so we are upon the very same and a greater Evidence of Reason driven to acknowledge that Intelligent Efficient to be the Great and Wise and Glorious God no other Cause imaginable being par tali negotio And indeed if once we can bring Men but to this one Concession That the original Efficient of the Humane Nature was an Intelligent Being any Man pretending to Reason will with much less difficulty admit that Efficient to be the Almighty God than any other invisible intelligent Efficient which we usually call Angels or Intelligences And the Reasons are these 1. Because though we that are acquainted with the Divine Truths do as really believe that there are Angels as well as Men yet the Natural Evidences of the Existence of Almighty God are far more evident and convincing even upon a Rational and Natural account than that there are Angels for the former being a Truth of the highest moment and importance to be believed by all hath a proportionable weight and clearness of evidence even to Natural Light more and greater than any other Truth And hence among the Jews the Sect of the Sadduces believed the Existence of God yet denied or doubted the Existence of Angels or separated Intelligences 2. Because the very Supposition of an Angelical Nature doth necessarily suppose the Existence of a Supreme Being from whom they derive their Existences 3. Because the great occasion of Infidelity in relation to Existence of Almighty God is that sensual Men are not willing to believe any thing whereby they have not a sufficient Evidence as they think to their Sense The Notion of a Spiritual and Immaterial Being is a thing that they cannot digest because they cannot see or by any Sense perceive it nor easily form to themselves a Notion of it He therefore that can so far master the stubborness of Sense as to believe such a Spriritual Intelligent Being as an Angel hath conquered that difficulty that most incumbers his belief of a God and we that can but suppose or admit the former cannot long doubt of the latter He therefore that can once bring his thoughts to carry the first Origination of Mankind to the efficiency of an Angel must needs in a little time see a greater evidence not only to believe a Supreme Deity but to attribute the Origination of Mankind and of the goodly Frame of the Universe to the Supreme Being as necessarily best fitted with Power Wisdom and Goodness to accomplish so great a Work and that without the help or intervention of Angels or created Intelligences who must needs derive their Being Power and Activity from him There remains two or three Objections against the force of the Consequence of the Existence of Almighty God and his Efficiencies in the production of Mankind in their first Individuals which I shall propound and answer 1. Object What need there be laid so great a stress upon the Primitive Formation of Man as that it could not be done but by the Power and Wisdom of an Almighty Intelligent Being since every day's experience lets us see that by the mixture and coition of Man and Woman Et ex semine ab utroque deciso in utèro muliebri per spatium decem mensium ad plurimum producitur hujusmodi natura humana quem tot elogiis magnificamus that which we every day see to be an effect of finite Creatures in the daily production of Individuals of Humane Nature Why must we needs call in no less than the Wisdom and Power of God himself to be the immediate Efficient of the first Formation of the Individuals of that nature which we see every day produced by the common efficacy of Nature and efficiency of the Parents Vel ad minus seminis utriusque sexus in utero foemineo conclusi In Answer hereunto I shall not at this time or in this place enter into the dispute how far the Divine Efficiency concurrs immediately in the ordinary Generation of Mankind nor how far the entire Humane Nature as well his Rational Soul as his
Body and Animal Nature is attributable to Parental Generation these will be proper for another place but for a full Answer hereunto I say 1. That there is not the same measure to be taken of the competency or sufficiency of an Efficient in the production of the Humane Nature as it stands now established and in the first formation of the first Individuals of that nature ex non genitis It is true it is in setled and established Nature within the compass of the immediate efficiency of both Sexes seminis prolifici ab eisdem decisi to form the Humane Nature in that gradual process and method that is now consonant to Nature but if all the Men on Earth and Angels in Heaven should now go about to form the Humane Nature ex non genitis either out of the Elementary Material or by the help and direction of the Celestial Influences or by any Irradiation even from an Angelick Nature it could not be done It was therefore a vain piece of madness Paracelsus to pretend to the formation of a Homunculus when by all his pretended Skill he could not protract his own Life being already constituted to the common period of an ordinary old age But 2. This Potestas generativa in the Humane Nature is part of that admirable Efficiency which Almighty God exercised in the first Formation of Mankind and of other perfect Animals and this Faculty is performed in the Humane Nature and traduced from one to another by the immediate efficacy virtue and energy of that first Divine Efficiency In this Generative Faculty therefore though the Parents are not simply passive Instruments the Semen prolificum is not meerly a passive Instrument in the production of Humane Nature yet both are Instruments and Efficientes vicariae subordinatae in respect of Almighty God and the activity that either of these Instruments have they have from that God that first formed the Humane Nature and implanted and alligated this activity to them In the first formation of the first Individuals of Humane Nature this Vis prolifica was immediately constituted in them by Almighty God with power not only to produce their kind but to transmit this Vis prolifica to those they so produced and although the immediate production now seems to be by the immediate efficiency of the Parents and their prolifick Semen yet it is done by virtue and in the power of the first efficiency of Almighty God Qui cum hanc indidit primis individuis in eorum prima formatione ac perpetua quadam lege successivis individuis quasi alligavit connexit So that as when I behold a Man at this day his corporeal Figure his Faculties I see but as it were a Copy or Transcript of the first created nature of Man in the first Individuals I mean as to their Essentials so I look upon the successive Generations of Mankind to be but a continuation of that first generative Faculty concreated with the first Man and protracted or extended unto all succeeding descendents from him And therefore I have all the reason imaginable when I behold the successive Generations of Men and the actuating of that Faculty retro trahere ad primam originem and to acknowledge it to be no less the Efficacy of the Divine Efficiency in the thousandth Generation from Adam than it was in Adam himself Just as if I should take a Wedge of Silver of one Inch square and gild it over with Gold and should after draw it by Art into a Wire as small as a Hair to a Mile in length every Inch of that silver Wire hath the very same tincture which the first Wedge had Though this resemblance holds not in all things it serves to explicate what I mean namely the Facultas generativa which was by God Almighty given to the first Parents of Mankind and was bound to their Species And though it be now at a remoter distance from its first efficiency yet it hath its continuance and efficacy by virtue of that First Efficiency and the Institution and Ordination of that most Wise and Powerful Being So that even at this day the univocal generation of Man yea and of all perfect Animals is no less the Efficiency of Almighty God than it was in the first production of it though it be more remote in respect of the intervenience of more successive instrumental Causes And therefore we are mistaken if we think that the generation of Men or Animals is purely by virtue of the instrumental Causes without regard to the first Efficiency of Almighty God which though it perpetuates it in a setled regular way now called therefore Natural yet it is by the Force Virtue and continuing Energy of the first wise powerful and efficacious Institution of Almighty God And so nothing is gotten by this Objection but to re-mind us to acknowledge and admire the admirable Wisdom Power and Goodness of God in the first establishment and continued protraction of this Law of Seminal Propagation And this is the true reason of the constancy and fixedness of the Methods of Generation and why they do not transire ultra limites why those Animals that are produced per ovum do not cannot produce viviparous as Birds and some sorts of Fishes and why those that produce vivipara or per vermem do not produce per ovum why without extreme accidents all perfect Animals produce Individuals conformable to their own similitude and specifick nature and likeness namely this is the true reason In the first formation of the Individual of these Species the most Wise God who foresaw what was most fit and convenient did engrave these several Laws and inviolable Constitutions in the natures of the things first produced and chained and connected them to their Species by an inviolable Law not regularly changeable by any Power but by his Power that Enacted them And therefore it is not in the power of an Angel to alter the established Method of the Generation of things because it is a Law instituted by the Supreme Lord. And although Monstrous Births may casually arise as in due time may be observed yet the production of vivipara per ovum or of ovipara per vermem or of Men or perfect Animals aliter quam per conjunctionem maris foeminae are prohibited by the setled and fixed Laws established by the God of Nature in the first formation of Individuals 2. Object You lay much stress upon the admirable Fabrick not only of Man but of perfect Animals the regular and excellent order and composure of their Parts the accommodation of their Organs to their Faculties and of their Faculties to the convenience of their Nature and yet there is scarce the smallest Insect but hath the same Faculties and Organs as exquisitly accommodated to their use as the greatest Animal nay they are so much the more curious and the Art of the Artificer so much the more commendable by how much the smaller they are
If a Flea or a Fly hath as exact a symmetry organization and diversity of Faculties as an Ostridge or an Elephant the curiosity of the Art is more admirable by the smalness of the Volume And yet these do every day arise spontaneously and it may be propagate their kind after their spontaneous production or it may be have only the existence of a Day neither is it reasonable to think that all these Insects thus spontaneously arising were first produced in the fifth or sixth Day or that the Semina formata of every Worm or Fly that hath arisen this day or yesterday were created in the first Creation of things and lay concealed and unactive for above 5000 Years and yet in these sponte nata we see no necessity nor evidence of any immediate Divine Efficiency for some are every day produced ex putri sine praeexistente semine Why therefore is so much weight laid upon the first Origination of Man or perfect Animals as if it must needs require the immediate interposition of Almighty God when we are content to referr the Origination of Works possibly of as wonderful a fabrication as many at least of perfect Animals to a lower Cause I Answer It is true that there is a great curiosity in the Texture and Faculty of Insects and that there are very many that arise not ex praeexistente semine but either of Vegetables or of that which we usually call Materia putris and it will be too hard a task for any to maintain that all Insects do arise of univocal Seeds derived from their own Species or that all the Species of Insects were created the fifth or sixth Day neither shall I with Scotus affirm that the Forms of such Insects are derived from Heaven and diffused into Matter whereby they mould themselves into their distinct Existences But as the God of Nature gave a seminal prolifick power to perfect Animals and unto Men and did bind and connex this Method of their future Generations unto their Nature without which though they had been constituted otherwise in a most perfect Constitution they could never have multiplied their kind So as to the production of many Insects Almighty God hath given such a prolifick nature to the Earth and Waters in a certain due mixture irradiated and influenced by the Sun to produce divers sorts of Insects by virtue of these two great Benedictions given to the Water Gen. 1.20 and to the Earth Gen. 1.24 as the two great prevailing Elements in spontaneous generations and as by virtue of the Divine Benedictions given to Animals and Men Increase and multiply and replenish the Earth and the Waters Gen. 1.22 28. so by virtue of that first Command to the Waters and Earth Let the Waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind and the cattel and creeping thing and the beast after his kind The spontaneous propagation of Insects by the Earth is by virtue of this Command as effectual and in its kind as natural by virtue of this established Law as the production of Animals per mixtionem though not so perfect And from the Efficacy of this Divine Institution it comes to pass 1. That their Textures and Faculties are curiously disposed for the Elementary Nature in conjunction with the Heavenly Influence doth produce them as Instruments and in the virtue of the first Institution of the Glorious God 2. That though there is a great variety and multiplicity in their Species yet they are not infinite but determinate 3. That according to the variety of Climates and various disposition of Matter Insects are variously produced this Climate produceth that Insect that another doth not and this Herb this Wood this Flesh that Insect that another doth not and the same is observed in Herbs and spontaneous Plants And hence it is that all the Art in the World can never make the meanest Insect out of any other Matter or any otherwise disposed or any otherwise irradiated than what would of it self naturally produce an Insect of that kind But this shall be farther illustrated in the Answer to the next Objection But although it be true that these little Insects discover the wonderful Wisdom and Power of God in their vicarious productions by the commissionated and influenced Elementary Nature yet they come exceedingly short of those perfect Animals who have a nobler and more elaborate production by univocal generation and infinitely short of the excellency of the Humane Nature And therefore there is no parity of Instance in the first formation of an Insect ex non genitis and the first formation of the Humane Nature Every Year gives us Instances of a new spontaneous production of Insects and this by virtue of that primitive commission and vital vigour thereby concredited to the Earth and Waters irradiated by the Sun But never any Age gives so much as a shadow of an Instance of the production of any perfect Animals much less of Man by any such spontaneous Method and that the latter gives a greater and more eminent Specimen of a Divine Power in its primitive formation than the former in its spontaneous production 3. Object It is evident that the malignant Spirits have power to produce Insects as appears by the Magicians producing of Frogs in Aegypt by their Enchantments Exod. 8.7 and therefore the resolution of the spontaneous productions of Insects into the Energy of the Divine Command seems unwarrantable And if he may produce those which are really endued with an Animal Life why not those Animals that have their ordinary production by univocal Generation and why not also Mankind And the Satyrs and Fauns whereof some of the Ancients write seems to be productions out of the common road of humane production I Answer 1. Touching the supposed Fauns and Satyrs they were either Fables or Illusions and no credit to be given to the Histories of them 2. Admitting it should be within the power of good or evil Angels to produce Insects yet it would be no consequence from thence to their efficacy of producing perfect Animals much less Humane Nature which is in another superior rank of Being above the noblest Brutes and excessively above the rank of Insects We might as well conclude because a Man can make a Candle he can make a Star But 3. As to the efficacy of good or evil Angels in effecting of Insects 1. It is of no great difficulty to suppose that good or evil Angels may bring or transport the Semina or Spawn of Insects to other places and possibly thus it might be done by the Egyptian Magicians 2. It is very true that the Angelick Natures have a very great knowledge of Natural Efficacies and Virtues and a great power of transporting uniting and applying Actives to Passives whatsoever therefore is effectible by the most congruous and efficacious application of Actives to Passives is effectible by them And since there are
instituted and statuminated Nature is his Law and his Institution and the connexion of natural Effects to their natural Causes is his Institution his Law his Order And therefore we do neither deny a Law of Nature or a connexion between natural Causes and Effects but that which we justly blame in these Men that pretend themselves to be the great Priests of Nature and admirers and adorers of it is 1. That they do not sufficiently consider and observe that this which they and we call Nature and the Law of Nature and the Power of Nature is no other but the wise instituted Law of the most wise powerful and intelligent Being as really and truly as an Edict of Trajan or Justinian was a Law of Trajan or Justinian Sic parvis magna and 2. That they do not warily distinguish between that first Law in rebus constituendis and this second Law of Nature in rebus constitutis but inconsiderately misapply that Law and Rule and Method which is ordinary and regular constituted and fitted and accommodate to Nature already setled as if the same were and ought to be necessarily the Rule and Law in the first formation and setling of things which is an Errour that proceeds from the over-much fixing of our Minds to that which in the present course of things is obvious to Sense and not adverting that the first Constitution and Order of things is not in Reason or Nature manageable by such a Law which is most excellently adequated and proportioned to things fully setled Therefore besides that Law which the Divine Wisdom Power and Goodness hath fixed in Nature fully statuminated we must also suppose a Law and Order of the Divine Wisdom not rigorously bound either to second Causes or present stated Methods in the first production of things And this the due Consideration of the different nature of the state of things in fieri and in facto esse will easily perswade that the most wise God that hath established a fixed regular ordinary Law in things already setled which he rarely departs from yet used another kind of order namely the regiment of his own Will and Wisdom and if I may with humility speak it a dictatorian power more accommodate to the first production of things And thus much for the comparison between the Mosaical and Philosophical Theories touching things and the great advantage and preference of the former as most suitable to the true nature state and reason of things And now I draw towards a conclusion of this long Discourse and shall therefore in the last place give an account of those Consectaries Consequences and Corollaries which are evidently deducible from this Consideration of the Origination of Mankind by the immediate Efficiency of this Supreme Intelligent Being Almighty God and indeed principally for the sake of these Consequences and Corollaries hath all been written that precedes in this Book and it is the Scope End and Use of the whole Book which I shall absolve in the next Chapter CAP. VII A Collection of certain evident and profitable Consequences from this Consideration That the first Individuals of Humane Nature had their Original from a Great Powerful Wise Intelligent Being I Now come to that upon which I had my Eye from the first Line that was written touching this Subject namely the Consequences and Illations that arise from this great Truth contained in these Conclusions 1. That Mankind had an Original of his Being ex non genitis 2. That this Origination of Mankind was neither casual nor meerly natural 3. That the Efficient of Man's Origination was and is an Intelligent Efficient of an incomparable Wisdom and Power First therefore we have here a most evident sensible and clear conviction of a Deity and a confirmation of Natural Religion which consists principally in the acknowledging of Almighty God to be a most perfect Eternal Being of infinite Wisdom Goodness and Power and a due habitude of Mind Life and Practice arising from that Principle It hath been commonly observed that the particular or instituted Religions since the Creation have had their Proofs by Miracles which were as it were the Credentials to subdue the Minds of Men to assent to it Thus the instituted Religion of the Jews given by the hand of Moses was confirmed by the great Miracles done by God by the hand of Moses in Egypt and in the Wilderness and the Christian Religion had its Confirmation by the Miracles of Christ and his Apostles who did wonderful things beyond the reach and power of created Agents or Activities which were therefore Miracles such as were governing of the Winds and Seas healing of the Sick by a touch or word raising the Dead c. But it is farther said That Almighty God never used Miracles to evidence the truth of his own Existence Power Wisdom Goodness or for the establishing of Natural Religion or the confuting of Atheism But I take it that there are really as many Miracles for the evincing of the truth of Natural Religion viz. the Existing of Almighty God as there are Works in Nature For although it be a great truth that the Laws of Nature as the Positions of the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies their Motion Light Influence Regularity Position propagation of Vegetables Animals Men and the whole Oeconomy of the Universe is by the Divine Wisdom Power and Goodness setled in a regular course so that now we call things Natural and Works and Laws and Order of Nature and being so setled and fixed cease to be Miracles yet in their first Institution and Constitution they were all or many Miracles Works exceeding the activity of any created or natural power and accordingly ought to be valued and really are so and it is nothing else but their commonness and our inadvertence and gross negligence that hinders the actual estimate of them as great and wonderful Miracles As I have often said if at this moment all the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies should cease or there should be a general stop of the Propagation of Animals Vegetables or Men if Mens Reason should generally fail them and for the most part they should become like Brutes if the Light of the Sun were darkned or the great Luminous or Planetary Bodies should bulge and fall foul one upon the other or that disorder or confusion should generally fall upon the Works of Nature and break that excellent Order that now obtains among them we should be full of admiration of such a Change and account them Miraculous And the reason is because the sense of the Change is at present incumbent upon us and we cannot choose but take notice of them as strong unusual miraculous Prodigies When all this while Natures course holds regularly the Wonder and Miracle is ten times greater in the state of things as they now stand than it would be in such a discomposure of Nature The Motion and Light and Position and Order of the Heavenly and Elementary Bodies is a greater
Evidence of the Divine Power that put them and keeps them in Motion than if they all rested And it is a greater Miracle that a Man was constituted upon the Earth that he hath a power given him to propagate his kind that he lives ordinarily such a portion of time in the World that he hath the use of Reason and Understanding I say there is more of Miracle in it than in the want of it Only there are these three things that abate the value of it among Men 1. The commonness of the benefit and wonder renders the Observation thereof little 2. Mankind is negligent in improving his Observation he never rubs the Corn out of the Ear and so by inadvertence supineness and negligence suffers things of this nature to slip away without notice 3. We rarely carry things to their Original but take them as we find them whereas if we did as by a Clew follow the Works of Nature to their Original we should find the Divine Omnipotence and infinite Wisdom at the upper end of the Chain and the Worms themselves no other than Miracles in their first constitution He that considers the admirableness of the Frame of Humane Nature especially of his intellectual power and that is but acquainted with himself will without arrogance or vain-glory conclude that Man is the most admirable Creature that this lower World affords a Creature to which all the visible Creatures of this lower World seem in a great measure to point at as their End And therefore if the first Individuals the common Parents of Mankind were at some one time constituted there was a very great deal of Power Wisdom and Intelligence employed to the making up of such a Piece as this If we see an excellent Picture to the Life or a Statue there will not need much Rhetorick or Logick to perswade or evince that surely it was not done without an excellent knowing and intelligent Artist And certainly that Efficient who ever he was that did at first compose and make up the admirable Structure of the Humane Body all the Organs Nerves Veins Arteries Viscera Bones and other Integrals thereof that endowed it with the Faculties of a vegetable and sensible Nature that gave him a reasonable intellectual self-moving Soul with all its subordinate Faculties that so strangely and stupendiously united two such different Essentials of a reciprocal and intellectual nature was some intelligent Being and such an intelligent Being that was not only of a far more admirable Wisdom and Power than Man now the best of the visible Creatures appears to be but of such an excess of Wisdom and Power as cannot be found in any known Being besides him that we call Almighty God And if any Man shall say as needs he must that surely it must be granted that he was of a Power and Wisdom far more excellent and perfect than that Work he thus made but how are we sure that he must be God May it not be some Being that admirably surpasseth the perfection of Humane Nature and yet may it not be something less than infinite somewhat inferior to God may it not be some Angel some separated Intelligence To this I say 1. That Man that can be forced by this Work to acknowledge an Intelligent Being transcendently beyond the Power and Wisdom of a Man a Power that he never saw but only collected from the eminence of an Effect which surpasseth the activity of any Being that he hath ever seen with his Eyes a Being that acts by choice election and intention I say that Man that can once admit an invisible Being of an efficiency equal to such a Work hath broken the strength of Atheism since whatsoever can be alledged to evince such an Existence as the Objection supposed doth may be alledged efficaciously to prove the Existence of a God since all that can be said for the Existence of the former that and much more may and must be said and granted for the Existence of the latter namely God 2. But again since the measure of any Man's conception touching the infinite sovereign excellence of an Efficient must needs be the excellence of the Work if therefore a Man doth not cannot know any more admirable created Existence than himself he cannot expect a greater Evidence of a more transcendent Power Wisdom or Goodness than he that was the Efficient of such a Being as himself is 'T is possible he may suppose some more excellent Inhabitants of the Heavenly Bodies than he himself is but this is more than he knows and 't is true the Sun and Stars are goodly beautiful Bodies but he doth not know that they are any more than fiery Balls that naturally give light and heat but as he hath no evidence so he hath no evident reason to satisfie that they are animate much less intellectual and consequently for any thing a Man knows he himself is incomparably a more excellent Being than they it is true they last longer and so doth a piece of Marble I speak not to disparage those beautiful Beings but to enforce the Argument ad hominem that to the first formation of a living Intelligent Nature there is as great a Power requisite and conspicuous as to the formation of the noblest Creature that we see or know And I should not question but that that Power and Wisdom which were equal to the first formation of the Reasonable Nature were equal to the formation and efficiency of the Sun or the brightest Star in Heaven Since therefore I can judge of the measure or excess of the Power and Wisdom of any Efficient by the nobleness and value of the Effect and I know not any sensible Being of greater worth value and wonder than Man I have reason to believe that he that first formed Man is a Being of the greatest and most transcendent Power Wisdom and Goodness that is imaginable and that Being which I have reason to believe to be of the greatest Power Wisdom and Goodness I have reason to believe to be Almighty God who is Optimus Maximus And if it be said that the conviction by this Argument is so much the more infirm because I see daily that Man begets a Man and so the efficiency no more proves the Existence of God than it proves the Father to be God that begets a Son of his own likeness and species I say the Instance is so far from weakning the Inference that it rather enforceth it For the first formed Parents of Mankind were also endued with this generative power by virtue of that first efficiency upon the first individual pair of Mankind so that the generative power in Man is but an effect of that redundance of Power that was in the first Efficient of the Humane Nature Indeed if any Man or all the Men in the World could constitute a Man in any other way than by natural propagation it were an Instance that would sufficiently confute the Inference But the generative power and
Being to But the propriety that any Man can have in what he makes is still limited and qualified first because he is not himself his own he owes his Being to God and therefore without the help of Divine Indulgence his acquests are like the acquests of a Servant acquirit domino And besides the Matter is not his own whatsoever he makes he makes out of that Matter that was not his own But the propriety that Almighty God acquires in his Creatures is absolute because he himself is a Supreme and Sovereign Efficient none is above him and because the Matter out of which he effected Man and all Corporeal Existences was perfectly his own it was Matter of his own making 2. A right of absolute Dominion and Sovereignty over his Creature where the property is circumscribed limited or qualified the dominion is so too but an absolute sovereign property carries with it an absolute sovereign dominion in the Proprietor 3. An infinite irresistible power to exert the right of his Dominion according to his Will The two former Considerations give him a sovereign authority over his Creature a right jus disponendi but authority or right being divided from power to execute that authority and exact obedience to it is lame but the glorious God hath not only an absolute right of propriety and dominion over his Creature but an infinite irresistible power to rule order and dispose it according to his Will Almighty God tells us Jerem. 18. that as the Clay is in the Potter's hand so are Mankind in his hand yea and in a far greater subordination and subjection to his Power the power of the Potter over his Clay is a finite limited power we see in the same place it resisted and disappointed his intention by its untractableness But the power of God over his Creature is an infinite power he that by his power made him in an instant can in an instant dissolve or annihilate him And yet this infinite Power of God is under the management of a most wise and holy and pure and gracious Will and therefore though his Propriety be absolute his Dominion boundless his Power infinite yet the exercise of his Dominion and Power is full of Goodness suitable to the most perfect nature of God I am God and not man therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed Here therefore we have that great Question among some of the Ancients satisfactorily answered namely What is the Root of all Obligation in Mankind whence comes the Obligation in the Consciences of Men what is it that binds Men to keep their Faith their Promises It is the Law and Command of him that hath sovereign Authority to command and infinite Power to exact Obedience and to punish the want of it all other foundations of Obligation are but weak and deficient without this or in comparison to it 10. In this History of the primitive state of Man and his defection we have the Solution of that great Quaesitum that troubled the ancient Philosophers especially the Stoicks namely Whence or how came it to pass that not only that great disorder happens in things of this World especially in the nature and practices and customs of Mankind some would have it from Matter some from one thing some from another we see here a plain Solution of the Quaere That it came not from God no nor from Matter but by the defection and disobedience of the first Man which brought Death into the World and Sin and Corruption and Depravation and Disorder into the Humane Nature and brought disorder and discomposure upon the greatest part of this lower World which as it was principally made for the service of Man so it suffered a great Concussion and Breach by the Disobedience and Apostacy of Man and from this unhappy root ariseth all the Disorders and Confusions in the humane World for although the Fall of Man did neither alter the essential Constituents of Mankind nor wholly raze out the Engravings of those common Notions Sentiments and rational Instincts that were in them yet it did in a great measure impair and weaken them and brought in a very great deordination and discomposure setting up the lower Faculties in rebellion against the superior so that the wiser and more morate part of Mankind were forced to set up Laws and Punishments to keep the generality of Mankind in some tolerable order 11. This reasonableness congruity and consonancy to common Light and Reason in the Hypothesis of the Formation of the World and Mankind and the great preference that it hath above those Inventions of the ancient Philosophers touching the same the admirable Solution of many of those difficulties which are hereby solved doth give a very great valuation and esteem to the truth and Divine Authority of the Scriptures It is true their Authority is above the contribution of Humane Reason or any Supplies it can bring either to its Truth or Authority but yet when a Man shall see so great a clearness and plainness and reasonableness in the Holy Scripture touching this great Truth so many difficulties and absurdities thereby avoided so great a suffrage and attestation of Reason and common evidence bearing witness to this Truth and to such a Truth as could never be at first particularly discovered without Divine Revelation yet being discovered carries in it nothing of absurdity but a singular congruity both to it self in the several parts of it and to the common Reason It is true a great though a Ministerial and Humane Suffrage to the truth and excellency of the Holy Scriptures strengthens our Faith which God knows stands in need of all the contributions that may be to bear up our Souls against that root of Infidelity that is in us and may be instrumental and preparative to bring those to the belief and veneration of the Scriptures who are without and hardly perswadible but by those media that bear a congruity to their natural Light and Reason 12. And therefore we have infinite reason to bless and magnifie the gracious God that hath lent us his Holy Scriptures to inform us in things to be believed and to be done and to contain and preserve us infra cancellos certitudinis The Lord knows and we cannot choose but daily observe in our selves a strange mobility and instability in our Imaginative and Intellective Faculty roving after every thing and in many things that we know and much more in things we know not framing strange Chimaera's finding out many Inventions was the first effect of the departure of Mankind from a revealed Truth and searching after unknown and forbidden Knowledge And this hath been the course and walk and disease of our restless moveable unstable Mercurial Brains ever since in matters of Philosophy in matters of Religion The merciful and wise God therefore to keep in and regulate the extravagant and witless Spirit of Man and to give us the clear knowledge of things necessary and useful and to prescribe and
beautiful Piece of the Furniture of this lower World In these things therefore or by them we are not to seek that special End for which man was made because under these and the like Considerations he seems to have a common parity with other created Beings But our search must be 1. Whether there be not some peculiarities in the Humane Nature some Faculties and Powers something in his Constitution and some adaptations and appropriate accommodations therein peculiar to his nature and of a far more advanced use and perfection than those of the best of other inferior Animals For if we find such in Man we have just reason to believe that the most wise Efficient of the Humane Nature as he raised Man to a greater eminence not only of gradual but of specifical perfection above the common Animal Nature so he designed a more excellent and noble End for this more excellent and noble Work For thus it became the greatest Wisdom to design a more noble End to that which he constituted a more noble Being 2. We are also to search wherein this excellency and preference of the Humane Nature above the Animal consists For as the former Consideration gives us a general Conclusion That because the Humane Nature is more excellent than the common Animal Nature therefore the End or Design of the Constitution of the former is of a nobler kind than the Design of the Constitution of the latter So this particular Consideration of the excellencies of the Humane Nature above the Animal gives us some Estimate Crises or Indications what those Ends may be which the wise Creator intended in the making of Man namely such Ends as hold proportions to those eminencies and excellencies wherein the Humane specifically exceeds the Animal Nature Plato though a great Assertor of the Creation of Man by the Wisdom and Power of Almighty God yet in his 7 th Book De Legibus seems to have too light an Expression concerning the End of the making of Man and of those many excellencies in the Humane Nature namely Hominem Dei ludo esse fictum atque id verè ipsius optimum esse It is below the Dignity of the Divine Wisdom to think that he made Men and endued them with those excellent Faculties only to behold them as a Play or a Scorn or as the inconsiderate part of Mankind please themselves with beholding of Interludes or Cock-fighting or Bear-baiting the Comical part of the Lives of Men are too full of Sin and Vanity and the Tragical part thereof too full of Sin and Misery to be a delightful Spectacle unto the pure and wise God who certainly propounded more serious Ends than such for so noble a Structure The Saying therefore of Plato must be understood only analogically and Epictetus may be his Scholiast who wisheth every Man to remember Te esse actorem talis fabulae qualis Magistro probata fuerit si brevis brevis si longa longa si mendicum agere te voluerit fac eam quoque personam ingeniosè repraesentes ita si claudum si principem si plebeium hoc enim tuum est datam personam benè effingere eam autem eligere alterius Teaching us by the similitude that every Man's Station is subject to the Divine Providence and every Man's Duty is to be contented with it But to return to the Consideration of the specifical Excellence of the Humane Nature above the Animal Nature and the deduction of those Ends which we may from thence reasonably conclude to be specifical to him and intended by his wise Creator 1. It is apparent that Man is the noblest of all the visible Creatures at least of this inferior World the Complement and chiefest Ornament thereof without which it would be destitute of the most glorious Integral thereof that all the visible Creatures of this inferior World as it were concenter in him and are directed to him or his use as their immediate End that he is an Abstract or Compendium of the greater World as might easily be evidenced by the induction of particulars that he hath complicated in him all the excellencies of the Elementary Vital and Animal Natures that he hath superadded thereunto a singular beauty and majesty and usefulness in the Structure of his Body the admirable Faculties of Intellect Reminiscence and Ratiocination the Faculty of Speech institution of Signs to express his inward Conceptions Principles and Habits Intellectual and Moral liberty and empire of Will whereby he may if he please govern his sensitive Appetite Passions and inferior Faculties So that he is nexus utriusque mundi the common Angle wherein the highest and noblest of Material and Corporeal Nature is joyned to the Spiritual and Intellectual By all which and many more Perfections he is the noblest Instance of the Divine Power Wisdom and Goodness in this inferior World The Universe indeed is the great and goodly Type and Image of the Excellency and Glory of its Creator but it is a vast and comprehensive Volume not comprehensible by any Understanding but his that made it But this lesser World Man is a more compendious Abridgment nearer unto us and more discoverable by us and though yet it hath exercised the investigation of most industrious Minds and Searches without a full and perfect discovery of the least part of all its Eminencies yet in respect of its vicinity and obviousness to Observation it yields a distinct and perceptible Evidence to us of the Wisdom of its Maker Thus the Humane Nature objectively and passively exhibits unto intelligent Beings a wonderful and admirable manifestation of the incomparable Wisdom Goodness Power and Excellency of him that first created it and this was one End of Almighty God in the Creation of Man And although it be true that such is the Self-sufficiency and Happiness of Almighty God that it is not capable of any accession by all the Instances of his Wisdom and Goodness in the Works he hath made nor by any Glory or Praise that from them can return unto him yet it is not an End unworthy of the most perfect Being to render his Magnificence and Goodness conspicuous and to receive that deserved Honour and Praise of his Works that is the just Tribute due unto him 2. The Divine Essential and Eternal Goodness is inseparable from him and this is the root of the Divine Beneficence which latter though in its effluxes and emanations it be under the regiment of his own most holy and wise Will yet it is diffusive and communicative That the World was at all made is the Effect of this Divine Beneficence which when it had nothing besides it self unto which it might communicate it self it made all things that according to their different natures and receptivities might participate of the Divine Beneficence To things vegetable he hath given the Faculty of Life Vegetation and Growth this is one participation of the Divine Goodness per modum else viventis and again he communicates
to these Faculties suitable Objects answering those Vital Faculties to Sensitive Nature his Beneficence hath communicated those Faculties of Sense as well as Life and then communicates to them a farther efflux of his Beneficence by communicating to them the Objects grateful and useful both for Life and Sense thus his Beneficence is communicated to them per modum boni sensibilis but to Man his Beneficence is communicated not only per modum boni vitalis sensibilis which yet he enjoys as other Creatures but per modum boni intellectualis voliti First by giving him those nobler Faculties of Intellection and Will and then by communicating to those Faculties Objects suitable to those Powers or Faculties namely Intellectual Truths to his Understanding and Moral Rational and Divine Good to his Will and among all those vera bona that are communicated to these Faculties by the Divine Beneficence God himself his Goodness Truth Will Perfection are the chiefest verum and the chiefest bonum So that no Creature below Man is capable formally to know to love to enjoy God as the chiefest Truth and chiefest Good And this also seems to be another End of the Creation of Man that being made a Creature endued with Understanding and Will he might be receptive of the Effluxus of the Divine Beneficence in a nobler way than the other visible Creatures of this lower World 3. As under the first Consideration Man is more eminently an objective manifestation of the Divine Glory than other visible Creatures and as under the second Consideration Man is more receptive of the Divine Beneficence than other visible Creatures So upon farther examination we shall find that Man was made in a capacity to be a more active Instrument to serve and glorifie his Maker than other visible Creatures which was another End of his Creation specifically different from the End of other visible created Natures which will appear by the farther consideration of those two great distinguishing Faculties his Understanding and Will I shall not go about to make a large Description of those Faculties or the Operation but only observe so much touching them as may reasonably evidence the preference that Man hath therein above the inferior Animals and the Inferences that arise thereupon touching the End of Almighty God in the making Man And first for the Intellective Faculty As in Animals the Faculties of Sense internal and external especially the Visive Faculty placeth Animals in a rank of Being far above the insensible Creatures and accommodates them exquisitly to a Life of Sense so the Intellective Faculty placed in Man puts him into a rank of Beings far above the most perfect Animals and accommodates the Humane Nature to an Intellectual Life And the preheminence of this Faculty above the Faculty of Sense will appear if we consider the Operations thereof I shall instance but in two namely intellective Perception and intellective Ratiocination or Discourse 1. For the intellective Perception the Understanding perceives many things which are not perceptible by Sense or sensitive Phantasie or Imagination for Instance it hath the perception of Substance or Being abstracted from all sensible qualities it hath the perception of the truth or falsity of a Proposition it perceives the Conclusion and the Evidence thereof in the Premises and many more intellectual Objects which never did nor can fall under the perception of Sense or Imagination And although we cannot clearly understand all the Operations of the Brutal Phantasie because we are distinct from them and they have not the instrument of Speech intelligible by us to express their perceptions yet we may know that this is true by our selves for we may perceive that we do perceive these Objects not to be perceptible by our Faculties of Sense but by some other Faculties distinct from that of Sense or sensitive Imagination Again in those Objects that are objective to Sense the intellective perception discovers somewhat that is apparently unperceived by the Sense or sensitive Imagination for Instance the Heavenly Bodies the Sun Moon and Stars are equally objected to the view as well of Animals as Men but yet by the help of intellective perception Man perceives that in those Objects which neither the Brutes no nor Man himself by the bare perception of Sense or sensitive Phantasie doth not cannot perceive The perception of Sense gives us the Sun no bigger than a Bushel and the Stars than a Candle cannot discover an inequality of their distance from us judgeth the body of the Moon to have as many changes in figure and quality as it hath various Phases or Appearances the Sun really to set the Limb of the Heavenly Horizon to be contiguous to the Earth but the intellective perception finds the quantity of the Sun and Stars bigger than the Earth and by the Parallaxes and Eclipses finds the Stars more distant from us than the Sun and that than the Moon perceives distinctly their several Motions Orders Positions and makes distinctions and computations of Time and Duration by them and over-rules and confutes the perception of Sense and Imagination by another kind of perception above the perception of Sense 2. Touching Ratiocination or Discursive Operation the precedure thereof is above the reach of the sensitive Phantasie though this seems to carry some weak and imperfect Image thereof For Instance sometimes not only the media discursûs and the processus discursivus are out of the reach of Sense but the very subjectum discursûs is imperceptible to Sense such are that processus discursivus of the Understanding touching complexed Notions or Universals touching the abstracted Notions of Being Substance Entity and transcendents in Metaphysicks such are also the discursives of moral good and evil just unjust which are no more perceptible to Sense than Colour is to the Ear and yet touching these Subjects the Intellect forms Discourses deduceth Illations and Conclusions Again in matters Mathematical and Physicall though in the concrete and in their subjects they are objective to Sense yet the media and processus discursivus whereby the Understanding makes Conclusions and Inferences and Illations touching them are of a range and kind quite above the range of Sense or sensitive Imagination thus upon certain data or postulata in Geometry the Intellect forms Conclusions which though Mechanically and Experimentally true yet are elicited by a Processus discursivus quite above the activity of sensitive Phantasie And though matters Physical Bodies and Tangible qualities and their several powers manner of production and divers other things relating to them are sensible Objects yet the Intellect useth a Processus discursivus whereby it investigates Truths and draws Conclusions that are quite above the scantlet of Sense or Phantasie ascending up from the Effect to the next Cause and thence to the next and thence gradually to the First Cause of all things So that though oftentimes the foot or root of the Discursus intellectivus be bottomed in some sensible Object perchance
and Punishments that which acts out of coaction as bare Instruments or out of necessity as bare Natural Causes or a determined Instinct as Brutes are not properly capable of a Law but only analogically and what they do is not properly an act of Obedience because they cannot ordinarily do otherwise Therefore as his Intellective Faculty gives him the power to know his duty so the liberty of his Will is that which gives him the power truly to obey 2. The second property of the Will is that it is moved and drawn to that which is good or at least what appears to be so The sensitive Appetite is a power subservient to a sensitive Nature and carried to a sensible Good but the Will is a rational Faculty a Faculty of an intellectual Nature and carried to an intellectual Good as its proper Object and therefore with most earnestness to the most noble and supreme Good which is Almighty God So that as by the liberty of his Will Man is capable to be an active Instrument to serve and obey his Maker so by this property of his Will he is by a just suitableness drawn to will and desire and in enjoyment to delight in God as the chiefest Good the most noble and suitable Object of its choice and motion And we may observe that the Divine Goodness and Wisdom to promote and advance this act of the Will in choosing and loving Almighty God as his chiefest Good hath exhibited himself unto Mankind in all the manifestation of Goodness and Beneficence imaginable hath made him Lord of this inferior World provides for him supplies him and endears him to himself with all those manifestations of Mercy Goodness and Bounty that his nature is capable of whereby he may be won to love God not only as the chiefest Good but also as his chiefest Benefactor And thus by the due consideration of both these Faculties of Understanding and Will we may reasonably conjecture that the End of Almighty God in creating Man was to make such a Creature as might actively know serve glorifie love and obey his Creator and in that his Service and Obedience and Love enjoy the Love and Favour of that God whom he thus loves and obeys because we find his Faculties admirably fitted for such an end and use and certainly the wisest Agent must needs be supposed to design such an End to any Work as is suitable and commensurate to the thing he makes And these seem to be those Ends for which the wise God created this noble Creature Man which do more specially relate unto God 5. I shall now consider the Ends of Man as they mutually relate one to another There are these particularities in the Humane Nature that singularly commend Man each to other namely 1. A great love and propensity to Communion and Society Aristotle somewhere in his Politicks tells us that among Animals Bees seem to be the most sociable but that Man is by nature more sociable than Bees 2. That there are implanted certain connatural tendencies or moral Principles that do most naturally suit with humane society such as the first Rudiments of natural Justice Charity and Benignity without which it is impossible that humane society can be upheld And this appears hereby that though it is apparent that evil Educations and Customs have much defaced and weakned the Principles of Morality among Men yet they could never extinguish it but even among the Briars and Thorns the Rudiments of natural Justice and Morality have arisen and all the Order and Government and common Regiment of Societies have been maintained and preserved by it Naturam expellas furca licet usque recurret 3. That the benefit of Speech and those other instituted Signs peculiar only to Mankind are of great and principal use in maintaining and upholding Society and Communication between Mankind by these each Man communicates his Thoughts and Conceptions to another each Man instructs directs and adviseth another and makes another partaker of his own Knowledge Wisdom Counsel and Advice by this Contracts and mutual Commerce are upheld the mutual Faith of each other given and taken and infinite other advantages by all which particularities and accommodations of Humane Nature subservient to mutual Society and Love it seems reasonable to conclude That the wise God intended as one of his Ends of the Creation of Man that Man should be beneficial to Man should be instrumental for the good of humane Society 4. There appears in Man besides the speculative power of his Intellect a certain admirable ingeny and dexterity in discovering and perfecting divers Arts as well Mechanical as Liberal for the benefit delight and convenience of the Humane Nature The great Arts of Government Political Civil and Oeconomical the Arts of Husbandry and Improvements of Nature for Food Clothing Medicine the Arts of Geometry Arithmetick and artificial Measuring and Partition of Time the Arts of Architecture Navigation the Art of contriving Letters Writing Printing the Arts of Musick and Observations of the Laws Orders and Rules of the Motions and Positions of the Celestial Bodies or Astronomy and infinite more which by the Ingeny and Industry of Man have been invented discovered or perfected in all succession of Ages for the use benefit and delight of Mankind And although we may observe an admirable sagacity and dexterity in many Animals in certain kind of artifices convenient for their use and the use of Mankind as in the nidification of Birds Bees Silk-worms and divers others yet Man hath still the prelation 1. In respect of the variety and multiplicity of his Artificial Inventions and Effections commonly the Artifices of Irrational Natures are single and determinate but the Arts invented and effected by Man are multifarious various and almost infinite 2. Besides his rational Faculty is more excellent and perfect than the Faculties of other Creatures in relation to Arts and more fruitful in it 3. That one Instrument his Hand which Aristotle well calls Organum organorum is admirably suited and fitted to all variety of Artificial effections more than any of the Organs of other Creatures as our own Experience without the induction of many particulars may easily demonstrate and evince By all which and many other peculiar and distinguishing adaptations and accommodations of the Humane Nature we may reasonably conclude That the wise God in lodging of these particularities in the Humane Nature had one End and Design to make Humane Nature beneficent and useful to Mankind and to humane society And therefore that Precept so often inculcated by Christ and his Apostles of Love Charity and Beneficence from Man to Man was no other than the re-enacting of that old Commandment and directing Man to one of those Ends for which he was made and which hath so many Indications of it self by the peculiar Constitution Make and Accommodations of our Faculties 6. But yet farther the Creation of Man seems to have a farther End even in relation to this
he will live he must eat and if he will eat he must labour Though by the Fall of Man his labour is fuller of toyl and vexation yet labour and industry was part of his duty and employment in the very state of Innocency As he hath a busie office and employment committed unto him namely to be God's Vicegerent and subordinate Officer in the Regiment of the Vegetable and Animal Provinces so he is under a necessity for his own preservation and under an advantage for his own profit and convenience industriously and vigilantly to exercise the Province committed to him Thus the infinite Wisdom of Almighty God chains things together and fits and accommodates all things suitable to their uses and ends 5. And yet farther there seems to be found in the Humane Nature certain Affections that carry it on effectually to this employment his love to himself his safety his convenient supplies wealth and plenty invite industry and pains and a complacency and delight attends the acquests of honest industry and pains 2. Hitherto we have seen this part of the End of Man's Creation namely to be a subordinate Rector of this inferior World a Tributary King thereof by Investiture from God himself which Investiture was conferred upon Man in his first Creation Gen. 1.29 and again renewed after the Fall and Flood Gen. 9.3 Psal 8.6 Thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of thy hands thou hast put all things under his feet But there is yet another Office another End in the Creation of Man with relation to this inferior World and the Furniture thereof Almighty God in the goodly Frame of this World hath manifested the exceeding greatness of his Wisdom and Power as in the Heavenly Bodies the Sun the Moon the Stars the Elements the Meteors the Minerals the Vegetables the Animals they all make up a most magnificent and stately Temple and every Integral thereof full of wonder and bears the Inscription of the infinite Wisdom Goodness and Power of the Glorious God yet still all these are but passive receptive and objective reflections of the Goodness and Glory of God there is not a Grass in the Field not a Tree in the Forest nor the smallest insect Animal the Fly the Worm but bear an Inscription of the incomparable Wisdom Power and Goodness of the Glorious God But yet these cannot actively glorifie their Maker they understand not their own original nor their own excellence the noblest Cedar in the Field nor the vastest Elephant in the Indies nor the goodliest Whale in the Ocean have not the sense of their own excellence nor from whom they had it nor can actively and intentionally return Praise and Glory to their Maker for they want an intellective Principle to make those discoveries or returns 6. The Glorious God therefore seems to have placed Man in this goodly Temple of the World endued him with Knowledge Understanding and Will laid before him these glorious Works of his Power and Wisdom that he might be the common Procurator the vicarious Representative the common High Priest of the inanimate and irrational World to gather up as it were the admirable Works of the Glorious God and in their behalf to present the Praises Suffrages and Acclamations of the whole Creation unto the Glorious God and to perform that for them and as their common Procurator which they cannot actively intellectually and intentionally perform for themselves It is true the whole Creation doth objectively and according to their several capacities set forth the Honour and Glory of their Creator and cry Blessing honour glory and power be unto him that sittteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever Revelat. 5.13 and the Psalmist Psal 148. calls upon them all to perform that duty But Man above all visible Creatures is able to perform that duty intellectually and intentionally and fitted to be the common Procurator and High Priest of unintelligent Creatures intelligently on their behalf to present all their Praises and Acclamations to their common Creator Lord and Sovereign I have now done with those Ends for which we may reasonably conjecture Man was made First in relation to Almighty God that he might actively Know Love Serve Honour and Obey Him Secondly in relation to others of Mankind mutual Beneficence Justice and Charity Thirdly in relation to the inferior Creatures to be their subordinate Regent under God and to be the common Priest for the rest of the visible Creation to present their Recognitions and Praises to their Maker I now come to consider what we may reasonably conjecture might be the End of the Wise and Glorious God in the Creation of Man in relation to himself The former Ends were such as were terminated without him either to God the rest of Mankind or the unintellectual Creatures but this Enquiry is touching that End that is terminated in himself the former were Ends of Office or Duty this of Fruition or Enjoyment And in this Enquiry I shall first proceed Negatively to shew what this End is not and then Affirmatively as far as the Light of Nature and natural Reason will dictate for in this Discourse at present I go no farther what it is or may be reasonably concluded to be As to the former or Negative Procedure 1. Therefore I say the proper peculiar end of Man in point of fruition is not a sensible fruition or a Life of Sense but somewhat that is higher nobler and of another nature It is true that as Man agrees in the animal Nature with other Animals and consequently hath a Life of Sense as well as they therein they participate of one common end but that which we are enquiring concerning is the specifical peculiar End of Man appropriate to and designed for him as such and therein it is that we affirm the end of his fruition is not the end of a sensible Being but of a Nature specifically and vastly different from it And this I shall prove and also illustrate by these following Reasons and Conclusions 1. As I have before observed the Method of search and enquiry into the specifical or peculiar end of any Existence is by observing the specifical and peculiar existence of Faculties of that Being for we have reason to think that the specifical and peculiar end thereof is somewhat that bears a specifical proportion to those Faculties and Excellencies thus we reasonably conclude That since the Animal Nature hath a specifical and peculiar excellence and faculty above Vegetables namely the faculty of Sense that therefore its proper end of fruition is not a bare fruition of a vegetable Life or the commensurate Good thereof but a Good that is superior and accommodate to the Life of Sense And upon the same account we may conclude That since the Excellence and Faculties of the Humane Nature are of a higher Make and Order than that of Sense namely an intellectual Faculty therefore the peculiar end of the Humane Nature is not
terminated in a Life of Sense or a fruition of that Good which is not only proportionate or accommodate to a sensible Life or Nature but in a fruition of something answerable to the eminence and nature of an intellective Faculty Now it is apparent to any considerate Man that the Operations the Objects the Delight of the intellectual and rational Faculties of Understanding and Will lye higher than the Faculties of Sense and have little communion with them The very contemplation of natural Causes and Effects if we went no higher are not in order to a sensitive Good but often deprive us of it the contemplation and action of moral Virtues are above the reach of Sense tranquillity of Mind peace of Conscience perception and fruition of the favour and love of God the satisfaction of the Understanding in that contemplation the motion and tendency of the Will towards it as its chiefest Good These are things that delight and please the Intellectual Nature if not basely and grosly immersed in and prostituted to the Animal Nature are more grateful sapid and delightful to the Mind than the best Apparatus or Provisions of a sensible Good 2. Again it is apparent that the very excellency and preference of the Intellectual Nature doth render the fruition of the Good of Sense less good less satisfactory than it is to the Brutes the Good of Sense is so far from being the specifical or peculiar end of Man that the very Make Texture and Order of his nobler Faculties renders it not only incomplete but deficient and less competent to him than if he had not this excellency of Faculties which are specifical to his Nature And therefore certainly it can never be that Good that is the appropriate end of fruition in Man for it is less good to the Beasts and that even upon the very account of the excellencies of his Faculties I shall give many Instances hereof The fruition of the delights of Sense in the Beasts are more entire simple and unallayed than they are in Men because it is apparent that in the Intellective Nature there is something that checks controls and sowrs the fruition of Sense namely the Conscience which hath oftentimes a contrary motion and checks the inferior Faculties of Sense even when it oftentimes cannot control it it chides and allays the contentation of sensual Delights so that even in Laughter the Heart is sorrowful but the Brutes have no such correction of their Delights in fruition of Sense but are entire in their enjoyments Again it is a great perfection of the Humane Nature that it hath a more fixed strong and compact memory of things past than the Brutes have A Brute forgets his fruitions when they are past hath not the sense much less the memory of any faults or follies committed by him and therefore his present fruitions are not sowred with the remembrance of those better seasons of delight that he once had But Man hath ever a remembrance of what is past he remembers his faults and follies and what sensible advantages he lost by this or that inadvertence oversight or folly if his prosperity or fruition were formerly greater it depreciates his present enjoyment so that the excellence of his memorative Faculties makes his present enjoyment faint weak and tastless Again Man hath a more exquisite sense of present incumbent evils than the Beasts have as his fruition of the sensible Good he enjoys is not so entire as the Beasts so his sense of any incumbent evil is more sharp quick and galling than that of the Beasts and thereby his present sensible contentations are sowred and allayed When Haman had all the sensible Honours Wealth Affluence that the Court of the greatest Monarch in the World could yield him yet the want of a bow from Mordecai sowred all his enjoyments and made him sick for the want of it And when Ahab had all the Honours and Provisions that a Kingdom could afford him yet the want of Naboth's little Vineyard rendred all his enjoyments tastless And this Consideration is easily improveable if we consider that the very state and condition of our sensible Life hath many more distastful and sharp ingredients than the brutal Life hath and the greatest sensual Contentments in Man are commonly haunted with more than one of these displeasing Guests The Beasts have no sense of reproach dishonour disgrace which yet sit close upon Men especially of great Spirits and Enjoyments The Diseases and Distempers in Man are ten to one more in number and sharper or longer than in Beasts and any of these render the best sensual Enjoyments either tastless or vexing Again and most principally of all the rest the Brutes have little prospect to the future if any at all their provisions for things to come as for the Winter for their Young and the like seem not so much acts of distinct knowledge or foresight of the future as certain connatural Instincts alligated to their nature by the wise and intelligent disposition of their most wise Creator And hence it is that they have no consideration or fear of death till they feel it and if they have a good Pasture at present they are not solicitous how long it will last or what they shall do after they are not tormented with fears of what may come because they have no anticipations or suspitions of what may be in the future and by this means their enjoyments are sincere unallayed with fears or suspitions they fear not death because they are not sensible of their own mortality till they feel themselves dying But the case is quite otherwise with Man the excellency of his Faculties and the impression of Experience and Observation gives him a foresight of many things that will come and a strong suspition of many more that may come and by this means he anticipates Miseries and becomes twice miserable first in fears pre-apprehensions and anticipation and then again in the actual undergoing of it and if those suspected and feared evils never overtake him yet he is equally if not more miserable than if they did For his pre-apprehensions and suspitions renders them as sharp as if they were felt and many times sharper by the apposition of the most hideous and aggravating circumstances that his thoughts and fears can fashion And this very advantage of anticipation and foresight which is a perfection and excellence in Man above the Brutes saddens his Joy galls and frets his sensual Contentment and upon the very account of his own excellency and perfection renders the fruition of a sensible good utterly incompetible to be that end of fruition which the wise God designed for him Thus when he hath Wealth and Plenty he is under a thousand cares and fears sometimes of false Accusers sometimes of Thieves and Robbers sometimes of Fire and Casualty and while he is rich and plentiful in fruition he is poor and miserable by anticipation If he be in Health and Strength whereby sensual Goods
proportionate to their being nature and capacity 2. And as thus the contemplation of the Efficient and his Beneficence to other created Beings induceth us to conclude an end of fruition designed to Man so the contemplation of the Work it self concludes the same Man hath in the peculiarity of his nature these two great Powers and receptive Faculties whereby he is rendred amply capable of a great enjoyment namely his Understanding whose proper Object is Truth and the noblest Truth that is and its proper action is directed to that Object namely Intellection and Will whose proper Object is Good and the greater and more sovereign the Good is the more suitable it is to this power and the proper act of this power is to reach after and desire and embrace and delight in its Object and the filling of these two receptive powers with the chiefest intellectual Truth and with the chiefest and intellectual Good is that which perfects advanceth and enableth these Faculties or Powers And this doth lead us to a just discovery of what that end of fruition is for which Man was designed by his beneficent Creator namely such as is suitable answerable and proportionate to those Powers or Faculties in Man whereby he excells all inferior Animals his Understanding and his Will and herein consists his happiness his end of fruition or enjoyment 1. As to his Understanding the great and general fruition of Good therein is Knowledge Now I shall distinguish these Objects of Knowledge or Scibilia into two kinds 1. The Scibilia subordinata which being united to the intellective Power by that act or habit which we call Knowledge do advance and perfect this Power or Faculty in a subordinate way measure or degree such is the knowledge of Natural Causes and Effects of Arts Liberal or Manual of Rules of justum and decorum of Moral Truths and the like this gives a subordinate perfection and fruition to this Power varied and diversified according to the worth of the Objects and the perfection or clearness of their perception 2. The Scibile supremum which is the ever-glorious God his Perfection Attributes Wisdom Power Goodness his Will and Commands so far forth as that infinitely perfect Being is cognoscible by our finite Understanding This is the supreme Truth the highest fruition of the intellective Power and the greatest perfection of an intellective Nature as such 2. Again as to the power of the Will it hath likewise Objects of Good answerable to the former distribution 1. The subordinate Good of Moral Virtues Honesty Sobriety Justice Temperance and all the train of Moral Virtues these being united to the Will in their acts and constant habits the Will enjoys a great Moral Good tranquillity of Mind complacency and delight 2. The Sovereign Good which is the glorious God reached after by the Will as the chiefest Good and enjoyed in the manifestations of his Love Favour Presence Influence and Beneficence this fills the vastest motions of the Will fills it with Peace Contentation and Glory and keeps it nevertheless in a perpetual motion by returns of Gratitude humble Love Obedience and all imaginable extension of it self for the Service Honour and Glory of that God that hath thus bountifully given to the Soul a power in some measure receptive of his Infinite Self and fitted that power with a proportionate Good even the Goodness and Bounty of the ever-glorious God And now because Man hath a double state namely a state in this Life in conjunction of the Soul with the Body naturally dissolvible and a state of Immortality after this Life either in the Soul alone or in the Soul in conjunction with an immortal Body as shall be shewn in its due time therefore proportionable to this double state is that fruition which Almighty God designed for his End 1. In this Life the proportionable fruition of Man is that which is compatible to the state he hath here namely the knowledge of God and his Works in a measure suitable to the intellectual Capacity in this Life the sense of the Divine Love Favour Goodness and Protection the sense of his own Duty to God to Man to himself with a cheerful endeavour to observe it And from these arise dominion over his Passions and inferior Faculties and the due placing ordering and moderation of them a resignation of his Will to the Divine Will and a dependance upon his Goodness Power and All-sufficiency and from all these arise peace of Conscience contentation and tranquillity of Mind in which even the wisest of Heathens placed the greatest Happiness acquirable in this Life 2. After this Life an immutable state of everlasting Rest and Happiness in the Beatifical Vision of God and fruition of so much of his Goodness and Beneficence as a glorified Soul is capable of for it is reasonable that the end of fruition of an Immortal Nature should be an everlasting Good commensurate in its intention and duration to such an Immortal Nature And now if any Man shall enquire if this be the End of Almighty God in the Creation of Man How comes it to pass that all Men attain not this End or how comes it to pass that Almighty God comes to be frustrated of the End which he thus designed as well in relation to his own Glory as the Good of Mankind I Answer first in general That this Enquiry belongs to another way of Examination namely herein we must have the assistance of Divine Revelation both to answer this Enquiry and to guide us in it which in this place is not designed to be prosecuted 2. Yet more particularly thus much I shall say 1. That the wise God hath as it were twisted his own Honour and Glory with Man's Felicity and Happiness if Man decline to honour glorifie love and obey his Maker and casts off the primary and chief End of his Being it is just and necessary that he be deprived of the End of his own Fruition and Happiness which is the Reward of his Duty 2. The Liberty of the Will was the great Prerogative of the Humane Nature and Almighty God having furnished that Nature with all conducibles to enable him to obey and to continue him in that Obedience Man by the abuse of his own liberty deprived himself of his own felicity When we speak therefore of the End of Man we speak of it as God made him not as Man made or rather unmade himself But of this End of the means of his Restitution by Christ and the admirable System and Connexion of the Divine Providence in relation to Man in his Redemption belongs to another Discourse We are in this preceding Discourse but in the outward Court of the Temple where the Gentiles came or might come by natural Light or Ratiocination Therefore to conclude all Almighty God out of his abundant Wisdom Goodness and Beneficence as he hath made Mankind so he hath fitted him for a double End namely to glorifie his Maker and everlastingly to enjoy him and in order hereunto hath given him a double station and in each of these a differing kind of fruition of his Maker viz. a station in this lower World and a station in the glorious Heavens His station in this lower World is during the time of his mortal Life here below and in this station the glorious God hath furnished Mankind with all conveniencics and accommodations suitable to it as the comfortable Accommodations of his sensible Life the Comforts of humane Society the Use and Dominion of his Creatures the admirable Faculties of his Mind the Books and Instructions of his Word and Will the goodly Works of Creation and Providence the Tenders and Ayders of his Grace and Guidance the Effluxes and Manifestations of his Favours and Love the Anticipations and Hopes of Eternal Happiness these and many more such as these the Bountiful God affords to Mankind even in this state of Mortality which may and do render it in a great measure very comfortable But withall he lets us know and we must know That these are but as so many Bounties to render our passage through this Life the more easie and convenient to our selves and the more serviceable to our great Lord and Master This is not to be the place of our rest or final happiness but a place of exercise and probation a place of preparation for our future and more durable state we are here as it were but put to School to learn our Duty and our Lessons we are but as young Plants planted in a Nursery till we come to a convenient size and fitness to be removed and then we are to be transplanted into another and a richer Soil In this World we are as it were Seeds ripening upon the Trees or Stalks till they are fully digested and ripe and then as the Seeds drop into the Ground and become the Seminary of a new Plantation so by Death we drop into Eternity and become the Children the Embryones of the Resurrection and then we come into that second and blessed station the Country of our Rest and Happiness our Home and the End of our Being where we shall ever behold the Glory of the Glorious God and glorifie him for ever where we shall have the perpetual sensible vigorous satisfactory Manifestation and Influences of his Love to all Eternity and enjoy that Blessedness which Eye hath not seen nor Ear heard neither hath entred into the Heart of Man to conceive And this is the great End of the Glorious God in making this great goodly Creature called Man whose Body is but the Husk the Shell of that vital immortal Beam of Light Life and Immortality that Seminal Principle of Eternal Life the Soul irradiated and influenced by the Sacred Spirit of Life and Love and if God lend me Life and Strength shall in my next be handled FINIS A