Divine Power But 't is a certain and undoubted truth that every Superiour Authority has Power to Revoke all the free Issues of its own Power unless it have abridg'd it selfe from the Exercise thereof by some special compact or promise For compact and promise lay an obligation upon him that makes it and vests a Right in the Person to whom 't is made and therefore where Benefits are bestowed without these Instruments of conveighing Right there the Donor has the same Right to withdraw as he had to give them and therefore that God who has given us our Beings has full Power arbitrariously to destroy them But here it will be Objected that destroying the life of a guiltless person is justly accounted the most salvage and unmerciful piece of Injustice in the World that 't is almost the only Instance which carries in it an undeniable Iniquity antecedent to all Humane Lawes and Sanctions So that when Mr. Hobs asserts that in the State of Nature there could be no Injuries and Violences Acted amongst Men because they could not have a Right of Propriety in any thing before they had by mutual Compacts apportion'd each mans share if he had limited his assertion to possessions of Lands and all other Proprieties Forreigne to a mans own person it had been equally true and blamelesse for Nature doth not assign this Moiety to Tuius and that to Caius but leaves us to share the Earth among our selves and to Enclose what she had left in Common into particular proprieties as we shall agree among our selves But when he extends the forementioned assertion to the persons of Men his Errour is as palpable as 't is mischeivous because every man has a right and propriety in himselfe Antecedently to all Law and Compact There needs no Covenant to appoint that I shall have a propriety in my own person nay 't is as impossible it should be otherwise as that I should alienate my self from my selfe and all the grants of all the men in the world cannot Vest me in a greater propriety to my selfe then Nature has because they cannot make me to be more my selfe then I already am so that though I were in Mr. Hobs's Natural State of Warre if he or any other man should take away my life without just cause he would do me at least as evident an Injury as if he should now either by Fraud or Violence thrust me from mine Inheritance to which I have an unquestionable Right both by his own consent and the Laws of that Civil Society of which we are Members because he will Rob me of that in which I have as clear a Right and Propriety as 't is possible for me to have in any thing that depends upon Pact or Covenant Well then it being thus Evident that to take away the Life of an Innocent person is among men a most Enormous and Inhumane piece of Injustice and that antecedently to all positive Sanctions and Contracts why should it not be so in reference to God the Rules of Equity being the same to all Eternal Unalterable and abstract from all Persons States and Relations To which I answer that notwithstanding there are the same general Rules and Principles of Justice in reference to God as to Men that yet the particular Instances are not the same because Gods Relation to the Creatures being infinitely different from that which they bear to each other the particular Actions and Displays of his Justice though measured by the same Rule must needs be of a widely different Nature not because the Measure is changeable but because the relation of the Persons suffers variety and alteration For God being the Supream Sovereign and Cause of all has upon that Account power to deprive any or all of his Creatures of what Perfections and Endowments he pleases whereas the Creatures not having any natural Dominion over one another they cannot take away from their fellow creatures any thing which God has given them without manifest Robbery unless in such cases where the Supream Lord has been pleased to communicate any part of his Power and Dominion And so in humane Societies though there are the same Lawes of Justice in reference to all men yet there are not alwayes the same Instances for though it be granted that every man has by right of Nature a power of punishing any one that injures him yet having entered into Societies either by Gods Institution or their own consent or both the exercise of this power is devolved upon some peculiar persons whom we call Magistrates in whose hands every man has for the common good deposited his Authoritative Rights it s upon that account just and lawful for the Magistrate to punish and take away Delinquents but unjust for the private person to do the same for that were to Usurp that Authority which I have granted away to them unless in cases of necessity as when I am assaulted by another and have no other way to preserve my own Life then by destroying my Assailants there the Common-wealth is presumed to allow me to exercise my natural right my self but where no such necessity urges there the Governours of the Society in which I am and to whom I have passed away the Exercises of my Original Right are to Execute Justice for me so that private persons not having power to punish Criminals as Magistrates have that action would be judged Murder in those which is accounted Justice in these notwithstanding that they are both subject to the same common Rules and Maximes of Equity Duo cum idem faciunt saepe ut possis dicere Hoc licet impune facere huic illi non licet Non quod dissimilis res est sed is qui facit And thus there being so manifest a disproportion between God and Men in reference to their propriety in and dominion over the life of man God may have a right to act that which no Creature can do without the grossest and most exorbitant Injustice for seeing that propriety which every Man has in himself is held from the free gift of our Supream Lord and that not confined by any Promise or Covenant he may cancel and reverse it when he pleases only by taking back what he has given And if we could stand in the same relation to or dependance on any creature as we do to Him that creature would have as great a right to devest us of the propriety we have in our own Essences as God himself has but because the former can never be supposed that 's the reason the latter can never happen 2. This Power and Dominion which God has over an Innocent persons life and all its appendant priviledges may be exercised by occasion of another mans sin for what God has a power to do absolutely he may certainly do upon any occasion for this is only to make use of the Instances of his Dominion to serve other designs of his Providence Thus God threatens to Visit the
Pre-existence there had been no peculiarity forasmuch as God would not only have known him but the whole Mass of mankind before they were formed in the Belly And now what shadow of favour do these words cast upon the Origenian Hypothesis No man could ever have discern'd the least colour for Preexistence here whose mind was not aforehand tinctured with its belief Here 's not the least foundation for an Argument unless this supposition were first laid viz. That God cannot fore-ordain a Person to any special employment before he exists And therefore to conclude that because God had consign'd Ieremy to the Prophetick Office before he was born that therefore he preexisted is an Inference fit for none but a Rabbi and upon that score I have taken notice of it only as his though other men have urged it with as great a grace as he And for that passage Phil. 2. 5. Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Iesus who being in the form of God did not think equality with God a prey or spoil but made himself of no Reputation and took upon him the form of a Servant and was made in the likeness of men c. It s plain and palpable meaning is onely this That though the Blessed Jesus was invested with the Divine Power and Authority and sustain'd the person of a Deity being made Sovereign Lord of all in which alone consists the Scripture notion of God yet he did not boast and triumph in his Greatness but made his appearance to the world only in a servile condition of Poverty and made himself so subject to those that seem'd his Superiours that in obedience to their Authority he yielded himself up to a most reproachful death not opposing his Almighty and Irresistible Power to rescue himself from their equally ignominious and merciless Decrees And what 's all this to Preexistence In the next place they urge us with some passages out of Saint Iohn And now O Father Glorifie me with thine own self with the Glory I had with thee before the world was I come forth from the Father and am come into the world Again I leave the world and goe to the Father c. Whence they argue that the Glory our Saviour prays to be restored to seems to concern his Humane nature only for the Divine could never be disrobed of it and therefore it supposeth that he existed in his Humanitie before and that his Soul was of old before its appearance in a Terrestriall Body Ans. 1. The most these places can pretend to prove is barely our Saviours Preexistence but to conclude thence the Preexistence of all mankind is a very wide and gaping Inference and we may as well prove we were all born of Virgin-Mothers because he was Our Saviour was a singular person designed for an extraordinary Employment and therefore may be supposed to have transacted with his Father about it before he undertook it and therefore we may as well Attribute all his personal Properties to Mankind in general as argue for their Preexistence from his 2. Those Praedicates that in a strict and rigorous Acceptation agreed only to his Divine Nature might by a communication of Idioms as they phrase it be attributed to his humane or at least to the whole Person compounded of them both Then which nothing is more ordinary in things of a mixt and heterogeneous Nature as the whole man is stiled immortal from the deathlesness of his soul. We ought not therefore to understand these and the like passages in a nice and metaphisical rigour of this or that nature but in a familiar sence of the Person of Jesus Christ. The instances hereof in Scripture are so frequent that few texts concerning our Saviour supposing his double nature can well be understood without it 3. Methinks Grotius's sence is very easie and natural viz. that the Glory he had with his Father before the world began was only in the intendment of the Divine decree as 1 Pet. 1. 20. Revel 13. 8. he is said to be a Lamb slain from the foundations of the world not that he was really slaughtered but because he was then marked out in the divine decree to be a sacrifice for Mankind It being a Proverbial from of speech among the Jews to express matters of great moment only resolved upon in the Divine Decree as if they were really existing thus they say the Messias is ancienter then the Sun and the Mosaick law older then the world not as if they apprehended them really so but only to express their absolute usefulness and necessity Now Scriptures are not to be interpreted in an exact and strictly literal sence but in a familiar manner suitably to the Idiom and manner of speaking used in the Age and Place in which they were written This therefore being a vulgar form of speech to express the Important usefulness of a thing existing only in decree as if it had been as long in actual existence as it was in Futurity the glory our Saviour here prays for and which he had before the world was as it could not so it need not be his essential lustre but was that honour with which God had from all eternity design'd to dignisie the Messias Thus have I satisfied all their Scripture Objections that can need an answer but as for their Applications of Parables and Cabalistical interpretations they are too impertinent to bear one And now Sir having evinced the Precariousness of the Origenian Hypothesis from the Nature of the thing it self and its uncouthness from some of the Divine Attributes having shewn the apparent and lamentable defiency of that evidence they produce for it having engaged the suffrage of the Divine Oracles against it and having given a hansome rational and certain account of the Phaenomina of providence without it I hope 't is sufficient to convince your self or any other ingenious and unpossest inquirer that for any thing we are able to know this is the first Stage upon which the Souls of men ever appeared and that there is no need of recurring to a former scene to solve the perplexed difficulties of Providence and to make the plot thereof seem neat and consistent enough to be a contrivance not unworthy the Divine Wisdome And now Sir methinks I ought not bluntly to conclude this tedious Discourse and it would be but good manners to complement you with unnecessary excuses or some other little pieces of Court-ship but you know I have long since remonstrated to these common ceremonies of the world And though I had a mind to trouble you with Apologies or News or anyother impertinencies yet I have not time being just now upon the very point of my departure for London to add any more then that I am as much as I ought or can be My Dearest Coz. Your c. From Trin. Coll. Oxon. May 1. ERRATA PAge 12. l. 21. for Buitish r. Bruitish p. 13. l. 17. for Grants r. Grantees l. 22. for esceats r. escheats p. 15. l. 7. for near r. meer l. 13. for deserved r. undeserved p. 30. l. 22. for Fatalist r. Fatalists p. 61. l. 12 for Phaenomina r. Phaenomena alias p. 84. l. 5. for ramotional r. rational p. 90. l. 25. headless r. endless p. 95. l. 13. for assurancew as r. assurance was FINIS De Cive l. 1. c. 1. Exod. 20. ver 5. Ethic. l. 1. c. 1. Episcopeus Curcellaeus c. Calvin and Mr. Hobs. Lux. Orient p. 41. The Account of Orig. c. pag. 27. V. Willis Cereb Anat. cap. 26.
Iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children unto the third and fourth Generation i. e. to punish the Impieties of wicked Parents by bringing their Posterity into those evil Circumstances into which he might have brought them by vertue of his Supream Dominion though not onely themselves but their Progenitors had been faultless The Posterity of Cham was consign'd to slavery for their Fathers Impiety Seventy thousand men expiated Davids folly and Sauls sons were hanged for their Fathers perfidiousness and the sinne of Ahab was visited upon his Children Scripture supplies us with infinite more instances where God makes use of the Sons infelicity to punish the Fathers sin in which cases God onely makes his Sovereignty minister to the designs of Justice and if it be lawful as I have proved it is for God to exercise his Supream Dominion absolutely surely it cannot be unlawful to do it with respect to other ends of Providence And such was the Origine of all the common miseries of mankind God created man at first in a more perfect and happy state but upon occasion of Adams prevarication he devested all mankind of a great part of those priviledges and perfections with which he had endued humane nature And all this God might have done though Adam had never sinned and therefore 't is no Injustice that God has made his Posterity the Heirs of his misfortunes The constitution of Adams body was probably so regular and harmonious that it had no natural propensions contrary to those of his mind but was entirely subject to all the Dictates of his understanding his Organs clear and well-disposed his Spirits brisk and active his Humours spirituous and oylie the ferments of his body regular and steady in their motions and not infected with those malignant tinctures that hurry us into all manner of exorbitant passions and appetites The Earth was fruitful and of its own accord brought forth all sorts of wholesome and pleasant Fruits Man was surrounded with pleasures and delights and had nothing else to do but to take his ease and enjoy them But when Adam fell God disrob'd him of most of those great and happy Priviledges and cast him into a condition of life uneasie and troublesome Now our bodies are unactive sickly and indisposed and instead of being Instruments to the actings of the mind are the greatest lets and hindrances Paradice is turned into a Wilderness the Earth is barren and accursed and man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brows and this has ever since been the condition of Mankind And though this be a sad story yet after all these losses our condition is still competently or rather extreamly happy for besides that if we will but be considerate and live by the use of our rational faculties we may enjoy contentment enough in this world to render our lives pleasant and comfortable God has prepared for us most exquisite and ravishing delights in the next only if we will forbear to persue our Buitish Appetites from which he hath afrighted us by the fearfulest threatnings and resolve to follow the dictates of Reason and Sobriety to which we are encouraged by the biggest Rewards and Promises so that notwithstanding all the present weaknesses and imperfections of our natures a man must be prodigiously absurd and sottish to make himself miserable And if men will choose to be wicked and miserable against all the Principles of Reason and Interest they have no Reason to blame the Condition of their Natures for that which proceeds purely from the choice of their Wills So that though God has punished the Prevarication of Adam by the evil Condition of all his posterity yet he has done nothing unjust because he might have placed us all in the same Condition though neither Adam nor our selves had prevaricated his Sanctions And this is no more then what is in some instance or other practised in all Common-wealths As in England every man holding his Estate of the King and the right of all Tenures being derived from his Grant with certain Conditions if any of the Grants fail in the performance of the Conditions on their part the Grantor may justly disseize both them and their Heirs of their Estates Thus if any Person be convicted of Treason against the Crown he is thereupon attainted and not only his Estate esceats to the King as supream Lord but his Blood too is corrupted so that his Posterity are not capable of Inheritance as deriving no inheritable blood and consequently no Right from him In which case he that should have been next Heir cannot justly think himself injured by being deprived of his Inheritance although himself had not by any misdemeanor forfeited it yet he having no right to it but what was derived from his Ancestors and that being rescinded by breach of those Conditions upon which it was suspended he can with no more equity claim a right in the Fee then he could though his Ancestors had never been vested in it And thus that Entail of Priviledges which God of his free goodness had settled upon Adam and his Heirs for ever upon Condition of their Obedience to his Laws was by the disobedience of Adam cut off from himself and all his Posterity 3. The Rights of Gods Dominion over sinless Creatures do not extend so far as to warrant his dooming them to a condition more wretched and forlorn then Non-existence That he has power to reduce them into a state not worse then Not-being is already proved but farther he cannot go without transgressing all the lines of Goodness and Equity because if he should he would rob his Creatures of more then he had ever given them And if this would not be an injurious Cruelty I must challenge all the world to tell me what would This Assertion is level'd against those men who are so hardy as to say that God might to shew the uncontrolableness of his Sovereignty have decreed infinite myriads of faultless Creatures to endless and insupportable Torments That ever such Thoughts could enter into the minds of men For what can we imagine more repugnant to all the notions of goodness and equity then to be the deliberate and sole Author of the biggest misery to an innocent and harmless Person What more Heavenly wide from the nature of true goodness T is a malice so near and abstracted that it can reside no where but in the Breasts of Fiends and Devils nay 't is the blackest Part of their natures and that very ingredient which makes them what they are Besides how can God be glorified in the eternal miseries of guiltless Creatures How can their deserved damnation be conducive to his Interests How can their unmerited torments gratifie infinite goodness or add to infinite happiness Could he promote his own Real Felicity by the Infelicities of an innocent Creature yet we cannot imagine him so selfish spirited as to effect it much less for the meer ostentation of his greatness If God can damn his
to place mankind here in an immature and more imperfect state that so we might in a way congruous to free and rational Agents by degrees be fitted for and at length arrive at a better and more raised condition of life As in nature all things commence their Beings in a rude and immature state and make orderly progressions to farther degrees of maturity 'till they arrive at the utmost perfections their Beings are capable of so is mankind Created and born into the World as it were in the Spring in a Budding and Blossoming season that so we may by proceeding forward in the differing Periods of our lives grow up to higher and more excellent Capacities till at length we ripen into a state of maturity and perfection Our natures are at first somewhat rough-cast to the end that they might be refined and polished by Vertue and Religion so that 't is the main and perhaps only designe of Religion to perfect and advance our Natures and make us capable of a higher and more noble condition of life Now I need not declaim and expatiate upon the neatness and consistency of this Hypothesis when we know by experience that 't is the way and method pitch'd upon by Providence to conduct mankind to its Perfection it being an Oeconomy hugely agreeable to all the designes and purposes of Religion the Natural tendency whereof is to raise us to higher Capacities and nearer approaches to the Divine Nature This gives a more general Reason of the present low and imperfect condition of mankind but that I may give a more certain and perspicuous account thereof and more close to the main Origenian objection viz. why God should put pure and immaculate Souls into these disorderly Bruitish Bodies I shall make my Hypothesis more distinct and particular Mankind then is an order of Beings placed in a middle state between Angels and Brutes made up of contrary principles viz. Matter and Spirit endued with contrary Faculties viz. Animal and Rational and encompass'd with contrary Objects proportion'd to their respective faculties that so they may be in a capacity to exercise the Vertues proper and peculiar to their compounded and heterogenial Natures For the perfection of humane Souls does not consist in an effeminate Beauty and Physical proportions but in a manly courage and moral accomplishments as at the Olympick Games there was no regard had to Beauty and Neatness they only were capable of honour and reputation who had courage and patience enough to combate And the life of man in this world is nothing else but an Olympick exercise God having placed us here not to admire the native Beauty and Perfection of our Beings but to exercise our selves in the conflicts and difficulties of Vertue therefore the worth and praise of the Soul consists in a Braveness and Gallantry of Spirit when it scorns to be usurp'd upon by those faculties that ought to obey her and checks and controules all their unruly and tumultuous exorbitances by her own sovereign and imperial Laws and resolutely defends its own Authority and Prerogative against all the furious and rebellious attempts of Passion and Concupiscence And therefore though humane Souls be capable of subsisting by themselves yet God has placed them in Bodies full of bruitish and unreasonable Propensions that they might be capable of exercising many choice and excellent Vertues which otherwise could never have been at all such as Temperance Sobriety Chastity Patience Meekness Equanimity and all other Vertues that consist in the Empire of Reason over Passion Appetite Religion is common to Men and Angels appertaining to them purely as Spirits but Vertue is proper to man alone and belongs to him as a Being made up of contrary principles whence spring contrary desires and inclinations in the good or bad Government whereof consists the Nature of Vertue and Vice upon this score 't is that Vertue is never attributed to God because being of a simple purely spiritual nature he has no unruly passions and sensual Appetites to Govern And therefore the Platonists though they place all Intellectual Vertues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the abstracted Soul yet they will have all moral ones reside 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Composition denying the naked Soul to be capable of moral Good or Evil these belonging only to the whole which results from Soul and Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saies Plotinus And this by the way is their meaning when they unanimously resolve that grand perplexing enquiry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into the terrestrial Hyle because our material Principle by reason of its intrinsique dulness and stupidity naturally hinders and obstructs the intellectual efforts of the mind and inclines it to the love of material and sensual objects which if it suffer it self to be so far immerst into matter as to persue only or chiefly the satisfaction of its gross and sottish Propersities thence naturally spring all those Irregularities that pass under the name of Moral Vices And this account of the Origine of Evil is not so devoid of Reason as some Learned men would perswade us For 1 it does not as is objected make matter to be essentially evil but rather the occasion thereof from its extra essential union with the soul. Nor 2 does it make the existence of evil natural and necessary for it dos not assert that it results from the nature of matter as they would make us believe but only an accidental effect thereof after its union with the soul in that from the sluggishnesse of its nature it inclines the soul to the love of gross and material objects and if the soul be so carelesse as to yeild to its inclinations it becomes the voluntary cause of its own evil But you will think my Pen very unruly if it be so apt to flie out into Digressions when 't is in so great speed and therefore I return Now because the nature of Vertue consists in the minds governing the Bruitish and Animal appetites and motions of the body Providence has furnish'd it with instruments convenient for that purpose for having its principal and commanding residence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where the Nerves that convey all motions and impressions backward and forward have their Original 't is able by its immediate influence upon them to command and bridle all the Animal motions of the Body Thus because all excess of Passion consists in an irregular motion of the blood the Nerves which the soul uses as its reins are twisted about the veins and arteries that so by contracting them it may be able to refrain and check the Impetuosity of the Bloods motion and consequently curb the eager and unruly passion as when for example such an object is presented to us that naturally provokes to anger which mainly consists in a violent ebullition and fervor of the blood about the Region of the Heart which violently hurrying from thence into the Brain disorders the motions of the Spirits there and so
by confounding the phautasms that lodge therein disturb all its conceptions and operations then does it concern the Soul to abate and cool this unruly heat which is effected by restraining the violence of the Torrent which is effected by its influence upon those Nerves that are the passage and high way from the Brain to the Heart And therefore the Providence of nature has made a peculiar passage for commerce between the Head and the Heart in Man where it has made none in Beasts viz. whereas the Praecordia of Beasts are furnished with nervous branches only from the Par vagum to supply the vital functions with spirits in man there are peculiar large branches derived from the Intercostal Nerve into the same region only for a way of commerce between the Brain and the Heart and passage of the Animal spirits from the one to the other as need shall require In so much that we may define Prudence and Virtue to be nothing else but a due commerce between the Brain the Heart which Plotinus only expresses more abstractedly when he describes it to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of which the fore-cited machless Author supplys us with a clear Example viz. that dissecting a Changeling or Natural Fool the chief defect he could discover in him was that this Plexus of the Intercostal Nerve which is proper to the body of Man and is the way of commerce for the Animal spirits between the Heart and the Brain was exceeding small and its branches very thin By reason whereof his Soul could have but very little command over his Passions and Appeties in the impotency and irregularity whereof consists the nature of Folly The result of all is this that mankind is compounded of contrary Principles endued with contrary desires and inclinations to the end that there might be an order of Beings in the world without which there would perhaps have been one Species wanting to compleat the Universe capable of all those Heroick Vertues which consist in the Empire of Reason over the brutish and sensual Faculties As also that by the right use and emprovement of our superiour Powers we might be raised to greater Capacities and qualified for higher and more divine Accomplishments So that man seems to differ from the Angels only in this that he must by conquest and industry win the happiness which is entail'd on their Natures for when we become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in our dispositions we shall be made so too in our enjoyments the Divine Goodness having graciously appointed that when the Soul is so far advanced in Vertue as to live above the reach of all its Passions and Desires that then it shall be translated into a more free and disintangled state where it shall be neither enticed nor vex'd with the importunity of these lower and bruitish Appetites but shall enjoy the Serenity and Pleasures of a pure and intellectual Being as the Reward of its former Pains and Industry As on the contrary when any man suffers his Passions and Brutish Appetites to beat Reason out of its Throne and to run headlong into an ungovernable Anarchy he degenerates from humanity grows incorrigible in sin and sinks so deep into the Animal life as to be made uncapable of acting Vertuously and suitably to the ends of his Being and thence is congruously doom'd to the Portion of degenerate and apostate Spirits as being fit for nothing else So that the whole designe of Providence in sending us into this world is only that we may in a way congruous to rational Agents prepare our selves for another and therefore the Souls of men shall at their departure hence be stated in a condition proportion'd to their good or bad Qualifications I am apt to be positive and dogmatical in this Hypothesis not so much because it gives a rational and satisfactory account of Gods sending pure and innocent Souls into Bodies full of brutish and irregular Inclinations as because it exactly agrees with the Condition of our Natures with the natural tendency of Vertue and Religion and with the whole Oeconomy of Providence in conducting mankind to their future happiness Not to mention its consonancy with Saint Pauls Hypothesis in his Account of the Civil and Intestine War between the law of the Mind and the law of the Members And now having laid my Hypothesis I come to shew 1. that mankind is endued with such faculties by the use whereof he may attain to the highest degrees of Vertue and Happiness 2 that we have the greatest endearments and advantages in the world to push us forward to a diligent and vigorous Prosecution thereof And if Vertue and Happiness be in our own power and if we are invited to pursue and endeavour after them by the greatest endearments and perswasions then certainly Providence has placed us in a sufficient capacity of being happy and if it happen that we should at last be abandoned to Misery we must owe it to our own choice and prodigious folly 1. First then Mankind is furnished with such faculties by the use whereof he may arrive at Vertue and Happiness To evidence this I require no other Postulatum then that which is the great foundation of all Religion and Morality viz. that the Mind of man is endued with Reason and Understanding able to discern the essential differences of Good and Evil and with Liberty and Election able to choose and pursue the one and eschew the other This I say is a Postulatum so just and evident as that it cannot be denyed without destroying not onely the Nature of Good and Evil but of Man himself For if in any thing we differ from Brutes 't is in the Reason and Liberty of our minds all our other faculties we have in common with them 't is these alone that are the peculiar Prerogatives of humane Nature and therefore without them we may be Sheep or Oxen but not Men. Separat haec nos A grege mutorum atque ideo venerabile soli Sortiti Ingenium divinorumque capaces Atque exercendis capiendisque Artibus apti Sensum à caelesti demissum traximus Arce However these are the efficient Causes and necessary Foundations of all Morality for no Action can be morally Good or Evil but what we can choose and concerning which we can deliberate because without them all our Actions would be either Casual or Fatal and the meer Issues of Chance or Necessity and by consequence as uncapable of being moral as those motions that result purely from Mechanical Powers as I have already I think demonstrated in what I have discoursed concerning the Freedom of the Divine Goodness And now if the mind of man be a deliberative and elective Principle able to discern between Good and Evil Happiness and Misery and to choose the one and refuse the other then 't is at its own choice and in its own power to be Vertuous and Happy for no body questions but that Goodness and Happiness are much
more eligible then Vice and Misery and therefore if men are able to discern and choose that which is best their Happiness and Misery depend upon their own wills and their Portion whether good or bad is the result of their own choice and certainly they that can be vertuous and happy if they will are in a fair capacity of being so From hence it follows that the mind and rational part of man is Superior and Predominant not only endued with Power but also invested with Authority to Govern the inferiour and brutish part which is of a slavish and servile nature and made to obey Reason is uppermost and has the bridle in its own hands and is strong enough to manage the wildest and most untractable Passions There 's no appetite within us uncontroulable no inclinations so strong and fatal which reason cannot master natural Propensities can only tempt but not command our Souls they may encline but cannot force them and our minds are never vanquished but when they betray themselves Briefly none of the charms of Concupiscence are so powerful and irresistible but that Wisdom and Discretion can easily dissolve and disenchant them The Truth and Reality whereof I thus Argue Either the rational Part of man is able to command the lower Appetites or 't is not if it is then is he sufficiently able to live well and happily because Vertue and Happiness are obtain'd by living up to Reason and being conducted by its Laws and measures and therefore if our superiour Powers are able to give check and controule to our brutish Lusts and Passions 't is in our own Power to attain to vertue happiness But if the Superior part be not strong enough to Govern the Inferiour it destroys the very Being and Existence of Good and Evil and renders mankind utterly uncapable of Goodnesse and Morality For 1. our Irrational faculties are unanimously acknowledged to be uncapable of Moral goodness because they are acted purely by a necessity of Nature and their Exertions like the Appetites of Brutes and the Motions of Artificial Engines result meerly from the Mechanical Powers of Matter And hence 't is that our Imperate Actions i.e. those that do not issue immediately from the Will it self but are exerted at its command by some of the inferiour faculties that owe it subjection are devoid of all moral Capacities as considered abstractedly in themselves or as proceeding from their immediate Cause and without respect to the wills Authority because when so considered they are not free and voluntary and therefore their being Morally good or evil is entirely derived from the Will because they act only in obedience to its Commands Nor 2. would our Rational faculties in this case be capable of Morality as being fatally determined by the stronger and irresistible motions of Lust and Passion But the Actions that proceed meerly from force and forreign Violence are of all others least capable of being moral because they do not only not issue from a free and self-determining Principle which is the greatest and most necessary foundation of all Morality but also because they are not at all determined from their own Principle but are forced thence barely by the Power of an exterior Agent Besides this the moral Goodness our Superior faculties are capable of would consist in their Commanding and Governing the Inferiour but if they are not able to master and rule them they cannot be supposed to be enjoyn'd to governe them because nothing can be obliged to impossibilities and therefore if our Superior Powers are commanded to govern the Inferiour they must have strength enough to do it Wherefore howsoever fatal and boisterous our Bruitist propensions are if there be any such thing as Religion and Moral goodness in the world they must be subject to the command and discipline of our Superior and Governing faculties From all which 't is evident by a plain and undeniable deduction that mankind notwithstanding the force of their brutish Inclinations is placed in a fair capacity of living well happily which utterly destroys all the forementioned Arguments alleadged from this Phaenomenon of Providence on the behalf of Preexistence As for the other part of their Argument taken from the customary Vices and Impieties of the World viz. seeing that Custome and Education have a great influence upon the manners of men to make them good or bad as also that the greatest part of the world has been always over-run with all manner of lust and barbarity for God to send an Immaculate Soul into an habitation into such parts of the Earth where reigns nothing but Vice and Wickedness by which she cannot fail without a Miracle to be over-born is to betray his own ofspring unto unavoidable Misery 'T is an objection sets too mean a value upon humane Nature and supposes mankind no better then Mushrooms as if all men were but so many Engines moved by the wheels of Custome and had not faculties within them able to discern of the good and evil of Customes as well as of other things I confess custome has acquired great Power and Authority over the life of Man because the lives of most men are disposed of by chance and casual Principles they pursue those things with which custome presents their Fancies without ever deliberating of their Goodness and Decency You know who has Pictured mankind comming into the World upon Hobby-horses and truly Sir the Emblem would perhaps have been as true if he had represented most of them going out so Seneca long since complain'd that the World was not govern'd so much by Reason as by Custome Men accounting that most Honest which is most in Practise and Error when it becomes Publick becomes Truth Custome is almost every where so confident as to out-face Reason and charge it of singularity as indeed the Wisest men are the greatest Rebels to her Usurped Empire whilst she rides upon the shoulders of the People who are almost universally not only her Slaves but her Idolaters For the rude and vulgar sort of people every where judge of things barely by their conformity to the Modes and Fashions of their own Country and esteem all forreign Customes and Usages inept and barbarous purely for their disagreement with their own Domestick manners and therefore I account the Boors of Attica and the common people of Greece in its most refined age not less barbarous then the wild and unpolish'd Scythian because they were equally Idiotical and lived by no other Rule then Prescription preferring the Customes of Greece as the Standard of Decency and judging of the goodness of things by their Correspondence with the Manners and Fashions of their own Country and condemning all strange and forreign usages of barbarity because they agreed not with the Municipial laws and customes of the Town they lived in But the plain and evident Reason of all this is because the Idiotical sort of Mankind are Fools and live below the dignity of their Natures For certainly
which alone he expected his sovereign Felicity so big a lye is it that he placed mans supream Happiness in Bruitish Pleasures If in any respect Vertue and Religion intrench upon the liberty of our Natures 't is in the Instances of sensuality and yet in these there is no other restraint laid upon us then that we live by the Rules and Measures of nature and the Natural Appetites of a Man are temperate and reasonable Nature desires nothing but what 's useful and convenient and its satisfactions are as innocent as necessary So that whilst we follow the dictates and appetites of humane nature we do nothing contrary to Vertue and Religion But when the Man is divided from the Beast and his Reason separated from the inferior and Bruitish Appetites then arise irregular and unreasonable desires but these proceed meerly from the bruitish part and are preter-natural and violent to the man so that till we abandon Reason and the better part of our selves Lust is a violence to our Natures and so far from gratifying our natural Propensities that 't is their greatest contradiction But if we should suppose that Vertue consisted in a perpetual Violence to all our Appetites and Inclinations yet its future reward being so great and glorious there is no advised and reflecting man but would exchange a short satisfaction of his present desires for the hopes and assurance of Infinite felicities hereafter It must be a strange piece of Folly and Indiscretion to prefer the enjoyment of a short cheap imperfect delight before the hopes of the Joyes of Heaven and Eternity For sensual gratifications are so low unsatisfying that to want them can amount but to an inconsiderable miserie whereas the future pleasures that entertain our hopes are as great as endless and therefore to miss them must needs be the saddest disaster man can suffer So that though I should grant the object of our hopes to be inevident uncertain yet any man that acts beyond the Indiscretion of a Child will rather choose to foregoe the present Enjoyment of cheap and little pleasures then the probable hopes of the greatest and most satisfying Felicities For the naked hope and expectation of so great a Blessedness is more pregnant with present content and satisfaction to the mind of man then the enjoyment of the highest and most exquisite delights of sense But when the waies of Virtue are so pleasant reasonable and advantageous in themselves as though they procure yet they need not promise the Blessings of another world and yet are so endeared to us by their inesteemable appendant rewards as to make them delightful though they were unpleasant in themselves then certainly are they recommended to our choice by the strongest motives and allurements that can work upon a Ramotional Nature Though the Prosecution of this Argument be as pleasant as 't is copious yet beside that I have not now leasure to pursue it through all its particular instances the Pulpit has of late afforded enough excellent discourses upon this Theme to supercede the necessity of any farther Performance of it But if you desire to see it discoursed of in a more Philosophick way I refer you to Tully's Books de Finibus where 't is as Rationally as Largely asserted by Torquatus the Epicurean And now If Humane Nature be endued with Rational and reflecting Faculties if it be most natural and easie for these Faculties to choose and pursue those objects that are most agreeable to their own Natures and most conducive to Humane Felicity If Vertue be most natural easie and reasonable if it be endear'd to us by present and future delights If vice be contrary to the Nature Interest and Reason of men if men have all the inducements and Persuasions in the World to pursue Virtue and Goodness and as great discouragements to scare and deter them from the Prosecution of Vice and Impietie if I say these things are so then I appeal to all Mankind whether the Divine Providence can be justly charged for leaving them too obnoxious to sin and misery But I easily foresee that you will enquire if all men have such pregnant engagements to Vertue what is the Reason of the almost unanimous viciousness of mankind and that when they have all the Reason in the world to engage them in an indefatigable pursuit of Goodness whence comes it to pass that they should with so much eagerness thwart both their Reason their Interests for the love of Vice and Wickedness I answer that though sensual Inclinations false Principles vicious Examples and wicked Customes may be inducements and occasions of it yet the only proper cause is the wilful or stupid Inadvertency of men Inconsiderateness is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Rabins speak the root whence all mischiefs grow 't is the spring head of that torrent of wickedness that has always overflown the greatest part of the world For if men would but look to the end of all criminal Pleasures they would easily discover in them much more to avert then to entice and court their Passions but when their Appetites are passionately set upon them they grow wild and impatient and will enjoy though they know t is death and misery they embrace That no man miscarries but by bruitishness and inconsideration I might demonstrate out of my precedent discourse for if every man be endued with Rational faculties if he can reflect upon the Essential differences of good and evil together with their natural Products if he can observe what things tend to his dammage and what minister to his advantage And if it be most apparent that vertuous Practices are infinitely more conducive to the interests and happiness of man then Vice and Luxury then what other Reason can possibly be assigned why men are so unanimously vicious but only because they are wilfully or carelesly unreasonable But I need not put my self to the Charge of an Elaborate Dispute to prove a thing that is evidenced by the surest and most obvious of Demonstrations viz. an Induction of particular Instances For if we consider the single Obliquities of every Individual man 't is not only easie to observe how they descended from carelesness and inadvertency but also to convince the man himself that had he but reflected upon the natural results and events of his Criminal actions he would never have committed them Take the pevishest Humorist in his hottest and most transported fits and ask him whether it was not in his own power to have refrain'd the folly of his Impatience I never yet met with any person so unreasonable whom I could not at lenghth force to own them as avoidable Indiscretions but if any person should be so cross-grain'd as to plead a brutish necessity it were very easie by laying afore him the circumstances upon which his Anger kindled to convince him that the Provocation was not irresistible How few are so wise as to avoid a fruitless greif and anxiety for past
Peevishness and moroseness themselves the hainousest and most inexcusable for beside that 't is aggravated by all the circumstances that can enhance its guilt nothing can be baser and more unworthy of a man for if the dignity of humane nature consists in Reason then certainly nothing can be more bruitish and unmanly then to abandon its use and thereby to disrobe our selves of our highest Prerogative to renounce the Glory and Priviledge of our Natures and in difiance of our Creatours Goodness who made us Men to prefer the condition of Bruits and unreasonable Creatures and in a word to dismount our Reasons that Providence has placed in the Sadle that the Bruit might Ride the Man Thus Sir have I replyed to and clear'd off the main Ratiocinations urged on behalf off Preexistence and have not declined or shuffled of any Argument for its difficultie but have been careful that the Account I have given you might be as faithful as satisfactory If therefore I have omitted any objections 't was not because I could not but because I need not answer them either upon the score of their being too inconsiderable or of their entire dependance on the Arguings I have here encountred and therefore having undermined and ruin'd their Foundation I suppose it would be but a fruitless and impertinent piece of service to beleager them by a particular onset I have Sir so strong an antipathy against all Impertinency that in all enquiries I have the patience only to examine the most weighty and considerable reflections after which the less concerning matters will as little want as merit Consideration and therefore I have not only waved all their pretty gay Probabilities apprehending them subjects too frivolous for serious and rational discourses but have also forborne all Duels or Personal Combats having all along only opposed the Hypothesis not its Patrons for I have taken no notice of the particular miscarriages of any Adversary and have no where objected the Inconsistency either of any Author with himself or of more of them with one another unless where it is apparently the fault of the Hypothesis and not the oversight of the Men. For I must confess Sir I am so far from quarrelling either with the Ancient or Modern Patrons of Preexistence that I peculiarly esteem and honour them as Persons more then ordinarily Learned and Ingenious and therefore though I might perhaps have triumphed over some weak passages of particular Authors yet I have scarce been less careful to pass by their weakest then I have been to assault their strongest objections The most remarkable things I have purposely omitted are those conclusions they draw from the Nature and Substance of the Soul all which I have slighted because we are so utterly ignorant of the nature of the Soul that 't is impossible to deduce any sure solid Speculations from it 'T is I know as easie a business to imagine Hypotheses concerning things whose natures are placed beyond the Reach of Humane Inquisition as 't is for the Rosi-Crucians for the confirmation of their Frenzies to tell us of strange Books Monuments Inscriptions found in the inmost and remotest parts of China Iapan and Tartarie because in such stories they are secure from all Contradiction But the difficultie is to give us evidence of the Truth and realitie of their Conjectures For when they have contrived and polish'd a neat and ingenious Idea of the Soul how can they assure either me or themselves of its agreement with the thing it self And therefore of them that pretend to acquaint the world with true and real notions of its Nature I demand by what means or methods they attain'd their knowledge for if they came by it in a Rational way they are able to shew by what steps and Ratiocinations they arrived at it but because this they have never performed they must give us leave to look upon their Hypotheses as the meer Issues and contrivances of their own Fancies 'T is not therefore enough to coyn Ideas of the Soul and stamp it with what essential Characters and Properties they please unless they can assure us of their real Conformity to the thing it self it being otherwise precarious and uncertain but as no such assurancew as as yet ever given so when I consider the waies and methods of gaining acquaintance with the Natures of things I despaire that it ever will For though I may by Rationacination obtain a clear and certain evidence of the Real Existence of many things of the Essential Ideas whereof I am utterly ignorant yet am I assured by diligent and impartial Trials that all the Objects and Ideas I could ever with all my Industry understand were conveyed to my mind through the Organs of sense But whether any certain knowledge of the Nature and Substance of the Soul be attainable or not I am sure 't is as yet undiscover'd and so altogether unqualified to be the Ground of any true and certain Knowledge in that where the first and Fundamental Principles are inevident all the Ratiocinations depending on them how coherent soever in themselves must of necessity be so too And therefore for Instance when they conclude against the seminal Propagation of Souls because 't is one of the prime and cheifest Properties of a Spiritual essence to be indiscerpible they argue at a high rate of confidence and impertinency because though perhaps the soul may be indivisible yet they are not able to produce the least tollerable Evidence thereof being utterly unacquainted with its Nature and Essence and then though perchance it may be indiscerpible in its primary and central substance yet who knows but it may as well as the Body have its seminal Excrescencies I am not more concern'd for the Hypothesis of seminal Traduction then for the other of Immediate Creation for they are both to me equally uncertain and consequently indifferent For as the only material objection they assault the former with is that groundless one I but now mention'd so they object nothing singly against the latter but its inconsistency with the Divine Goodness to place pure and spotless souls in such evil and sad Circumstances as inviron us in this life but this objection as it equally concerns all the Adversaries of Preexistence what other soever particular Hypothesis they adopt so 't is already abundantly answered So that 't is not at all material whether the reality of either or neither of the forementioned Hypotheses be sure or evident for notwithstanding all that is objected either of them may and therefore 't is of no concernment which is And now Sir though both my Patience and my Pen begin to fail me yet am I obliged as well by my Promise as my Method to consider the most plausible passages of Scripture the Patrons of Preexistence alledge on behalf of their Hypothesis but the application of the Texts they produce to their designe is so lamentably forced frivolous that it will scarce excuse a serious answer from being