immediate reach of our Sense we may have such an evidence as in reason we ought as reasonable Men to acquiesce in though the evidence be still in its own nature but moral and not simply demonstrative or infallible And the variety of circumstances renders the credibility of such things more or less according to the various ingredients and contributions of credibility that are concentred in such an evidence It is impossible to demonstrate by evidence infallible or which is all one by evidence that is impossible to be false that there was such a Man as Julius Caesar or Augustus that there was such a Man as William the Conqueror or King Henry the Eighth or that such a Man was his Father or such a Woman his Mother or that there is such a City as Venice or Rome to me that never saw it for all these I have but by relation from others and it is not impossible but those Histories or informations or relations by which I am informed of these things may be false And they are such matters as have in them a less evidence than my own Sense of Sight for the evidence of my Sense is simple and immediate and therefore I have but a shorter cut thereby to the assent to the truth of the things so evidenced But in things that I have by relation from others my evidence is of greater distance for first I see them not by my own Eyes but it is others that must first see the thing they relate and secondly though I should think that whatsoever might be believed if obvious to the Sense of others might have as great a credibility as if obvious to my own yet I must have a second postulation that must have an ingredient to elicit my assent namely the veracity of him that reports and relates it And hence it is that that which is reported by many Eye-witnesses hath greater motives of credibility than that which is reported by few that which is reported by credible and authentick witnesses than that which is reported by light and inconsiderable witnesses that which is reported by persons disinteressed than that which is reported by persons whose interest it is to have the thing true or believed to be true that which hath the concurring testimony of real existing monuments than that which is without them and finally that which is reported by credible persons of their own view than that which they receive by hear-say from those that report upon their own view So that it is not with Evidences of Fact as it is with Logical or Mathematical Demonstrations which seem to consist in indivisibles for that which thus is demonstratively true is impossible to be false but Moral Evidence is gradual according to the variety of circumstances Yet such a man would be exploded as an irrational man that will not believe there was such a man as Julius Caesar because the Historians that write of him might possibly conspire to deceive the World with a Romance or that the Books may be supposititious or corrupted or will not believe that such a Man was his Father or such a Woman his Mother because he might be supposititious or will not believe there is such a City as Rome which he never saw because Travellers are wont to love to tell strange things and so may many as well as one So that as eternal Truths may have one kind of certainty by Logical Demonstration and as Mathematical Conclusions have an infallible certainty by Mathematical Demonstration and as matters objected immediately to our Sense have another kind of certainty by sensible evidence so matters simply of fact not objected immediately to our Sense have another kind of certainty though not altogether equal to the former nor simply infallible yet so highly credible that may justly elicit the assent of reasonable men and such as is proportionate to the nature of the thing and therefore more cannot be reasonably expected for the proof of the fact In the pursuance of this Argument namely Evidences of Fact touching the Origination of Mankind I must therefore say that the Evidences thereof are not of an infallible certainty and so much the rather because it relates to a matter that at the nearest that can be supposed is near six thousand years distant from us and some suppose more therefore the Evidences of Fact are as it were percolated through a vast Period of Ages and many very obscure to us And therefore all Proofs of this kind except that of Divine Revelation which though true and infallibly true we must not by the Laws of Argumentation bring in here because at one word it determins the Question will arise to no higher than Moral and therefore fallible in their own nature We rest upon what hath been before said for Evidences and Reasons that to me seem demonstrative But yet the Evidences of Fact which we shall produce must be considered also with these Advantages for their credibility 1. They are such as bear a great congruity and consonancy with and subservience to those former Arguments that ex natura rei and intrinsecè prove an impossibility of an eternal duration of Mankind à parte ante which though it doth not cannot evince that Mankind must have their Origination or Beginning in hac vel ista hora yet they do evince that Beginning it must have and the evidences of fact are as so many testes contestes or suffragiales that bear witness to that Truth that the former sort of Arguments do plainly evince 2. Though these Evidences of Fact taken singly and apart are not without their Objections that may seem to weaken them yet juncta juvant That evidence at Law which taken singly or apart makes but an imperfect proof semiplena probatio yet in conjunction with others grow to a full proof like Silurus his twigs that were easily broken apart but in conjunction or union were not to be broken Truths especially of Fact are not made Truths by Arguments or Evidence If there were once such a man as Caesar it is most certainly true that he was though no Historian ever mentioned him and therefore if there were ten thousand Authors that mention him kept sacredly and inviolably in certain Archives unto this day all this evidence doth not make him to be but only gives us a light and evidence of great probability that he was The Stars in the Milky-way and those Asseclae Jovis are not therefore in the Heavens or Aether because the Telescope hath discovered them for they were there before but the position of those Glasses present them to our perception and evidence their being which cannot be discovered without them And so it is with Evidences of Fact they do not make the thing to be but evidence them to be and because if to any one quaesitum of fact there be many but probable evidences which taken singly have not perchance any full evidence yet when many of those evidences concur and concenter in
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
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
as they proceed from or are found in the Integrals of the Universe are devoid not only of Reason but of Sense And he that after all this shall see the World upheld without any considerable decay or defect in the same state and order as it hath been for many Thousands of years will upon a due and impartial search find that it were far more impossible that this could be without the Wisdom Power and Influx of a most Infinite Omnipresent Omniscient and Omnipotent Fixed Being than for the Humane Body to be kept without dissolution and putrefaction being destitute of the influx and regiment of its Vital Principle the Soul And therefore some of the Ancients that were willing to solve the Phaenomena of the World have though erroneously thought that the World was Animate and that all these Operations in the World proceeded from that Anima Mundi as the Operations in the Bodies of Men proceeded from that Anima Humana that lodged in it and at length finding so great effects that are and may be done by this supposed Anima Mundi according to their Hypothesis have at last proceeded in plain terms to determine that this Anima Mundi was in truth no other than the Glorious God whereas they might with much more ease and truth have attributed all the great Oeconomy of the Universe to the most Glorious God without dishonouring him into the existence of a Forma informans or a constituent part of that World which he made Others to amend that absurdity and yet out of a piece of mannerliness and respect as they think to God though they deny this Universal Soul or Form informing of the whole Universe yet without any sufficient ground have devised several Systems of the Universe and assigned several Souls to each System or Vortex at least which should be the immediate Regent in every such System as the Soul is in the Body This as it supposeth something without evident ground so it doth without any necessity For the Divine Wisdom and Power is sufficient for the management and government of the whole Universe and if such Animae Systematum should be granted yet still there must be some one common Regent of all these Systems and their respective Souls or otherwise disorder would follow between the Systems themselves But thus far even those suppositions bear witness to the necessity of a Providential Regiment of the parts of the Universe that bare Matter Motion and Chance cannot perform this business but that there is a perfect necessity of a Regent Principle besides it which may govern and dispose it as the Soul of Man doth his Body And even that supposed regiment of these particular Souls of every System as they must needs have it if they had it at all from the institution and efficiency of the Wise God so they are all continually influenced from him and the whole College of them governed guided and ordered by him as their sovereign Regent 3. The Third thing that I design is this That although it is impossible for any Created Being or the Operations thereof to hold a perfect Analogy or adequate Representation of the Divine Wisdom Power and Providence in the governing of the World because the Wisdom and the Ways of Almighty God are unsearchable and past finding out they are of such a perfection that no Created Being or Operation thereof can be a just Parallel or adequate Resemblance of them yet there seems to be such an instance in the regiment which the Humane Soul exerciseth in relation to the Body that with certain correctives and exceptions may give some kind of Explication or Adumbration thereof whereby though we can never get a complete Idea of the Divine Regiment yet we may attain such a notion thereof as may render it evidently credible and in some kind explicable 1. The first act of the Divine Nature relating to the World and his administration thereof is an immanent act The most wise counsel and purpose of Almighty God terminated in those two great transeunt or emanant acts or works the works of Creation and Providence The Divine Counsel relating to the work of Creation is that whereby he purposed to make the World and all the several Integrals thereof according to that most excellent Idea or Exemplar which he had designed or chosen according to his infinite Wisdom in those several ranks and methods and in that order and state wherein they were after created and made The Divine Counsel relating to his Providence or Regiment of the World seems to consist in these two things 1. A purpose of communication of an uncessant influence of his power and goodness for the support and upholding of things created according to the several essential states and conditions wherein they were made some being created more durable some less some in one rank of being or existence some in another 2. A purpose of instituting certain laws methods rules and effluxes whereby he intended to order and rule all the things he had made with the greatest wisdom and congruity and according to the natures and orders wherein he had created them And this is that which I call the law rule and regiment of Divine Providence and seems to be of two kinds namely general Providence and special Providence The general Providence I call that whereby every created Being is governed and ordered according to that essential connatural implanted method rule and law wherein it was created And thus the state and several motions and influences of the Heavenly Bodies is that general providential law wherein they were created and according to which they are governed and the susceptibility of those influences and the effects thereof and of that motion is the general providential law whereby other physical Beings are governed in relation thereunto the activity of the active Elements and the passiveness of the passive the methods and vicissitudes of generation and corruption the efficacy of natural causes and the proper effects consequential to them the natural properties or affections of Bodies according to their several constitutions as motion alteration ascent of light descent of heavy Bodies These and the like are the general providential Laws relating to them Again that things indued with sense should have a sensible perception and certain instincts connatural to them that rational and free Agents should move rationally and freely These and infinite more are the standing and ordinary Rules and Laws of general Providence and the wise God who sees all things from the beginning to the end and therefore can neither be disappointed nor overseen in any of his Counsels hath with that great and admirable Wisdom so ordered these Laws of his general Providence that he thereby governs most excellently the World and they are never totally changed and but rarely altered in particular and that only to most wise ends and upon most eminent occasions And the reason is because the Infinite Wisdom of God hath so instituted and modelled
those natural Laws that they are ad omnem eventum fitted to the ordinary administration of the World When the wisest Counsel of Men in the World have with the greatest care prudence and foresight made Laws yet frequent emergencies happen which they did not nor could foresee and therefore they are necessarily put upon repeals correctives and supplements of such their Laws But Almighty God by one most simple foresight foresaw all Events in Nature and could therefore fit Laws of Nature that might be proportionate to the things he made and not stand in need of any change in the ordinary administration of his Providence The special Providence of God is so denominated either in relation to the objects which are special or in relation to the acts themselves Special Providence in relation to the objects is that Providence which Almighty God exerciseth either to Man or Angels in relation to their everlasting ends such as are Divine Laws and Institutions the Redemption of Men by Christ Jesus the Message of the Gospel and the like Special Providence in relation to the acts themselves are those special actings of the Divine Power and Will whereby He acts either in things natural or moral not according to the Rules of general Providence but above or besides or against them And these I call the Imperate Acts of Divine Providence whereof in the next place 2. Analogal to the imperate acts of the Soul upon the Body are the imperate acts of Divine Providence whereby with greatest wisdom and irresistible power He doth mediately or immediately order some things out of the tract of ordinary Providence For although the Divine Wisdom hath with great stability settled the Laws of his general Providence so that ordinarily or lightly they are not altered yet it could never stand with the Divine Administration of the World that He should be eternally mancipated to those Laws he hath appointed for the ordinary administration of the World Neither is this if it be rightly considered an infringing of the Law of Nature since every created Being is most naturally subject to the Soveraign Will of his Creator therefore though He is sometimes pleased by extraordinary interposition and pro imperio voluntatis to alter the ordinary method of natural or voluntary Causes and Effects to interpose by his own immediate Power He violates no Law of Nature since it is the most natural thing in the World that every thing should obey the Will of him that gave it being whatever that Will be or however manifested Now the Instances that I shall give touching these actus imperati of Divine special Providence shall be 1. In things simply natural 2. In things voluntary or free Agents In things natural we have these Instances of the actus imperati of the Divine Providence namely first those that are real and also appearing Miracles as Moses his Rod turned into a Serpent our Saviours miraculous curing of all sorts of Diseases and raising the Dead and the like Again there are other things that though they are natural effects and not in themselves apparently miraculous yet are in truth the actus imperati of the Divine Providence Winds and Storms Hail and Thunder and many the like are things that are in themselves natural yet when they are in such a season and such a juncture they may be and are and possibly more often than we are aware actus imperati specialis providentiae The East Wind that brought the Locusts and the West Wind that carried them off from Egypt Exod. 10.13 19. The East Wind that divided the Red Sea Exod. 14.21 The Hail that slew the Canaanitish Kings Josh 10.12 The Rain and Drought 1 Kings 18. Amos 4.7 Thunder and Lightning 1 Sam. 13.18 Yea the very Blasting and Mildew and Caterpiller and Palmer-worm Amos 4.9 are sent by God The ravenousness of a Lion or Bear are natural to them yet the mission of them upon an extraordinary occasion may be an actus imperatus of Divine Providence 1 Kings 14.24 2 Kings 2.24 And although we often attribute as well mischiefs as deliverances to accidental natural Causes yet many times they are actus imperati of the Divine special Providence as much and as really and truly as the motion of my Pen is the actus imperatus of my Will at this time And if we enquire how these things are effected though it may be they be sometimes effected by the immediate Fiat of the Divine Will yet I have just reason to think they are most ordinarily done by the Ministration of Angels as the destruction of the Host of the Assyrians and divers other great Exertions of these imperate acts of Divine Providence Psal 103. His Angels that excel in strength that do his commandements hearkning to the voice of his word That as the more refined and efficacious Matter which we by way of analogy call Spirits are the executive Instruments of the actus imperati of our Will so these true and essential Spirits are ordinarily the immediate Instruments of the imperate acts of Divine Providence And therefore although many times Effects purely natural that have their Originals meerly by the ordinary course of Providence are ordered by special Providence unto great and wonderful Events yet it seems to me very plain that there be many natural productions that it may be in the immediate Cause or second or third may be purely natural yet at the farthest end of the Chain there is an Agent that is not simply natural as we use to call natural Causes but voluntary sometimes in the first production sometimes in the restriction sometimes in the direction of them for otherwise we must of necessity make all successes in the World purely natural and necessary and Almighty God would be mancipated to the Fatality of Causes and to that Natural Law which he gave at first and Prayers and Invocation upon Him in case of any calamity would be unuseful and ineffectual And therefore though Almighty God do not create a Wind for every emergent occasion but the Wind is a Vapour breaking out of the Earth yet the Ministration of an Angel may restrain open excite direct or guide that Vapour to the fulfilling of those imperate acts of Divine special Regiment And it is observable that although the regular part of Nature is seldom varied but ordinarily keeps its constant tract as the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies yet the Meteors as the Winds Rain Snow Thunder Exhalations and the like which are in themselves more unstable and less mancipated to stated and regular motions are oftentimes employed in the World to very various ends and in very various methods of the special Divine Providence And hence the Winds and Storms are stiled in a peculiar manner Winds and storms fulfilling his will Psal 148. And He bringeth his winds out of his treasury Psal 134. And again Hath the rain a Father and who begot the drops of dew Job 38.28 And again Can any of the vanities of the Gentiles
give rain Jer. 14.22 Thus the wise God who doth nothing vainly or unnecessarily nor infringeth the more constant Laws of Nature when those parts thereof that are more anomalous and more easily applicable to his imperate acts and ends of Providence may serve more ordinarily chuseth those parts of Nature to execute his special Providences that may do it without any great fracture of the more stable and fixed parts of Nature or the infringment of the Laws thereof Again as the Empire of the Divine Will doth exercise its imperate acts in the Methods of special Providence upon things simply in themselves natural so it doth upon Agents or Natures intellectual and free Sometimes immediately by Himself sometimes by the Instrumentality of Angels or proposed Objects This Exercise of the imperate Acts of the Divine Providence may be upon the Understanding or Will Upon the Understanding principally these ways 1. By immediate afflatus or impression as anciently was usual in prophetick Inspirations 2. By conviction of some Truths and this may be either by a strong and over-bearing presenting of them to the Understanding with that light and evidence that it is under a kind of necessity of believing them which was often seen in the primitive times of Christianity wherein God was pleased many times irresistibly and by immediate overpowering the Understanding by the powerful impression of the Object or Truth propounded to conquer as it were the Understanding into an assent Or 2. By advancing and enlightning the understanding Faculty with a superadded light and perception whereby it was enabled to discern the truth of things delivered For as the Understanding receives some Truths proposed by reason of the congruity between the Faculty and the Object as the Eye sees some visible Objects by reason of the congruity between it and them so the reason why it perceives not all Objects of Truth is because of some defect of the Faculty whereby it holds not a full and perfect congruity with them either by reason of the remoteness or sublimity of the Object or some deficiency of light in the Faculty which is aided by the Collyrium of the Divine Assistance Rev. 2. Or else 3. By some extraordinary concomitant moral evidence such was that of the Miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles the Seals and Credentials of the Truths they delivered And as thus the imperate acts of the Divine special Providence are exercised upon the Understanding so they are exercised upon the Will and that either immediately or mediately Immediately 1. By an immediate determining of the Will For although the Will be naturally free yet it is naturally and essentially subject to the imperium divinae voluntatis when He is pleased to exercise that empire upon it This although he rarely doth yet he may do it and sometimes doth it irresistibly determining the Will to chuse this or that good and yet this without any such force or violence as is simply contrary to the nature of it because as there is no Power in the World but owes most naturally an obediential subjection to the Lord of Nature so even the Will it self is naturally and essentially subject to the determination of the Lord and Author of it 2. By immediate inclining and inflecting it to determin of it self This is that secret striving of the Spirit of God with the Will inflecting and perswading it to this or that good It differs from the former way because that it is irresistible this though potent yet in its own nature resistible by the Will of Man though it many times prevails by its efficacy V. Gen. 6.3 Eph. 4.30 Again 2. Sometimes it is done Mediately more humano and yet not without the mediate special Empire and Regiment of the Divine Will and thus it is done two ways viz. 1. By an irresistible or at least powerful conviction of the Understanding that the thing in proposal is fit and necessary to be done or omitted for although some think that the Will hath a power of choosing or refusing or suspending notwithstanding the final decision of the practical Understanding yet certain we are that ordinarily and when the Will acts as a Rational faculty it is or ought to be determined by the last decision of the practical Understanding and 2. By proposing Moral objects that do more humano guide the Will to determine it self accordingly and these are various sometimes Intervention Perswasion or Examples of others and sometimes even the junctures of Natural occurrences For as I shall have occasion to shew and is partly touched before even the Natural occurrences of things are under the guidance and conduct of the Divine Providence even when to us they seem to be either Accidental or to be the meer product of Natural Causes And surely if we should deny the intervention of Imperate Acts of Divine Providence in relation to actions Natural or Moral that appear in the World we should exclude his Regiment of the World in a great measure and chain up all things to a fatal necessity of Second Causes and allow at most to the glorious God a bare prospect or prescience of things that are or shall be done without any other Regency of things but meerly according to the instituted nature and operations of things And thus far of the Imperate Acts of the Divine Providence Only this farther I must subjoyn as a certain truth That neither the Empire of the Divine Providence or his mediate or immediate determinations perswasions or inflexions of the Understanding or Will of Rational Creatures doth either naturally morally or intentionally deceive the Understanding or pervert the Will or necessitate or incline either to any falshood or moral evil 3. The third Analogy that is between the regiment of the Soul over the Body and the Divine regiment of the Universe is in relation to the acts of general Providence or that ordinary Law wherein Almighty God governs ordinarily the Universe and the things in it without the particular mixture of those that I have called the Imperate Acts of special Providence which seems to consist of two parts 1. The institution of certain common Laws or Rules for all created Beings which without a special intervention of his Will to alter or change they should regularly observe as that the Heavenly Bodies should have such Motions and Influences that the Inferiour or Elementary World should have its several Mixtures and Transmutations by the application of the active principles and particles in it to Passives and by the virtue of the Heavenly Motions and Influences That there should be vicissitudes of generations and corruptions that Vegetables should have the operation of vital vegetation increase duration and productions according to their several kinds that Sensible Natures should enjoy a life of Sense and those several powers or faculties of Sensation Phantasie Memory Appetition Digestion Local Motion Generation and those several instincts whereby they should be managed and governed according to the conveniencies of a
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
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
by the necessity of his Beneficence First therefore concerning the supposition of the Eternity of the World in general I shall not in this place dispute whether there be an utter impossibility of any material Being to be either independently or dependently eternal enough may be said against it from the incapacity of any material Being to sustain such a kind of duration à parte ante and yet without any derogation to the Divine Omnipotence or Goodness which though infinite yet cannot communicate such a duration to that which in its own intrinsick nature is not capable of it Nor secondly shall I dispute whether there be any such material or corporeal Being or Beings within the compass of the Universe that hath or may have such a kind of permanence or fixedness in being that may be capable of an eternal existence à parte ante either dependently or independently upon Almighty God admitting by way of argument but not granting it possible that in the nature of the thing some material or corporeal Being may be of such a fixed permanent consistence as may sustain such an eternal existence and I here omit this dispute not because I make the least doubt of the beginning thereof by Creation but because these are matters that require a longer and stricter process of enquiry and debate than I intend in this place and therefore I shall descend to things that are more plain and evident and yet such as will abundantly serve my design in the inquiry in hand And therefore for the present I shall gratia argumenti admit or suppose 1. That there are or may be some corporeal things in the compass of the Universe that may possibly be of such a fixedness stability and permanent nature that may sustain an eternal existence at least dependently upon the supreme Cause 2. And that possibly Matter it self undetermined to any particular form or under any particular constitution the Heavenly Bodies the Elementary Bodies and such as seem to have a simple nature and possibly their figure position and situation may be such as might have this eternal existence as the Sun the Stars the Aether the four Elements we will for avoiding dispute touching it for the present admit them to have been or that possibly they might have been of that nature quality distance each from other eternally as now they are like the great integrals and contignations figure and concamerations of a goodly Palace These things I say though in themselves most certainly untrue I shall for avoidance of difficult disputes admit at present Yet I farther say that though all these things were admitted yet there are some great and considerable parts and integrals and appendications unto the Mundus aspectabilis that we see that are purely impossible to be eternal and do de facto appear so to be and consequently it is apparent that the World in its full latitude and comprehension cannot be eternal And herein I shall not fix upon little or inconsiderable things but upon such as highly contribute to the excellency beauty and usefulness thereof neither shall I fix upon individuals which are apparently transient and necessarily have their beginning duration and end in certain known determinate portions of time as is evident in the individuals of all kinds or species of mixed sublunary Natures But I shall apply my self to the species themselves which most that assert the eternity of the World assert to be eternal or to such individuals as are the single Conservators of their own species And in this debate I shall take my measure from things in Nature as I find them and it is reasonable I should do so especially considering that this Discourse concerns principally the Judgments or Opinions of those men that are the great assertors of Nature and the eternity of those Laws Rules Orders or Methods of Nature which they now find and observe in it And it were a great vanity and rashness especially for such men to reject those reasons which are drawn from the nature of things as now they appear or for them to go about to answer those reasons by suppositions of a variety in things from what they now appear If therefore the state and method of things to be instanced in as they now appear do involve a repugnancy to an eternal existence the Arguments drawn from that Supposition must be conclusive at least to those great Priests and Venerators of Nature and its appearances Those things therefore that I would instance in as in their own nature uncapable of eternal existence à parte ante are these 1. All things that are of all hands agreed to be concreted of other things and necessarily in their own nature require a pre-existence of those more simple Bodies out of which they are concreted and a pre-existence of some preparatory antecedent motion for their coalition mixtion and concretion as Animals Vegetables Minerals Meteors and regularly all mixt Bodies 2. All things that are in their own nature successive as all Motion Alteration Generations Corruptions and all things that in their own constitution have as it were intrinsecally annexed to them or at least necessarily belonging to them in respect of their situation and position and juxta-position to other things a necessary subjection to alteration or corruption 3. All things that do not nor their nature considered cannot persist in one immutable state but have variety in the nature and manner of their existence necessarily by the laws of their nature annexed to them These things constituted and being in that state we find them cannot without a total alteration of their nature and being from what in truth they are nor in the state of nature wherein they are placed can they be eternal or without beginning And these are very considerable and momentous parts or appendices of the World and if it had been eternally without these it had been a very lame and defective World and such as the wisest man under Heaven could hardly understand for what use it would be or why it should have continued in such a defective condition from the endless period of Eternity Or at least if it had its use and beauty certainly it had not had the same use that now it hath nor the same beauty that now it hath And the consequence thereof is of great moment and importance viz. If these great accessions to the World whereof I am speaking could not be eternal and yet without them the World would have been greatly deficient from what it is the greatest Arguments for the Eternity of the rest of the World will necessarily fall off for the same reason that concludes for the necessity of an eternal existence of the World would as effectually conclude for the eternal existence of that which highly conduceth to the beauty use and ends of the Universe which yet we shall find cannot be eternally existing as it concludes for the eternity of such integrals of the World which possibly might be eternal
that is analogal to the state of the Elementary and mixed Inanimate Bodies that there are some more active and vigorous Qualities that seem continually to exercise a Sovereignty and Tyranny over the more passive and weak Natures and prey upon them Thus Heat and also in some degree Cold are always persecuting and foyning at the weaker and more unactive parts of Nature So among Brutes Birds Fishes Insects there is a continual invading and prevalence of the more powerful active and lively over the more weak flegmatick and unactive Creatures the Bear Lion Wolf Dog Fox c. pursue the Sheep Oxen Hare Coney c. and prey upon them the like is evident among Birds and Fishes and generally Insects being the weaker and more inconsiderable parts of Nature 2. That the vicissitudes of Generation and Corruption are by a kind of standing Law in Nature fixed in things and the Notions and Qualities of Natural things are so ordered to keep always that great Wheel in circulation and therein the Accesses and Recesses of the Sun the Influxes of the Heat thereof and of the other Heavenly Bodies and the mutual and restless Agitation of those two great Engins in Nature Heat and Cold are the great Instruments of keeping on foot the Rotation and Circle of Generations and Corruptions especially of Animals and Vegetables of all sorts 3. That yet these Motions of Generations and Corruptions and of the conducibles thereunto are so wisely and admirably ordered and contemperated and so continually managed and ordered by the wise Providence of the Rector of all things that things are kept in a certain due stay and equability and though the Motions of Generations and Corruptions and the Instruments and Engins thereof are in a continual course neither the excess of Generations doth oppress and over-charge the World nor the defect thereof or prevalence of Corruptions doth put a Period to the Species of things nor work a total Dissolution in Nature And upon this seemingly impertinent Diversion touching the Reductions and Correctives of these inferior Animals there may seem to be collected reasonably an analogical Inference of the like means of the Correctives of the Generations of Mankind and that although in an ordinary course of Humane Productions the Increase surmounts the Decay yet there may be reasonably supposed such Periodical Corrections as might fairly keep the state of Mankind in a mediocrity and equability although it should be supposed the Generations of Mankind had been Eternal And although these Correctives may not happen every Day or every Year in the ordinary course of things and therefore may be called extraordinary because they are less ordinary than the common Casualties of Mankind as Sickness or Accident that happens to this or that individual Person promiscuously yet they are in truth no more extraordinary than a cold Winter is extraordinary which although it is not every Day nor doth it happen every Year possibly in an equal Degree yet it is no extraordinary thing in Nature if it happens once in 5 or 10 or 20 Years Having therefore considered these Correctives in the inferior Animal Nature I shall now search out what may be those Correctives that may be applicable to the Reductions of the Generations of Mankind to an Equability or at least to keep it within such bounds as may keep it from surcharging the World whereby if in the Period of 2 or 3 or 4000 Years it may grow too luxuriant yet it may in probability be so far abated as may allow it an Increase of the like number of Years to attain its former proportion So that by these Prunings there may be a consistency of the Numbers of Mankind with an eternal succession of Individuals Those Reductions that may be supposed effectual for these Ends and such as the course of Mankind seem to have had great Experiences of are 1. Plagues and Epidemical Diseases 2. Famines 3. Wars and Internecions 4. Floods and Inundations 5. Conflagrations 1. Concerning Plagues and Epidemical Diseases the Histories of all times give us Accounts of the great Devastations that they have made in many places and sometimes it hath been it is true only in some particular Regions or Cities but at other times it hath been more universal and although at the same time in some Seasons it hath not universally prevailed yet it hath gradually and successively moved from place to place The ancient Plagues of former Ages in Forein Parts have been very terrible and cut off multitudes of People See a Collection of some of them by D r Hakewill lib. 2. sect 3. as namely That Plague in Ethiopia and also in most parts of the Roman Empire in the Year of Christ 250 which continued 15 Years and left not so many People in Alexandria as there were formerly aged Men that under Justinian in Constantinople and the parts adjacent wherein there dyed 10000 in a Day that in Africa whereby according to Procopius in the Country of Numidia there dyed 800000 Persons that in Greece under Michael Duca which so prevailed that the living were not sufficient to bury the dead and that in Italy in the Year 1359 whereby there were not left ten of a thousand this possibly may be the same mentioned by Walsingham but referred to the Year of Christ 1349 that prevailed over the World beginning in the Northern and Southern parts that the living were not able to bury the dead Existimabatur à pluribus quod vix decima pars hominum fuisset relicta ad vitam and presently after followed a great Murrain of Cattel so that he concludes Tanta ex his malis miseria secuta est quod mundus ad pristinum statum redeundi nunquam postea habuit facultatem Vide Lipsium de Constantia lib. 2. cap. 23. And if we look upon our own Country besides those great Plagues that have been in a manner universal there have been very many such in England sometimes more general sometimes more circumscribed to particular Cities or places As that Plague in the North parts of England mentioned by Walsingham in the beginning of R. 2. that in a manner depopulated those Parts that mentioned by the same Author Anno 7 H. 4. whereby there dyed in one Year 30000 in London which was considerable then considering the narrowness of the City in those days comparatively to what it now is besides the great desolation it made in the Country If we come to latter Years both in England and in Forein Parts the Observator of the Bills of Mortality before mentioned hath given us the best Account of the Number that late Plagues have swept away for Instance In London Anno Dom. 1592 of the Plague 11503 Anno Dom. 1593 10662 Anno Dom. 1603 30562 Anno Dom. 1625 35400 Anno Dom. 1636 10400 Anno Dom. 1665 68596 We have also Accounts of the great Devastations made by the Plague in late Years in Forein Parts In Amsterdam between 1622 and 1664 84564 And in the Year 1664
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
Particles were partly those Ignei spiritus and partly those Humores primogenii that were interspersed in Nature or possibly the constituent Essentials both of the semina themselves and of the Individuals produced by them Again 2. They might be thus far natural that the immediate Instruments of the conjunction of these Particulae seminales might be the Heat or Influence or Motion or Agitation of the Heavenly Bodies or what other natural Instrument the Divine Power might employ in their Coagmentation 3. They would be thus far natural that when these Particulae seminales were conjoyned together and made up into their Moleculae seminales and when they had received their Signature their Energy by the Divine Fiat they would naturally produce their Effect viz. the production of an Insect when they had obtained a convenient Menstruum to lodge it and the kindly Heat to ripen them this would be as natural as any Operation of Heat or Cold or other things are natural which though they had their first existence by the Supernatural Power and Will of God yet when they are in their existence they move and act according to that nature which is put into them which is the Law of their Being given them by Almighty God But the Virtue that gives these Moleculae seminales their Energy of Productiveness of Life and Sense their Determination in their several species and Ranks that mints and stamps them as it were with their Esse specificum seminale is the Institution and Fiat of the Divine Will and Ordination So that if there be at this day any semina of Insecta animalia ex non insectis which gives them their several determinate species and natures though I am not of the mind of scotus that they have an immediate Creation by God yet I am not of the mind of Beregardus who thinks they are meerly natural and made up and put together without the Pre-disposition Ordination or Signature of the God of Nature as the first power communicated to the primogenial natures of Animals and Men to have a Vis Seminativa and Prolifica was in the first Creation of Mankind communicated to them by virtue of the Divine Institution and Benediction though the way of exerting that Power when produced was natural But possibly much of what is in this Chapter is needless if in truth the individual natures of Insects were at first created by God without any pre-existing semen as we are sufficiently taught Gen. 1.20 25. and that the Seminal and Prolifick Power was given to them as other Animals and consequently the seminia viventium were subsequent and not antecedent to the first Institution of the Animal Nature and an effect thereof 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. IT is true that Insects and those equivocal Generations have an admirable perfection in their kind not much unlike to those that we find in the more perfect Animals and indeed they are so much the more admirable because their little and almost imperceptible moles renders their distinction of Faculties and Organs the more curious and artificial They have their several Faculties the Senses of Sight Hearing Touch and Taste they have the digestive egestive and other parts of the Nutritive Faculty and though their individual production may seem equivocal and of no univocal Seed of the same kind yet they have the Generative Faculty and propagate their species as well as perfect Animals and have therein distinction of Sexes as appears by frequent experience notwithstanding the doubt or contrary Opinion of Aristotle and although their Phantasie is more lubricous and sickle than perfect Animals yet it is evident that they have a Phantasie as appears by their Motions and little Operations and as they have Phantasie so they have Memory as appears by the Returns of Bees and Pismires to their homes from great distances And as they have these Faculties of Life and Sensation so they have Organs accommodate and admirably fittted to those several Faculties namely to Nutrition Augmentation Generation Sense Local Motion Phantasie Appetite which are so far from being contemptible in respect of the smallness and petiteness of these little Animals that indeed in some respect they are the more admirable as a small Watch is an evidence of greater skill and artifice than a greater or as a small Picture drawn to the Life commends the skill of the Painter sometimes more than a great Draught But yet for all this we must not think that these little Animals are of an equal perfection with the greater and nobler Caesar's Image drawn upon a Cherry-stone is a piece of great curiosity but not of an equal perfection to his lively Statue in Brass or that a Fly is of an equal perfection with an Eagle Therefore I shall not fetch Arguments against the like spontaneous Productions of the greater Animals from any contemptible valuation of these smaller and these little Models of sensible Life for certainly they are curious and elaborate automata in respect of their admirable minuteness and accuracy But yet upon other Reasons it seems utterly inconsequential that because these smaller Particles of sensible Nature may be thus spontaneously produced therefore these greater Animals may be so for it is apparent that in things of an equality of perfection there is by the Laws and fixed Rules of their several Natures several manners of their productions If we should compare Vegetables among themselves some will arise ex surculo as well as ex radice or ex semine others will not if we compare Sensible Natures among themselves that seem to have an equality of perfection as some sorts of Brutes and Birds it will be hard to say which have the perfecter Nature yet the production of the latter are ex ovo the former ex verme the former oviparous the latter viviparous in the ordinary course of their natural production and as at this day the former is not producible ex Ovo so the latter not producible without it The several natures of things have distinguished them as in their kinds so in the manner of their production and whatsoever the perfection of Insects sponte orientia may be there is no Consequence to be drawn from the same to other more noble Animals But again as there is no Consequence to be drawn from the one to the other so there is in the very nature of the one kind and the other and in the natural order of their production a great disparity and disproportion so that in truth by the very Constitution and Frame of their Natures the perfect Animals that we see only produced by the conjunction of Sexes and univocal Generation cannot by any course or consistency in Nature without the Supposition of Divine Power and Ordination arise spontaneously And that appears 1. In the disparity of the natural Productive
Principle of the one and the other 2. In the disparity of the natural Method of the perfecting of the one and the other 3. In the disparity of the Natures of the Animals of the one kind and the other having arrived to their complement and perfection First touching the disparity of the natural Productive Principle of the one and the other although it be admitted that Insects and spontaneè orta do or may arise from a Semen or Principle that is not univocal or formal yet it must needs be agreed that the Natural Principle of such their production must be some analogal Semen or some Seminal Principle that is suitable to such a Production otherwise quidlibet orietur ex quolibet there must be something that must determin the Matter to be an apt Seminium for such a Production or else the Matter must determin it self either there must be some determinate Vital or Spiritual Principle that is determined in it self and determins the Matter which Paracelsus seems to hold that Bodies were first Spirits and Aristotle seems to intimate when he tells us that Animarum omnia plena and when the Matter is fitly prepared there is an illapse of this Vital Formative Spirital Principle into it or else the inherent qualities or dispositions of Matter it self must be of force to mould it self up into these Moleculae seminales the Formative Principles of these sponte orta I speak in the Language of those that erroneously hold no higher Principles but such as are purely Natural But although such Seminal Particles as these may be sufficient for the production of Insects yet they are not naturally accommodated for the perfection of the perfect Animals For the Semen prolificum for the production of perfect Animals must receive its specifical conforming Principle either by the Supernatural Power of Almighty God or from the Specifical Nature of the Individuals of both Sexes and if we could suppose an Anima vaga of the Sensible Nature not confined to any Individual of the same nature nothing could be a Matter fitly prepared for its reception but the Materia seminalis ex individuis elicita neither is there any Matter extra compositum animale capable to advance it self to the nature of such a perfect Animal for if either of these could be done we had as much reason daily to expect the like spontaneous productions of Horses and Sheep as we find of Frogs and Worms Again the Vis conformatrix and Seminal Particles of Insects is most plainly in Insects not confined to the semina formalia utriusque sexus commixta for we see almost all their parts are seminal and will by putrefaction advance to the production of their kind Their productive power is not so strictly and severely bound to the semen utriusque sexus Many have told us by experience and observation that the Excrements of Flies without any mixtion will produce immediately Flies that the Resolution or Maceration of Frogs and Worms will reproduce Individuals of the same species as Kercher lib. 12. Mundi subterranei tells us But there are no parts of perfect Animals that are productive of their species but the same is confined by the Laws of their Nature to a semen formale ex utroque sexu decisum It is true that their parts corrupted as their Blood Flesh or Veins will produce Insects and living Creatures of a different and baser kind than themselves as Worms Lice Fleas Flies but they can never advance to the production of their own kind And the Reason is because there is not possibly any transmission of that specifical vital formative Principle to any other part but the semen formale of the Individuals of that species and that Vis formatrix activa vitalis sensibilis must be communicated either by virtue of a participation of all the parts of the Producents or by a kind of a specifical Idea naturally produced by that Nature from whence it is derived which evolves and expands it self being produced or which is more intelligible and probable than either of the former by a participation of the vital and sensible Soul to the semen prolificum from the Producents and there is no way of communication thereof in perfect Animals but only to that natural and genuine Semen constituted mixed and ordered according to the Law of its Being so that we cannot suppose any seminal Principle of perfect Animals but this semen prolificum utriusque parentis unless we shall gratis and without either Reason or Example wholly invert the natural order of things and substitute a Semen contrary to the nature of the things that must be produced or admit that which those great Assertors of Nature think below them to grant and will rather suppose a thousand Absurdities than admit namely the Interposition of the Divine Power And 2. As the Semen formativum of perfect Animals is greatly differing from that of Insects and therefore not capable of a spontaneous production as these so it is apparent that at least in animalibus viviparis it is impossible to be preserved sine receptaculo naturae congruo scilicet utero foemineo The vital particles thereof are more fiery and volatile and higher advanced than that Semen that is or may be sufficient for Insects sine convenienti receptaculo avolabunt spiritus vitales ex interventu vel minimi frigoris mortuum infoecundum evadet but the Semina of Insects are more viscous and less volatile in so much that their Semina will remain all the Winter in caverns and holes and yet be fruitful the next Spring 3. Again the Semen Insecti being so small a Particle and having as I may say so small a portion of Soul in it is soon formed and brought to maturity We may learn this in their univocal productions or ex coitu Scaliger tells us Exercitat 191. l. 2. that the Gloworm brings forth his Eggs postridiè post coitum Malpighius in his curious Disquisition touching the Silkworm tells that quarto post coitum die the Female brings forth ordinarily above 300 sometimes above 500 Eggs and these will lie all the Winter and with the warm heat of the Spring and some other assistance will prove vital the next Spring and Aristotle Hist Animal l. 5. cap. 27. tells us that Araneae statim post ova parta incubant triduo peragunt quatuor septenis diebus justa accipiunt incrementa ibid. l. 6. cap. 37. tells us that Mures si salem lambunt pariunt sine coitu and that even their young have been found with young before they saw the light By all which it is evident That although these little Moleculae seminales will retain their fecundity longer than the Eggs of Birds even a whole Winter and possibly longer yet when they have obtained a convenient Matrix and the warm cherishing heat of the Spring the formation production and maturation of Insects and of that Semen prolificum which they univocally yield in their regular
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
thereof to be the Rule and Guide of his Sentiments though he be drawn by the necessity of Reason to grant and conclude that Man must needs have an Origination and that in another way than now he hath namely ex non genitis yet it is not reasonable for him to conclude that he had this Origination upon a bare natural account as the Insects and sponte orta have because it quite thwarts and crosses all the appearances of Nature and is wholly incongruous to the nature of things as they now stand And a Man that makes such a Conclusion must needs offer violence to his own Reason and Experience and depart from those Laws and Rules of Nature which he makes his Guide and the Compass by which he steers his Judgment touching things and suppose that natural which is wholly different from what it seems And consequently if the reason and nature of things compel a Man to assert that Mankind had their Origination another way than that in which it now is the same reason and nature of things duly and impartially considered must needs evince that it had not its Origination from any either casual or meer natural course of things But by the Power and Will of a most wise intelligent bountiful free and powerful Being who according to his Wisdom and Goodness first gave being to Man yea and all other things secundùm intentionem beneplacitum suae voluntatis And since it is apparently necessary for any Man that will admit the first production of Mankind to be totally in another Method than now and since they that will suppose a natural production of Man at first must necessarily suppose a different production from that which now obtains And since no more is asserted by those that suppose its Origination by the Will Power and Institution of Almighty God this latter Supposition is much more reasonable and explicable than theirs that suppose the first Origination natural yet totally different from what now it is which is the great thing I intend in this long process touching the Origination of Man 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 THis I propounded as a distinct Inquiry at the first namely Whether or how far forth we have any Evidence of Fact touching any such casual or natural production of perfect Animals but especially of Man But the truth is that this is but an Appendix to the former Chapter for if there be any credible Instance of any such Production all or any reasoning against the possibility thereof is but vain for what hath been naturally or casually may be again But on the other side if in all the Successions of the Ages of the World there hath not been any Experience or credible Instance of any such Production but contrarywise since Mankind was first upon the Earth both Mankind and all perfect Animals have had their being by natural Procreation and Generation by conjunction of Sexes it is a frenzy for any Man that pretends to Reason to suppose a natural possibility of that to be either from a casual or meer natural Cause which never had any Instance of its being or existence in such a manner The World hath now upon the shortest Account lasted above 5600 Years and within the compass of these Ages of the World there have been in many Nations especially among the Egyptians and Grecians Men of great Wisdom and Understanding and singular Industry to search into the History of Nature and many of them have had great opportunities to know very much therein and since their times especially the generality of the wiser and more inquisitive sort of Men being allarmed by the Writings of those that went before them have made it their business to search yet farther and the Learned in all Ages have left the Essays of their Learning Reason and Observation to succeeding Ages and if any Prodigy or considerable Production hath happened in their times they have sent us the News of it But never in all the Ages of the World since those 5600 Years hath there been any credible Relation either of the casual or natural production of a Horse or a Dog much less of a Man or a Woman happening within the compass of that time abating some Poetical Fictions and Fables that have no colour of any Authentick History or Authority And therefore Scaliger well saith Exercit. 193. Si bos aliquando ex putri ortus cur post hominum memoriam ex ejusmodi procreatione nullus extitit and therefore Aristotle the wisest Pagan Philosopher that ever wrote and the strictest observer and searcher into Nature even upon the account of Experience and Reason tells us Lib. 3. de Gen. Animal cap. ult that there never hath been nor can be according to the Rules of Nature any such Production though by way of Supposition that it some times had been he gives us that Hypothesis of it that seemed to him most likely And upon this very account and partly because he was not acquainted with the Truths of God or at least because he was not willing to acknowledge any other Original of things but by Nature he took up the Opinion of his Predecessor Ocellus touching the Eternity of the World and of Mankind in it and so absolved the difficulty of the Manner of the Origination of Mankind by denying it And therefore we have no reason to believe any such thing since we find nothing in any Authentick History of any Man or perfect Animal since the first Being of Man upon the Earth hath been thus produced abating the Fables of Poets touching the production of Men and Women out of Stones by Deucalion and Pyrrha cast over their heads the Serpents Teeth sowed by Cadmus the production of Castor and Pollux out of an Egg and those forlorn Fables of Beregardus of the Green Man found in England in the Den of a Wolf 500 years since the Blew and Red Men of Rabbi Elcha that came out of the Mountains of Armenia And therefore for want of any credible or particular Instances of any such production Caesalpinus supposeth that they are in some unknown Mountains between the Tropicks where the Heat of the Sun is more constant fervent and equable than in Climates remoter from the Equinoctial though he neither doth nor can give any Instance of such a production there or elsewhere To excuse this unexperienced Notion and the difficulty of assigning any Instance thereof they allude these ensuing Apologies 1. That these Productions cannot be but under some notable Conjunction or Position of the Heavenly Bodies which may be accommodate to such Productions which Positions or Conjunctions not happening but after vast and distant Revolutions the Experiment it self can rarely happen and by length of time before the like Revolution return it is forgotten 2. That those Productions could not be but in Matter excellently prepared
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
interspersed in it and that fruitful Water which remained conjoined with it 4. That this Production was not by any formed antecedent Seed dispersed in it but immediately the Vegetable Individuals were antecedent to any Semina that might be productive of it and according to the true Method of Existence of Things in their first Origination the Herb and Tree were the Cause the Original of the Seed the Seed was not the Original of the Herb or Tree though in the secondary production by generation the Semen precedes the thing generated according to the Order settled after the first production of things which doth reasonably solve the Dispute of Plutarch Whether the Hen were before the Egg or the Egg before the Hen And as the Supposition that the first Principle in the Origination either of Vegetables or Sensitives to be ex praeexistente semine seems incongruous and unreasonable I mean as to perfect Vegetables or Animals so it is idle and needless For certainly the same Infinite Power that could form a Semen univocum to be the immediate Principle of an Animal or Vegetable in the primordial Origination of them could with equal facility form perfect Individuals of the several Species and endue them with a prolifick power of propagation of their kinds by seminal Principles decised from them and no lesser Power and Wisdom was required to mold up a specifical operative Semen than to frame the Individual or Species to be produced by it 5. The Supreme Power of the Great Efficient of Vegetables as well as Animals was seen in this in that it determined their Species which Matter alone nor any Universal Cause purely natural could never have done in respect of their universal common indeterminate Nature which could never fix nor settle in any determinate specifick production Therefore in that the Individuals of Vegetables Fish Fruits and Birds as well as Men were made after their kinds it ascertains us that this Origination of things was by a Wise Free Intelligent Being full of Power and Wisdom acting secundum intentionem electionem voluntatem 6. By virtue of this Divine Intention Ordination and Command these three things were settled touching Vegetable Natures which is also true concerning Animals as to the two latter of them at least 1. The Earth was endued with prolifick vital Energy whereby it was enabled with the vigorous assistance of the Fiery Nature included in it and accompanying it to put out many spontaneous productions of some ordinary Vegetables and probably of some Insects and to exhibit a succus nutritionis to support all kind of Vegetables and many Animals in their vital existence 2. The Individuals of Vegetables of all sorts as also of Animals Fishes Fowls Insects and Man were in a moment of time produced in their full and perfect complement laden with their Fruit and Seed without ruining the natural gradual process of Maturation which was to ensue in the course of future Generations and this could not be done either by force of any natural fecundity that was then in the Earth or the bare strength of the formed natural accommodation of Light or Heat for though it be true that the natural fecundity and heat of some Climates and also artificial fecundations of Matter may conduce much to the acceleration of Maturity yet it is hot imaginable that these could be ripened into the full growth and burden of Fruit in the period of a Day but by virtue of a supernatural Efficient and Power namely the Energy of the Divine Command Germinet terra c. 3. The third admirable Demonstration of the Immediateness of the Divine Power Wisdom and Ordination is this That Vegetables as also Animals and Mankind were endued with a Power Faculty and a certain Law fixed and radicated in them to transmit their specifical Nature to succeeding Individuals by propagation and seminal traduction whereby their Species might be preserved and this was done by force of the Divine Institution and Benediction the Vegetables were produced with their various Semina in them ready formed for their several specifical productions in their full and perfect stature quasi per saltum and endued with a prolifick power of multiplication of their kind by virtue of that Soveraign Institution and Commission Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth Gen. 1.22 28. 2. I come now to the Fourth Days Work Verse 14 15 16 And God made two great Lights the greater Light to rule the Day and the lesser to rule the Night and he made the Stars also It is true what I before observed that first Matter of all things corporeal was made and this only was properly Creation or making out of nothing and all corporeal things that were made within the compass of the Six Days was Creation only per analogiam for it was only separation and distribution of that Matter which before existed in the Materia Chaotica or else an elevation or rectification of some parts of that Matter or a composition out of it or of some parts of it it was effectio or creatio secunda not creatio prima and though the Word Create be applied to some things that were thus effected as Vers 21. yet it is not purely creatio prima or ex nihilo but creatio secunda ex praeexistente materia Now What was the Matter of these Heavenly Bodies the Sun the Moon the Stars for in this Fourth Day all the Matter of the Chaos was before distributed into these four Simpler Natures Light or Fire Air or Aether Water and Earth The first Matter of these Heavenly Luminaries therefore was the common Chaotica materia but the Materia proxima out of which they seem to be constituted were principally those two great Natures which were separated from the Chaos the first day viz. The Fiery Nature imbodied in a suitable Vehicle and the second day the Aether or Aery part these two great Integrals of the first Universe were far greater than all the rest of the Chaotick Matter and therefore might very well subminister the principal and predominant Matter for those great and vast Luminaries the fixed Stars the most whereof are far greater than the Globe of Earth and Water But to the Constitution of the Planetary Bodies which seem to be more gross than the Stars there was a greater proportion of more gross and feculent Matter added to the Fiery and Aerial Particles in their coagulation though in some of them more in some less according to the various degrees of subtilty and grosness of their constitution And these goodly Bodies being formed and molded it should seem that that great and mighty flaming Light which was made or produced the first day and for the two ensuing days had rolled about the rest of the Chaotick Mass was by the Glorious God distributed into those several Heavenly Vessels of the Sun and Stars who succeeded unto and as it were inherited that primitive Light now divided among them according to their several measures
others arising ad plurimum ex ovo 2. In the great variety of their bodily composure the texture of the Bodies of Brutes being far more curious and fuller of variety than others 3. Ad plurimum the animal Faculties of the brutal Soul are far more perfect than those of others their Phantasies and Memories refined they have greater and more lively Images of Reason and more capable of Discipline than either Fowls or Fishes Now touching the production of Animals whether Terrestrial Aquatil or Volatil we may observe that they are in the ordinary course of Nature of two kinds Some which arise among us no otherwise nor in any other manner than ex semine which we usually call perfect Animals and arising by univocal generation others there are that be imperfect arising spontaneously in the Earth Air and Water as Worms Flies and some sort of small Fishes and watry Insects This being premised I shall now set down some Suppositions which seem to me truly to explicate the production of these Animals which are these that follow 1. Although the predominat Matter in the constitution of Fowls and Fishes were Water and in the constitution of Terrestrial Animals were Earth yet that Water nor that Earth were not simply such but were mixed and impregnated with the other Elementary Principles 2. That all the Species of perfect Animals of all kinds were constituted in their several Sexes in the fifth and sixth day of the Creation but yet we must not think that all those kinds which we now see were at first created but only those primitive and radical Species How many sorts of Animals do we now see that yet possibly are not of the same Species but have accidental diversifications as we may observe in the several Shapes and Bodies of Dogs Sheep Pyes Parots which possibly at first were not so diversified some variation of the same Species happen by mixt Coition some by diversity of Climates and other accidents 3. That the first Individuals in their distinction of Sexes were not produced according to those Methods of Nature which they now hold nor ex aliquo praeexistente semine but by the immediate efficiency of Almighty God out of the Matter prepared or designed for their Constitution 4. That they were made in the first instant of their Constitution in the full perfection and complement and stature of their individual and specifical nature and did not gradually increase according to the procedure of animal augmentation at this day and the reason is because those gradual augmentations arise from the Seminal Principle which gradually expands it self to the full growth but here they arose not from any such Seminal Principle but the Hen was before the Egg. 5. There was no mean portion of Time between their Formation and Animation but both were together they were living Beings and living Souls and living Creatures as soon as they were formed 6. That consequently the Formation of the Body of these Animals was not as now it is by the Formative Power of the Soul which must needs be gradual and successive as we see it is and must be at this day in all natural Generations but the Formation and Information of them was by virtue of the immediate Fiat Determination or Ordination of the Divine Will 7. That in their Origination the Species of these Animals were determined neither from the Matter nor from the universal Cause the Celestial Heat but by the Divine Intention and Ordination 8. That by the same Divine Ordination and Intention the Faculties specifically belonging to every Individual were annexed and alligated to it especially the power conficiendi semen prolificum speciei propagandae ex mutua utriusque fexus conjunctione 9. That although by the Divine Power and Ordination all these perfect Animals did arise from the Earth yet that Prolifick Power of propagating of them was never delegated or committed to the Earth or any 〈◊〉 other Casual or Natural Cause but only to the Seminal Nature derived from their Individuals and disposed according to that Law of propagation of their kind alligated as before to their specifical and individual nature And therefore it its perfectly impossible that any of these perfect Animals can be casually or naturally or accidentally produced by any Preparation of Matter or by any Influence of the Heavens without the miraculous interposition of Almighty Power because the Earth or those Influences have not this power concredited to them but their production is irresistibly alligated to the Semen innatum and conjunction of Sexes the Earth can as naturally produce a Sun or a Star as it can a Man or a perfect Animal 10. Whether those imperfect or equivocal Animals were created or no it is not altogether clear possibly some might be then produced whose kinds were likewise producible spontaneously after but it seems beyond contradiction that all were not 11. As by virtue of that general Commission or intrinsick Prolifick Power given to the Earth to produce spontaneous Herbs as Grass c. it doth naturally produce such Herbs so by virtue of that common Commission given by Almighty God to the Earth and Water and to that Spirit of Nature diffused in it it doth naturally produce those equivocal insect Animals which arise out of them The same Law of the Creator that hath eternally excluded or rather not committed to the Earth or Water the power of producing perfect Animals hath given and committed to them by concurrence of that Vital Heat of the Sun and the common Spirit of Nature residing in them a Productive Power of some equivocal insect Animals in Matter fitly prepared Touching therefore the Origination of Insects I shall declare my thoughts as followeth 1. That by virtue of the Divine Fiat the Earth at first did produce some Individuals of several kinds which is imported under the words Every creeping thing after its kind 2. That as I have before shewn the greatest part of the Insects that are commonly produced and seem to be spontaneous productions are yet the univocal and seminal productions of Insects of the same kind 3. That yet it is a certain Truth that some Insects are and have an Origination since the first Creation without any formal univocal seminal production some out of Putrefaction some out of Vegetables some by very strength and fracedo of the Earth and Waters quickned by the vigorous Heat of the Sun which infuseth into some Particles of Matter well prepared and digested a kind of Vital and Seminal Principle Some have thought the very Sun and Earth are endued with a Vital yea and with a kind of Sensitive Nature and thereby enabled as it were to spin some prepared Matter into vital and sentient Semina for those insect Animals But we shall not need to trouble our selves with that incertain Speculation we are sure that the greatest part of the Superficies of the Earth being daily and hourly impregnated with the corrupted and dissolved Particles of Vegetables and Animals is
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
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
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
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
many Insects that arise by the connatural efficacy of Elementary Matter and by the due preparation of the same and by the due application thereof unto the incidence of Celestial Heat and Influxes it may be in the power of these knowing and active Spirits by a transportation and application of such Matter and by the position of them in such an Influence as is natural for their production to be instrumental not only to the acceleration of such productions but to the productions themselves But though still the efficacy of the production is not applicable to the efficiency of these Spirits but to the natural vigour of those Natural Actives and Passives that are by them brought together and they cannot produce a Fly or a Frog beyond the activity and efficacy of Elementary Matter and Celestial Heat And hence it was that the Egyptian Enchanters could produce Frogs out of the Rivers of Egypt by the assistance of evil Spirits because the Waters and temperament of the Soil and Climate was able to have done it if those parts thereof were transported and united unto one place where being brought they would probably without the help of a Magician have been formed into that Insect Yet when the same Artists were trying to produce Lice out of Dust a Matter simply unsuitable for such a production they could not effect it but acknowledged it was the Finger of God Exod. 8.18 19. We see that Man by his little narrow skill and power by applying Actives to Passives may do things of not unlike a nature as the acceleration of the growth of Seeds by Mineral Preparations the production of Mites in Cheeses by infusing Wine and many tell us of a strange production and multiplication of some Insects by the juxta-position of several Ashes and Solutions of Insects and by other means none of which ways are estranged from the knowledge of those experienced Spirits But it seems utterly beyond the power of any Created Nature to produce any Insect but by the juxta-position and application of that Elementary Body and Celestial Heat that is natural and proper for such a production and much more is it impossible for any Created Power to produce any Animal though never so small or inconsiderable whose production is by the standing and fixed Laws of Nature mancipated and chained to that common Method of Production setled in Nature by the Conjunction of Sexes And therefore though an evil Angel may produce a Frog or Snake by the due application of Actives to Passives as before is declared yet he cannot with all his power and skill produce a Dog or a Cat or any other Creature that by the Laws and Institution of Nature is only producible by the Conjunction of Sexes And the reason is because these Laws which are instituted and setled in Nature when it is fixed and established are no other than the Laws of the Sovereign Lord of Heaven and Earth and although he may dispense with alter or suspend his own Laws yet no created Being hath that power of it self to suspend or alter these Laws setled by the God of Nature no not in any one individual thing and therefore it is not possible for Angel or Devil without the immediate Commission from the God of Heaven to make any spontaneous production of such an Animal as by the established Law of Nature is to be produced by natural propagation and not otherwise But herein I do not understand 1. Such Insects as though producible by Propagation yet are naturally likewise producible ex putri as Frogs and many other Insects for Nature hath allowed them both ways of production 2. Neither of Incubation for many Animals that are ovipara and cannot produce ovum foecundum sine utriusque sexus natura yet may be excluded by artificial Incubation as well as natural this is not only within the power of Angels by applying an artificial Heat but even of any else The Eggs in Egypt are hatched in the Sun or by the heat of Ovens or warm Ashes 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 UPon a diligent Observation of the various Suppositions and special Methods of the ancient Philosophers touching the Origination of Mankind and of the Universe in general these improbabilities of their truth and sufficiency will appear to any considerate Man First They are destitute of any satisfactory Evidence to any person that is not strangely and impotently engaged to them either because they are his own Conceptions or the Conceptions of some persons of whose Learning or Wit their Disciples or Followers are too fond admirers There are commonly two Ingredients that make Men fond of a pre-conceived Opinion 1. Self-love and admiration when a Man hath fashioned a Fancy or Imagination to some height he falls in love with it because it is his own and is with great difficulty drawn from it 2. Affectation of Esteem which hath a double effect upon Men namely the affectation of Praise and Vain-glory as having found out some Conception singular novel or that may give a Man a name of a high Mercurial Wit and on the other side a shame and disdain to retract that which he hath once publickly asserted The truth is that many of the several Hypotheses of the Aristotelians Epicureans and of divers of the other Ancients touching the original or fundamental state of the Universe and Mankind are meer Inventions and Fancies having no other foundation or evidence of their truth than meerly their own Fancies and Conceptions And it is not reasonable to think it should be otherwise for since the Manner of the Origination of Things must in common Reason be thought to be of some other Mode or Order than what we see now in Nature and since the particular Manner or Method of this Origination of Things is such a Matter of Fact as cannot possibly lye in the compass of humane discovery meerly by the strength of Ratiocination or a bare humane Tradition for it is a Matter of Fact that precedes the supposed existence of Memory at least of any Man it must necessarily be that Mankind must be ignorant of it unless it be revealed unto him by some that might certainly know the Fact it self and therefore the Conceptions of Men touching it must needs be as confused roving uncertain and inevident as the Discourses or Conceptions of a blind Man that never saw touching Light or Colours But the Medium of the discovery of the first Formation of things delivered by Moses is that which can only give us a true Notion of them namely Revelation to a Man that conversed with Almighty God face to face and the Communication thereof to Mankind by this Man divinely inspired and informed touching this Fact by him that alone could give him the true account thereof namely God himself Although I do not doubt but besides this Divine
inconsistencies and so avoid those intollerable absurdities that their Suppositions do necessarily occasion And again sometime are fain utterly to lay aside some of their former Positions as utterly undisciplinable and ungovernable by any subsidiary Explication by reason of their gross absurdities and apparent impossibilities This appears by some of the former Debates touching the Epicurean and Aristotelian Suppositions and many more may be given in this matter But the first Chapter of Genesis as it is perfectly consonant to it self so it labours under no difficulties or absurdities but all parts thereof are easily and apparently reconcilable one with another and with the common reason of the things delivered upon the account of that common Supposition upon which the whole is bottomed namely the Efficiency of the most Wise and Powerful Intelligent Being Since therefore it is evident that Truth is ever consistent with it self and that which contains any irreconcilable absurdity or contradiction with it self or any other Truth can never be true we have all the reason imaginable to give the preference to the Mosaical Hypothesis as consonant to it self and to all other Truths that are and on the other side to reject the Epicurean and Aristotelian Theories in this matter each of which contains irreconcilable difficulties in themselves and contradictions to evident and demostrable Truths 3. The third observable is this That the Holy History gives us such an Efficient and such an Efficiency of things that gives us a plain and clear and evident Solution of all those admirable Phaenomena that we see both in the Universe in the Motions Orders Positions Influences and Conveniences of the whole Universe and of the several great Integrals thereof and likewise of that admirable Beauty Order Symmetry Usefulness of Parts and Organs of Faculties and Powers that are to be found in Animals and especially in Man of these admirable congruities of Powers Motions and Instincts not only in the Animal and Vegetable Province but also in the very inanimate Bodies by giving us the Almighty most Wise most Bountiful God to be the first Author of the World and of Mankind and to be the Contriver and Institutor of that Law in things created which we usually call the Law of their Nature which is nothing else but the Will the Rule the Institution of the most Wise Powerful and Intelligent Being And let Men toyl themselves till their Brains be fired and study and invent from Age to Age to give us any other Explication of most of the observable Phaenomena in Nature they will toyl in vain and substitute unto us nothing but empty watrish and unsatisfactory Solutions or meer Whimsies Chimaera's and Falsities instead of Truth and Reality And this is the admirable preference of the Divine History of the Origination of Things that it gives us a solid plain evident congruous Solution of all the admirable Phaenomena in universal and particular Beings wherein our Minds may rest and quiet themselves which those Philosophers neither do nor can do that use any other Method of the Origination of Things What reason can there be assigned of the position of the Elementary and Heavenly Bodies in that most convenient position and situation the usefulness order and regularity of their Motions Heat and Influence Why the Motions of every thing are directed with the most suitableness to the convenience of the Universe and to its own Why a Stone or a Bar of Iron moves downward what is within it or without it that excites or directs it What reason can there be assigned of that admirable accommodation of Meteors the Wind and Rain nay the very Thunder and Lightning to the use and benefit of the Elementary World What reason can be assigned of the admirable Fabrick of the Body of Man that singular beauty destination and symmetry and convenience of Parts and Organs that admirable constitution and ordination of his Faculties especially that of his Intellect What reason can be assigned of the wonderful order and procedure of the generation of Men yea and of common Animals All done with that order and uniformity with that convenience and regularity that it exceeds the imitation and even the the comprehension of the wisest Man in the World Touching these and infinite more of these admirable Appearances in Nature the first of Genesis gives us a plain reasonable evident Explication by letting us know that these were the Works of the most Intelligent Being the Works of the most Wise and Glorious God And the reason why they are so admirably wisely and excellently framed and ordered is because they were made and ordered by the great Skill Wisdom Power and Design of the Glorious God But now if we come to demand of these wise Philosophers a Solution of the admirableness of these Phaenomena we shall have such Solutions as must make us first unreason and unman our selves before we can subscribe to them or at least we shall have such a Solution as no way countervails the value of the Work or else shall give a Solution of Idem per idem or else by somewhat else that is utterly unintelligible Ask Democritus and Epicurus and by their favour some of their late the Atomists will tell us that all or the greatest part of this is by chance casual position and mode and motion and figure and texture of Atoms and he that believes this whiles he hears it or says it is in a full capacity of believing any thing though never so unreasonable Let any Man but ask his own Reason fairly whether he can believe this that he thus saith I appeal to that Man whether he doth or can really believe himself when he says it Ask another sort of Philosophers for their Solution of it they will tell you that Nature is the Cause and a sufficient Solution of all these things But what is that Nature where is it is it the nature or disposition of the things themselves Then it explicates it no otherwise but thus That things have this excellency and order because it is their nature to be so or they are so because they are so But if by Nature they mean some separate Existence what then is it Is it a Body or Spirit is it a reasonable an intelligent Being or is it a surd and stupid Existence or else is it a Law or a Rule self-subsisting If it be a reasonable intelligent Existence we differ but only de nomine that which I call God they will call Nature at least unless they suppose it an inferior intelligent Being and then the difficulty is only made somewhat more that a subordinate intelligent Being was able to produce such Effects which appear to all Men to be Works of the greatest Power and Wisdom imaginable On the other side if they suppose it to be a meer surd unintelligent Being how comes it to pass that they carry in them the greatest evidence imaginable of the most perfect and consequently of the most intelligent efficient Agent Again
will they suppose it a Norma Rule or Law of a most excellent frame and order and indeed in so conceiving they conceive truly that Nature is such a Law or Rule but still this doth not explicate the Phaenomena of Nature without supposing somewhat more A Law or Rule is not in it self effective or active neither can it subsist or exist without an Agent that either gave it or works by or according to it The Laws of a State are the Rules of its Government but this Law must be given by some Power and some Power there must be that must act according to it otherwise a Law is a stupid dead unactive and unconceivable thing And therefore a Law or Rule singly explicates not any the Phaenomena of Nature without a Being that gives this Law to things or acts or makes things act according to it and then we are in a great measure where Moses brings us only with this difference the Law by which this great World was made was no other but the Determination and Beneplacitum of the Divine Will determined or qualified if we may use that improper word with the highest and most sovereign Wisdom and Power And the Law by which things thus made were for the future to be governed was that instituted Rule and Order which this Sovereign Lord contrived and placed in created Beings and thus indeed Opus naturae est opus intelligentiae Nature therefore may have these various acceptations viz. 1. As it signifies that Principium activum that gave every thing its Being and thus it imports no other than Almighty God that Supreme Intelligent Being though improperly called Nature viz. Natura narans 2. As it imports the Things or Effects principated or effected by this intelligent active Principle or the Effects or Creatures of God or Natura naturata and this hath a double import viz. i. For the first and immediate Productions of that Principle namely not only created Matter which was the Productum primo primum but also the things first produced in their several kinds or natures or Producta secundo prima as the first Vegetable Animal and Humane Individuals or 2. For those Mixtions and Productions which afterwards had their productions in the World by successive mixtions and generations which include all Productions which though in relation to their dependence and first production of their kind are still the Creatures of God yet in relation to their immediate Causes are productions of second Causes 3. As it imports the Law and Rule and Method and Order of the production and government and process of created Beings and this of two kinds 1. The Law and Rule of the first Creation or Production of Beings as the production of the first Individuals of Animals Vegetables and Men and herein though Almighty God proceeds with admirable Wisdom and Order yet he used no other Law or Rule than the immediate Determination of his own most wise and perfect Will suitable to the Business he had in hand wherein there was necessary and fit another kind of Regiment and Order than was afterwards instituted 2. The Laws or Rules instituted and appointed by the same most wise God to things already constituted this is the common and ordinary and regular Law of instituted Nature and these two Laws or Rules were different and necessary that they should be so In the first Constitutions of Beings God Almighty proceeded by a Law suitable to that Work namely according to the wise Counsel of his own Will that was best and fittest for that Work he proceeded more suddenly and by the immediate interposition of his own Power the Vegetables constituted in a moment or very speedily and within the compass of a Day came to their full and perfect maturation and growth so also did the Fowls and Fishes and Brutes and Man without any considerable mora between their first formation and complement or individual perfection But the Law instituted for things already formed and setled was of another kind Vegetables Animals and Men are in the Laws of their future existence to pass through those gradations and steps and methods which we see now in use for the formation production increase and perfection thereof Again in the first production of things though sometimes the wise God used in some measure the order of second or instrumental or effective Causes yet he bound not himself to that Rule though as we have formerly observed the instrumentality of Heat might be used in separating the Expansum and the arefaction of the Earth and the production of Vegetables and though the instrumentality of the perfected Celestial Bodies might be some way instrumental towards the maturation of Nature towards the production of Animals and though he used the Matter which he had created to be the substratum of the Corporeal Natures even of Man himself yet the great Energy and Power whereby he compleated all things was above and beyond the activity of second Causes yea when he used the instrumentality of second Causes his own Powerful and Omnipotent Hand was engaged in the advancing of the efficacy of the second Causes which he used beyond their natural strength and efficacy there was much that was supernatural and miraculous as well in the first separation distribution and formation of things as in the first Creation of the Corporeal Matter out of nothing But in the succeeding process and procedure of created Nature he fixed and established certain powers and activities in things and a certain order and connexion between them and their effects and governed and regulated the motions and productions of things according to those implanted powers and connexions and this we call the instituted Law of Nature namely the activities and powers placed in created Beings and the mutual connexions and concatenations of things to such activities and powers which Law was at first instituted by the God of Nature to be the common and standing ordinary Rule for things setled and fixed in their created station And therefore we are far from denying a Law of Nature or Calling in the immediate efficiency of the great God or a miraculous interposition in all the ordinary procedures of things already fully setled and statuminated by the first Divine Efficiency That which we only say in relation to Nature already setled is but this that 1. The primitive and fundamental powers and activities of things were placed in them by the immediate Will and Efficiency of God it is this that gives the power to Heat and Fire to dissolve dissipate rarifie and consume to Cold to condense to heavy Bodies to descend to all the Celestial Bodies their Motions Influences and Positions that gave the Generative Faculty to Men to Brutes to Fishes the Productive Faculty to the Earth and Waters the Receptivity to Semen and Intellection c. 2. That he by a continuing Influx doth support and preserve all things in their being order and activity 3. That this which we call the Law of
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
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
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