Prince of the World that is of the Eternal Intellect or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 24. Aristotle an Acknowledger of Many Gods he accounting the Stars such and yet an express Asserter of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Prince One Immoveable Mover 25. Cleanthes and Chrysippus Stoicks though they filled the whole Heaven Earth Air and Sea with Gods yet notwithstanding they acknowledged only One Gâ—d Immortal Jupiter all the rest being consumed into him in the Successive Conflagrations and afterwards made anew by him Cleanthes his excellent and devout Hymn to the Supreme God 26. Eâ—dless to cite all the Passages of the later Pagan Writers and Polytheists in which one Supreme God is asserted Excellent Discourses in some of them concerning the Deity particularly Plotinus Who though he derived all things even Matter it self from one Supreme Deity yet was a Contender for Many Gods 27. This not only the Opinion of Philosophers and Learned men but also the General Belief of the Pagan Vulgar that there was One Supreme God proved from Maximus Tyrius The Romans Deus Optimus Maximus The Paâ—ans when most serious spake of God singularly Kyrie Eleeson part of the Pagans Litany to the Supreme God The more civilizâ—d Pagans at this very day acknowledge one Supreme Deity the Maker of the World 28. Plutarch's Testimony that notwithstanding the variety of Paganick Religions and the different Names of Gods used in them yet One Reason Mind or Providence ordering all things and its Inferiour Ministers were alike every where Worshipped 29. Plain that the Pagan Theists must needs acknowledge One Supreme Deity because they generally believed the whole World to be One Animal gâ—vernâ—d by One Soul Some Pagans made this Soul of the World their Supreme God others an Abstract Mind Superiour to it 30. The Hebrew Doctors generally of this Perswasion that the Pagans worshipped one Supreme God and that all their other Gods were but Mediatours betwixt him and men 31. Lastly this confirmed from Scripture The Pagans Knew God Aratus his Jupiter and the Athenians Unknown God the True God 32. In order to a fuller Explication of the Pagan Theology and shewing the Occasion of its being misunderstood Three Heads requisite to be insisted on First that the Pagans worshipped One Supreme God under Many Names Secondly that besides this one God they worshipped also Many Gods which were indeed Inferiour Deities Subordinate to him Thirdly that they worshipped both the Supreme and inferiour Gods in Images Statues and Symbols sometimes abusively called also Gods First that the Supreme God amongst the Pagans was Polyonymous and worshipped under several Personal Names according to his several Attributes and the Manifestations of them his Gifts and Effects in the World 33. That upon the same accompt Things not Substantial were Personated and Deified by the Pagans and worshipped as so many several Names or Notions of One God 34. That as the whole Corporeal World Animated was supposed by some of the Pagans to be the Supreme God so he was worshipped in the several Parts and Members of it having Personal Names bestowed upon them as it were by Parcels and Piece-meal or by so many Inadequate Conceptions That some of the Pagans made the Corporeal World the Temple of God only but others the Body of God 35. The Second Head proposed that besides the One Supreme God under several Names the Pagans acknowledged and Worshipped also Many Gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Made Gods Created intellectual Beings Superiour to Men. 36. The Pythagorick or Platonick Trinity of Divine Hypostases And the Higher of the Inferiour Deities according to this Hypothesis Nous Psyche and the whole Corporeal World with particular Noes and Henades 37. The other Inferiour Deities acknowledged as well by the Vulgar as Philosophers of Three Sorts First the Sun Moon and Stars and other greater Parts of the Vniverse Animated called Sensible Gods 38. Secondly their Inferiour Deities Invisible Ethereal and Aereal Animals called Daemons These appointed by the Supreme Deity to preside over Kingdoms Cities Places Persons and Things 39. The Last sort of the Pagan Inferiour Deities Heroes and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Men-gods Euemerus taxed by Plutarch for making all the Pagan Gods nothing but Dead Men. 40. The Third general Head proposed That the Pagans worshipped both the Supreme and Inferiour Gods in Images Statues and Symbols That first of all before Images and Temples Rude Stones and Pillars without Sculpture were erected for Religious Monuments and called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Bethels 41. That afterwards Images Statues and Symbols were used and housed in Temples These placed in the West-end of the Temples to face the East so that the Pagans entering worshipped towards the West One probable Occasion of the Ancient Christians Praying towards the East The Golden Calf made for a Symbolick Presence of the God of Israel 42. All the parts of the entire Pagan Religion represented together at once in Plato 43. That some late Writers not well understanding the Sence of Pagans have confounded all their Theology by supposing them to Worship the Inanimate parts of the World as such for Gods therefore distinguishing betwixt their Animal and their Natural Gods That no Corporeal thing was worshipped by the Pagans otherwise than either as being it self Animated with a Particular Soul of its own or as being part of the whole Animated World or as having Daemons presiding over it to whom the Worship was properly directed or Lastly as being Images or Symbols of Divine Things 44. That though the Egyptians be said to have Worshipped Brute Animals and were generally therefore condemned by the other Pagans yet the wiser of them used them only as Hieroglyphicks and Symbols 45. That the Pagans worshipped not only the Supreme God but also the Inferiour Deities by Material Sacrifices Sacrifices or Fire-offerings in their First and General Notion nothing else but Gifts and Signs of Gratitude and Appendices of Prayer But that Animal Sacrifices had afterwards a Particular Notion also of Expiation fastned on them whether by Divine Direction or Humane Agreement left undetermined 46. The Pagans Apology for the Three forementioned Things First for Worshipping one Supreme one God under Many Personal Names and that not only according to his several Attributes but also his several Manifestations Gifts and Effects in the Visible World With an Excuse for those Corporeal Theists who Worshipped the whole Animated World as the Supreme God and the several Parts of it under Personal Names as Living Members of him 47. Their Apology for Worshipping besides the One Supreme God Many Inferiour Deities That they Worshipping them only as Inferiour could not therefore be guilty of giving them that Honour which was proper to the Supreme That they Honour'd the Supreme God Incomparably above all That they put a Difference in their Sacrifices and that Material Sacrifices were not the proper Worship of the Supreme God but rather below him 48. Several Reasons of the Pagans for giving Religious Worship
look'd upon as Barbarians and yet did they not only acknowledge One Supreme Deity but also such as was distinct from the world and therefore Invisible he writing thus concerning them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They believe that there is One Immortal God and this the Cause of all things and another Mortal one anonymous but for the most part they account their Benefactors and Kings Gods also And though Caesar affirm of the ancient Germans Deorum numero eoâ— solos ducunt quos cernunt quorum opibus apertè juvantur Solâ—m Vulcanum Lunam yet is he contradicted by Tacitus who coming after him had better information and others have recorded that they acknowledged One Supreme God under the name of Thau first and then of Thautes and Theutates Lastly the Generality of the Pagans at this very day as the Indians Chineses Siamenses and Guineans the Inhabitants of Peru Mexico Virginia and New England some of which are sufficiently Barbarous acknowledge One Supreme or Greatest God they having their several Proper Names for him as Parmiscer Fetisso Wiracocha Pachacamac Vitziliputzti c. though worshipping withal other Gods and Idols And we shall conclude this with the Testimony of Josephus Acosta Hoc commune apud omnes penè Barbaros est ut Deum quidem Omnium rerum Supremum summè Bonum fateantur Spirituum vero quorundam perversorum non obscura opinio sit qui à nostris Barbaris Zupay vocari solent Igitur quis ille Summus idemque Sempiternus rerum omnium Opifex quem illi ignorantes colunt per omnia doceri debent mox quantum ab illo illiusque fidelibus Ministris Angelis absint gens pessima Cacodaemonum This is common almost to all the Barbarians to confess one Supreme God over all who is perfectly Good as also they have a Perswasion amongst them of certain Evil Spirits which are called by our Barbarians Zupay Wherefore they ought to be first well instructed what that Supreme and Eternal Maker of all things is whom they ignorantly worship and then how great a difference there is betwixt those wicked Daemons and his faithful Ministers the Angels XXVIII It hath been already declared that according to Themistius and Symmachus two zealous Pagans One and the same Supreme God was worshipped in all the several Pagan Religions throughout the world though after different manners Which Diversity of Religions as in their opinion it was no way inconvenient in it self so neither was it Ungrateful nor Unacceptable to Almighty God it being more for his Honour State and Grandeur to be worshipped with this Variety than after one only Manner Now that this was also the opinion of other ancienter Pagans before them may appear from this remarkable Testimony of Plutarch's in his Book De Iside where defending the Egyptian Worship which was indeed the main design of that whole Book but withal declaring that no Inanimate thing ought to be look'd upon or worshipped as a God he writeth thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No Inanimate thing ought to be esteemed for a God but they who bestow these things upon us and afford us a continual supply thereof for our use have been therefore accounted by us Gods Which Gods are not different to different Nations as if the Barbarians and the Greeks the Southern and the Northern Inhabitants of the Globe had not any the same but all other different Gods But as the Sun and the Moon and the Heaven and the Earth and the Sea are common to all though called by several names in several Countries so ONE REASON ordering these things and ONE PROVIDENCE dispensing all and the Inferiour subservient Ministers thereof having had several Names and Honours bestowed upon them by the Laws of several Countreys have been every where worshipped throughout the whole world And there have been also different Symbols consecrated to them the better to conduct and lead on mens undeâ—stâ—ndings to Divine things though this hath not been without some hazard or danger of casting men upon one or other of these Two Inconveniences either Superstition or Atheism Where Plutarch plainly affirms that the Several Religions of the Pagan Nations whether Greeks or Barbarians and among these the Egyptians also as well as others consisted in nothing else but the worshipping of One and the Same Supreme Mind Reason and Providence that orders all things in the world and of its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 its Subservient Powers or Ministers appointed by it over all the several parts of the World though under different Names Rites and Ceremonies and with different Symbols Moreover that Titus Livius was of the very same opinion that the Pagan Gods of several Countreys though called by several Names and worshipped with so great Diversity of Rites and Ceremonies yet were not for all that Different but the same common to all may be concluded from this passage of his where he writeth of Hannibal Nescio an Mirabilior fuerit in adversis quà m secundis rebus Quippe qui mistos ex colluvione omnium gentium quibus alius Ritus alia sacra alii PROPE Dii essent ita uno vinculo copulaverit ut nulla seditio extiterit I know not whether Hannibal were more admirable in his adversity or Prosperity who having a mixt colluvies of all Nations under him which had different Rites different Ceremonies and Almost different Gods from one another did notwithstanding so unite them all together in one common bond that there hapned no sedition at all amongst them Where Livy plainly intimates that though there was as great diversity of Religious Rites and Ceremonies among the Pagans as if they had worshipped several Gods yet the Godâ— of them all were really the same Namely One Supreme God and his Ministers under him And the same Livy elsewhere declares this to have been the General opinion of the Romans and Italians likewise at that time where he tells us how they quarrel'd with Q. Fulvius Flaccus for that when being Censor and building a new Temple in Spain he uncovered another Temple dedicated to Juno Lacinia amongst the Brutii and taking off the Marble-Tyles thereof sent them into Spain to adorn his new erected Temple withal and how they accused him thereupon publickly in the Senate-house in this manner Quod ruinis Templorum Templa aedificaret tanquam non Iidem ubique Dii immortales essent sed spoliis aliorum alii colendi exornandique That with the ruines of Temples he built up Temples as if there were not every where the Same Immortal Gods but that some of them might be worshipped and adorned with the spoils of others The Egyptians were doubtless the most singular of all the Pagans and the most odly discrepant from the rest in their manner of worship yet nevertheless that these also agreed with the rest in those Fundamentals of worshipping one Supreme and Vniversal Numen together with his Inferiour Ministers as Plutarch sets himself industriously to
Power or Agent Invisible Moreover it is concluded that from the same Originals sprang not only that vulgar opinion of Inferiour Ghosts and Spirits also subservient to the Supreme Deity as the Great Ghost of the whole World Apparitions being nothing but mens own Dreams and Phancies taken by them for Sensations but also mens taking things Casual for Prognosticks and their being so Superstitiously addicted to Omens and Portents Oracles and Divinations and Prophecies this proceeding likewise from the same Phantastick Supposition that the things of the World are disposed of not by Nature but by some Vnderstanding and Intending Agent or Person But lest these Two forementioned Accounts of that Phaenomenon of Religion and the Belief of a Deity so Epidemical to Mankind should yet seem insufficient the Atheists will superadd a Third to them from the Fiction and Imposture of Civil Soveraigns Crafty Law-makers and Designing Politicians Who perceiving a great advantage to be made from the Belief of a God and Religion for the better keeping of men in Obedience and Subjection to themselves and in Peace and Civil Society with one another when they are perswaded that besides the Punishments appointed by Laws which can only take place upon open and convicted Transgressors and are often eluded and avoided there are other Punishments that will be inflicted even upon the secret violators of them both in this Life and after Death by a Divine Invisible and Irresistible Hand have thereupon Dextrously laid hold of mens Fear and Ignorance and cherished those Seeds of Religion in them being the Infirmities of their Nature and further confirmed their Belief of Ghosts and Spirits Miracles and Prodigies Oracles and Divinations by Tales or Fables publickly allowed and recommended According to that Definition of Religion given by a Modern Writer Fear of Power Invisible Feigned by the Mind or Imagined from Tales publickly allowed Religion not allowed Superstition And that Religion thus Nursed up by Politicians might be every way Compliant with and Obsequious to their Designs and no way Refractory to the same it hath been their great care to perswade the People that their Laws were not meerly their own Inventions but that themselves were only the Interpreters of the Gods therein and that the same things were really displeasing to the Gods which were forbidden by them God ruling over the world no otherwise than in them as his Vicegerents according to that Assertion of a Late Writer Deum nullum Regnum in homines habere nisi per eos qui Imperium tenent that God Reigneth over men only in the Civil Soveraigns This is therefore another Atheistick Account of Religions so generally prevailing in the world from its being a fit Engine of State and Politicians generally looking upon it as an Arcanum Imperii a Mystery of Government to possess the Minds of the People with the Belief of a God and to keep them busily employed in the exercises of Religion thereby to render them the more Tame and Gentle apt to Obedience Subjection Peace and Civil Society Neither is all this the meer Invention of Modern Atheists but indeed the old Atheistick Cabal as may appear partly from that known Passage of the Poet That the Gods were first made by Fear and from Lucretius his so fequently insisting upon the same according to the mind of Epicurus For in his First Book he makes Terrorem animi Tenebras Terrour of Mind and Darkness the Chief Causes of Theism and in his Sixth he further pursues the same Grounds especially the Latter of them after this manner Caetera quae fieri in Terris Coeloque tuentur Mortales pavidis quom pendent mentibu ' saepe Efficiunt animos humiles formidine Divûm Depressosque premunt ad terram proptereà quod IGNORANTIA CAVSARVM conferre Deorum Cogit ad Imperium res concedere Regnum Quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre Possunt haec fieri Divino Numine rentur To this Sence Mortals when with Trembling Minds they behold the Objects both of Heaven and Earth they become depressed and sunk down under the Fear of the Gods Ignorance of Causes setting up the Reign and Empire of the Gods For when men can find no Natural Causes of these things they suppose them presently to have been done by a Divine Power And this Ignorance of Causes is also elsewhere insisted upon by the same Poet as the chief Source of Religion or the Belief of a God Praeterea coeli rationes ordine certo Et varia annorum cernebant tempora verti Nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere causis Ergo PERFVGIVM sibi habebant omnia Divis Tradere ipsorum nutu facere omnia flecti Moreover when a Modern Writer declares the Opinion of Ghosts to be one of those things in which consisteth the Natural Seeds of Religion As also that this Opinion proceedeth from the Ignorance how to distinguish Dreams and other strong Phancies from Vision and Sense he seemeth herein to have trod likewise in the Footsteps of Lucretius giving not obscurely the same Account of Religion in his Fifth Book Nunc quae causa Deûm per magnas Numina gentes Pervolgarit ararum compleverit Vrbes c. Non ita difficile est rationem reddere Verbis Quippe etenim jam tum Divûm mortalia Secla Egregias animo facies vigilante videbant Et magis in Somnis mirando corporis auctu His igitur Sensum tribuebant c. That is How the Noise of the Gods came thus to ring over the whole world and to fill all places with Temples and Altars is not a thing very difficult to give an account of it proceeding first from mens Fearful Dreams and their Phantasms when awake taken by them for Visions and Sensations Whereupon they attributed not only Sense to these things as really Existing but also Immortality and great Power For though this were properly an Account only of those Inferiour and Plebeian Gods called Demons and Genii yet was it supposed that the belief of these things did easily dispose the minds of men also to the Perswasion of One Supreme Omnipotent Deity over all Lastly That the Ancient Atheists as well as the Modern pretended the Opinion of a God and Religion to have been a Political Invention is frequently declared in the writings of the Pagans as in this of Cicero Ii qui dixerunt totam de Diis Immortalibus Opinionem sictam esse ab hominibus Sapientibus Reipublicae causa ut quos Ratio non posset eos ad Officium Religio duceret nonne omnem Religionem sunditus sustulerunt They who affirmed the whole opinion of the Gods to have been feigned by wise men for the sake of the Commonwealth that so Religion might engage those to their Duty whom Reason could not did they not utterly destroy all Religion And the sence of the Ancicient Atheists is thus represented by Plato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They First of all affirm that
Religion not fit for the Vulgar to know Varro's Supreme Numen the great Soul or Mind of the whole World his Inferiour Gods Parts of the World Animated Image-Worship Condemned by him as disagreeable to the Natural Theology Page 438 439 Seneca a Pagan Polytheist but plain asserter of One Supreme Numen excellently described by him That in his Book of Superstition now lost he did as freely Censure the Civil Theology of the Romans as Varro had done the Fabulous or Theatrical Page 440 Quintilian Pliny Apuleius their clear acknowledgments of One Sovereign Universal Deity Symmachus a great stickler for Paganism his Assertion That it was One and the Same thing which was Worshipped in all Religions though in different ways Page 440 441 The Writer De Mundo though not Astotle yet a Pagan His Cause that conteineth All things and God from whom all things are Which Passage being left out in Apuleius his Latin Version gives occasion of suspicion that he was infected with Plutarch's Ditheism or at least held Matter to be Unmade Page 442 Plutarch a Priest of Apollo however unluckily ingaged in those Two False Opinions of an Evil Principle and Matter Unmade yet a Maintainer of One Sole Principle of all Good Page 443 Dio Chrysostomus a Sophist his clear Testimony 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the whole World was under a Kingly Government or Monarchy ibid. Galen's True Hymn to the praise of him that made us in his Book De usu Partium Page 444 Maximus Tyrius his short Account of his own Religion One Supreme God the Monarch of the whole World and Three Subordinate Ranks of Inferiour Gods the Sons and Friends of God and his Ministers in the Government of the World Page 444 445 A most full and Excellent Description of the Supreme God in Aristides his First Oration or Hymn to Jupiter wherein he affirmeth all the several kinds of Gods to be but a Defluxion and Derivation from Jupiter Page 445 446 All the Latter Philosophers after Christianity though maintainers of the Worlds Eternity yet agreed in One Supreme Deity the Cause of this World and of the other Gods Excellent Speculations in them concerning the Deity especially Plotinus who though deriving Matter and all from One Divine Principle yet was a Contender for Many Gods he supposing the Grandeur and Majesty of the Supreme God to be declared by the Multitude of Gods under him Themistius That the Same Supreme God was worshipped by Pagans Christians and all Nations though in different Forms and that God was delighted with this Variety of Religions Page 446 447 The full Testimony of S. Cyril That the Greek Philosophers universally acknowledged One God the Maker of the Universe from whom were produced into Being certain other Gods both Intelligible and Sensible ibid. XXVII This not onely the Opinion of Philosophers and Learned men but also the General Belief of the Vulgar amongst the Pagans A Judgment of the Vulgar and Generality to be made from the Poets Dio Chrysost. his Affirmation That all the Poets acknowledged One First and Greatest God the Father of all the Rational Kind and the King thereof Page 447 The Testimony of Aristotle That all men acknowledged Kingship or Monarchy amongst the Gods of Maximus Tyrius That notwithstanding so great a Discrepancy of Opinion in other things yet throughout all the Gentile World as well the Unlearned as Learned did universally agree in this That there was One God the King and Father of all and Many Gods the Sons of that One God Of Dio Chrysostomus also to the same purpose he intimating likewise that of the two the acknowledgment of the One Supreme God was more General than that of the Many Inferiour Gods Page 448 Page 449 That the sense of the Vulgar Pagans herein is further evident from hence because all Nations had their several Proper Names for the One Supreme God as the Romans Jupiter the Greeks Zeus the Africans and Arabians Hammon the Scythians Pappaeus the Babylonians Bel c. Page 449 True that Origen though allowing Christians to use the Appellative Names for God in the Languages of the several Nations yet accounted it unlawfull for them to call him by those Proper Names because not onely given to Idols but also contaminated with wicked Rites and Fables according to which they should be judged rather the Names of a Daemon than of a God Notwithstanding which he does not deny those Pagans ever to have meant the Supreme God by them but often acknowledge the same But Lactantius indeed denies the Capitoline Jupiter to be the Supreme God and that for two Reasons First because he was not worshipped without the Partnership of Minerva and Juno his Daughter and Wife Granted here that there was a Mixture of the Fabulous or Poetical Theology with the Natural to make up the Civil But that Wise men understood these to be but Three several Names or Notions of One Supreme God This confirmed from Macrobius Page 450 Vossius his Conjecture that in this Capitoline Trinity there was a further Mystery aimed at of Three Divine Hypostases This Roman Trinity derived from the Samothracian Cabiri Which word being Hebraical gives Cause to suspect this Tradition of a Trinity amongst the Pagans to have sprung from the Hebrews Page 451 Lactantius his Second Reason Because Jupiter being Juvans Pater was a name below the Dignity of the Supreme God The Answer that the true Etymon thereof was Jovis Pater the Hebrew Tetragrammaton ibid. That the Capitoline Jupiter was the Supreme God evident from those Titles of Optimus Maximus and of Omnipotens by the Pontifices in their Publick Sacrifices Seneca's Testimony that the ancient Hetrurians by Jupiter meant the Mind and Spirit Maker and Governour of the whole World The Roman Souldiers Acclamation in Marcus Aurelius his German Expedition To Jove the God of Gods who alone is Powerfull according to Tertullian a Testimony to the Christians God Page 452 453 That as the Learned Pagans in their Writings so likewise the Vulgar in their common Speech when most serious often used the word God Singularly and Emphatically for the Supreme proved from Tertullian Minucius Felix and Lactantius together with the Testimony of Proclus that the One Supreme God was more universally believed throughout the World than the Many Gods Page 453 454 That Kyrie Eleeson was anciently a Pagan Litany to the Supreme God proved from Arianus The Supreme God often called by the Pagans also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Lord. Page 454 455 That even the most sottishly Superstitious Idolatrous and Polytheistical amongst the Pagans did notwithstanding generally acknowledge One Supreme Deity fully attested and elegantly declared by Aurelius Prudentius in his Apotheosis Page 455 However some of the Ancient Pagans were said to have acknowledged none but Visible and Corporeal Gods yet as they conceived these to be endued with Life and Understanding so did they suppose One Supreme amongst them as either the whole Heaven or
Aether Animated or the subtle Fiery Substance that pervadeth all things the God of the Heracliticks and Stoicks or the Sun the Cleanthaean God Page 455 456 Though Macrobius refer so many of the Pagan Gods to the Sun and doubtless himself lookt upon it as a Great God yet does he deny it to be Omnipotentissimum Deum the Most Omnipotent God of all he asserting a Trinity of Divine Hypostases Superiour to it in the Platonick way Page 456 457 That the Persians themselves the most Notorious Sun-worshippers did notwithstanding acknowledge a Deity Superiour to it and the Maker thereof proved from Eubulus As also that the Persians Countrey-Jupiter was not the Sun confirmed from Herodotus Xenophon Plutarch and Curtius Cyrus his Lord God of Heaven who commanded him to build him a house at Jerusalem the same with the God of the Jews Page 458 That as besides the Scythians the Ethiopians in Strabo and other Barbarian Nations anciently acknowledged One Sovereign Deity so is this the Belief of the generality of the Pagan World to this very day Page 458 459 XXVIII Besides Themistius and Symmachus asserting One and the same Thing to be worshipped in all Religions though after different ways and that God Almighty was not displeased with this Variety of his Worship Plutarch's Memorable Testimony That as the same Sun Moon and Stars are common to all so were the same Gods And that not onely the Egyptians but also all other Pagan Nations worshipped One Reason and Providence ordering all together with its Inferiour Subservient Powers and Ministers though with different Rites and Symbols Page 459 460 Titus Livius also of the same Perswasion That the Same Immortal Gods were Worshipped every where namely One Supreme and his Inferiour Ministers however the Diversity of Rites made them seem Different Page 460 Two Egyptian Philosophers Heraiscus and Asclepiades professedly insisting upon the same thing not onely as to the Egyptians but also the other Pagan Nations the Latter of them Asclepiades having written a Book Entitled The Symphony or Harmony of all Theologies or Religions To wit in these Two Fundamentalls That there is One Supreme God and besides him Other Inferiour Gods his Subservient Ministers to be worshipped From whence Symmachus and other Pagans concluded That the Differences of Religion were not to be scrupulously stood upon but every man ought to worship God according to the Law and Religion of his own Country The Pagans Sense thus declared by Stobaeus That the Multitude of Gods is the work of the Demiurgus made by Him together with the World Page 461 XXIX That the Pagan Theists must needs acknowledge One Supreme Deity further Evident from hence Because they generally believed the whole World to be One Animal Actuated and Governed by One Soul To deny the Worlds Animation and to be an Atheist all one in the sense of the Ancient Pagans Against Gassendus that Epicurus denyed the Worlds Animation upon no other account but onely because he denyed a Providential Deity This whole Animated World or the Soul thereof to the Stoicks and others The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The First and Highest God Page 462 Other Pagan Theologers who though asserting likewise the Worlds Animation and a Mundane Soul yet would not allow this to be the Supreme Deity they conceiving the First and Highest God to be no Soul but an Abstract and Immoveable Mind Superiour to it And to these the Animated World and Mundane Soul but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A Second God Page 463 But the Generality of those who went Higher than the Soul of the World acknowledged also a Principle Superior to Mind or Intellect called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The One and The Good and so asserted a Trinity of Divine Hypostases Subordinate Monad Mind and Soul So that the Animated World or Soul thereof was to some of these but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Third God ibid. The Pagans whether holding Soul or Mind or Monad to be the Highest acknowledged onely One in each of those severall Kinds as the Head of all and so always reduced the Multiplicity of things to a Unity or under a Monarchy Page 464 Observed That to the Pagan Theologers Vniversally the World was no Dead Thing or meer Machin and Automaton but had Life or Soul diffused thorough it all Those being taxed by Aristotle as Atheists who made the world to consist of nothing but Monads or Atoms Dead and Inanimate Nor was it quite Cut off from the Supreme Deity how much soever Elevated above the same the Forementioned Trinity of Monad Mind and Soul being supposed to be most intimately united together and indeed all but One Entire Divinity Displayed in the World and Supporting the same Page 464 465 XXX The Sense of the Hebrews in this Controversy That according to Philo the Pagan Polytheism consisted not in worshipping Many Independent Gods and Partial Creators of the World but besides the One Supreme other Created Beings Superior to men Page 465 466 That the same also was the Sense of Flavius Josephus according to whom This the Doctrine of Abraham That the Supreme God was alone to be Religiously Worshipped and no Created thing with him Aristaeus his Assertion in Josephus That the Jews and Greeks worshipped one and the same Supreme God called by the Greeks Zene as giving Life to all Page 466 467 The Latter Rabbinical Writers generally of this Perswasion That the Pagans acknowledging One Supreme and Universal Numen worshipped all their Other Gods as his Ministers or as Mediators and Intercessors betwixt him and them And this Condemned by them for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Strange Worship or Idolatry The first Commandment thus interpreted by Maimonides and Baal Ikkarim Thou shalt not set up besides me any Inferiour Gods as Mediators nor Religiously Worship my Ministers or Attendants The Miscarriage of Solomon and other Kings of Israel and Judah This That believing the Existence of the One Supreme God they thought it was for his Honour that his Ministers also should be worshipped Abravanel his Ten Species of Idolatry all of them but so Many several Modes of Creature-Worship and no mention amongst them made of many Independent Gods Page 467 c. Certain Places of Scripture also Interpreted by Rabbinical Writers to this purpose That the Pagan Nations generally acknowledged One Sovereign Numen Page 469 470 The Jews though agreeing with the Greeks and other Pagans in this That the Stars were all Animated nevertheless denyed them any Religious Worship Page 470 471 XXXI This same thing plainly confirmed from the New Testament That the Gentiles or Pagans however Polytheists and Idolaters were not Vnacquainted with the True God First from the Epistle to the Romans where that which is Knowable of God is said to have been manifest amongst the Pagans and they to have Known God though they did not Glorify him as God but hold the Truth in Unrighteousness by reason of their Polytheism and Idolatry
Demonstrable of a Perfect Being as the Properties of a Triangle or a Square and therefore can neither be Contradictious to it nor one another Page 652 Nay the Genuine Attributes of the Deity not onely not Contradictious but also all Necessarily Connected together ibid. In Truth All the Attributes of the Deity but so many Partial and Inadequate Conceptions of One and the Same Perfect Being taken into our Minds as it were by Piece-meal ibid. The Idea of God neither Fictitious nor Factitious Nothing Arbitrarious in it but a most Natural and Simple Idea to which not the Least can be Added nor any thing Detracted from it Nevertheless may there be different Apprehensions concerning God every one that hath a Notion of a Perfect Being not Vnderstanding all that Belongeth to it no more then of a Triangle or of a Sphear ibid. 653 Concluded therefore That the Attributes of God No Confounded Non-sense of Religiously Astonished Minds huddling up together all Imaginable Attributes of Honour Courtship and Complement but the Attributes of Necessary Philosophick Truth and such as do not onely speak the Devotion of mens Hearts but also declare the Reall Nature of the thing Here the Wit of a Modern Atheistick Writer ill placed Though no doubts but some either out of Superstition or Ignorance may Attribute such things to the Deity as are Incongruous to its Nature Thus the Fourth Atheistick Pretence against the Idea of God Confuted Page 653 654 In the next place The Atheists think themselves concerned to give an Account of this Unquestionable Phaenomenon the General Persuasion of the Existence of a God in the Minds of men and their Propensity to Religion whence this should come if there were no Reall Object for it in Nature And this they would doe by Imputing it partly to the Confounded Nonsense of Astonished Minds and partly to the Imposture of Politicians Or else to these Three Things To Mens Fear and to their Ignorance of Causes and to the Fiction of Law-Makers and Civil Sovereigns Page 654 The First of these Atheistick Origins of Religion That Mankind by reason of their Natural Imbecillity are in continual Solicitude and Fear concerning Future Events and their Good and Evil Fortune And this Passion of Fear raises up in them for an Object to it self a most Affrightfull Phantasm of An Invisible Understanding Being Omnipotent c. They afterwards Standing in awe of this their own Imagination and Tremblingly Worshipping the Creature of their own Fear and Phancy Page 654 The Second Atheistick Origin of Theism and Religion That Men having a Naturall Curiosity to Enquire into the Causes of things wheresoever they can discover no Visible and Naturall Causes are prone to Feign Causes Invisible and Supernatural As Anaxagoras said never to have betaken himself to a God but onely when he was at a loss for Necessary Materiall Causes Wherefore no wonder if the Generality of Mankind being Ignorant of the Causes of all or most Things have betaken themselves to a God as to a Refuge and Sanctuary for their Ignorance Page 654 655 These two Accounts of the Phaenomenon of Religion from mens Fear and Solicitude and from their Ignorance of Causes and Curiosity Joyned together by a Modern Writer As if the Deity were but a Mormo or Bugbear raised up by mens Fear in the Darkness of their Ignorance of Causes The Opinion of other Ghosts and Spirits also deduced from the same Originall Mens taking things Casuall for Prognosticks and being so addicted to Omens Portents Prophecies c. From a Phantastick and Timorous Supposition That the things of the World are not disposed of by Nature but by some Understanding Person Page 655 But lest these Two Accounts of the Phaenomenon of Religion should prove Insufficient the Atheists superadde a Third Imputing it also to the Fiction and Imposture of Civill Soveraigns who perceiving an advantage to be made from hence for the better keeping men in Subjection have thereupon Dextrously laid hold of mens Fear and Ignorance and Cherished those Seeds of Religion in them from the Infirmities of their Nature Confirming their Belief of Ghosts and Spirits Miracles Prodigies and Oracles by Tales publickly Allowed and Recommended And that Religion might be every way Obsequious to their Designs have perswaded the People that Themselves were but the Interpreters of the Gods from whom they Received their Laws Religion an Engin of State to keep men busily Employed Entertain their Minds render them Tame and Gentle apt for Subjection and Society Page 655 656 All this not the Invention of Modern Atheists But an Old Atheistick Cabbal That the Gods made by Fear Lucretius That the Causes of Religion Terrour of Mind and Darkness and that the Empire of the Gods owes all its Being to mens Ignorance of Causes as also that the Opinion of Ghosts proceeded from mens not knowing how to distinguish their Dreams other Frightfull Phancies from Sensations Page 656 657 An Old Atheistick Surmize also That Religion a Political Invention Thus Cicero The Atheists in Plato That the Gods are not by Nature but by Art and Laws onely Critias one of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens his Poem to this purpose Page 657 658 That the Folly and Falsness of these Three Atheistick Pretences for the Origin of Religion will be fully Manifested First As to that of Fear and Phancy Such an Excess of Fear as makes any one constantly Believe the Existence of that for which no manner of Ground neither in Sense nor Reason highly tending also to his own Disquiet Nothing less then Distraction Wherefore the generality of mankind here affirmed by Atheists to be Frighted out of their Wits and Disstempered in their brains onely a few of themselves who have escaped this Panick Terrour remaining Sober or in their Right Senses The Sobriety of Atheists nothing but Dull Stupidity and Dead Incredulity they Believing onely what they can See or Feel Page 658 True That there is a Religious Fear Consequent upon the Belief of a God as also that the Sense of a Deity is often awakened in mens Minds by their Fears and Dangers But Religion no Creature of Fear None lesse Solicitous about their Good and Evill Fortune then the Pious and Vertuous who place not their Chief Happiness in things Aliene but onely in the Right Vse of their own Will Whereas the Good of Atheists wholly in things Obnoxious to Fortune The Timorous Complexion of Atheists from building all their Politicks and Justice upon the Foundation of Fear Page 658 659 The Atheists Grand Errour here That the Deity according to the generall Sense of Mankind Nothing but a Terriculum a Formidable Hurtfull and Undesirable thing Whereas men every where agree in that Divine Attribute of Goodness and Benignity ibid. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the worst Sense taken by none but a few Ill-natured Men painting out the Deity according to their own Likeness This condemned by Aristotle in the Poets he calling them therefore Liars by
THE True Intellectual System OF THE UNIVERSE THE FIRST PART WHEREIN All the REASON and PHILOSOPHY OF ATHEISM is Confuted AND Its IMPOSSIBILITY Demonstrated By R. CVDWORTH D. D. Origenes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 LONDON Printed for Richard Royston Bookseller to His most Sacred MAJESTY MDCLXXVIII VICTORY Aristotle 〈◊〉 Pythagoras THEISTS 〈…〉 CONFUSION 〈◊〉 Epicurus Aâ—â—â—â—mandes ATHEISTS 〈…〉 â—â—LIGION 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato L. 10. de leg To the Right Honourable HENEAGE LORD FINCH BARON of Daventry Lord High CHANCELLOVR of England and one of His MAJESTIE's most Honourable Privy Council MY LORD THE many Favours I have formerly Received from You as they might justly challenge whenever I had a fit opportunity a Publick and Thankfull Acknowledgment so have they encourag'd me at this time to the Presumption of this Dedication to Your Lordship Whom as Your Perspicacious Wit and Solid Judgment together with Your Acquired Learning render every way a most Accomplish'd and Desirable Patron so did I persuade my self that Your Hearty Affection to Religion and Zeal for it would make You not Unwilling to take that into Your Protection which is written wholly in the Defence thereof so far forth as its own Defects or Miscarriages should not render it uncapable of the same Nor can I think it probable that in an Age of so much Debauchery Scepticism and Infidelity an Undertaking of this kind should be judged by You Useless or Unseasonable And now having so fit an Opportunity I could most willingly expatiate in the large Field of Your Lordship's Praises both that I might doe an Act of Justice to Your self and provoke others to Your Imitation But I am sensible that as no Eloquence less then that of Your own could be fit for such a Performance so the Nobleness and Generosity of Your Spirit is such that You take much more pleasure in Doing Praise-worthy things then in Hearing the Repeated Echo's of them Wherefore in stead of pursuing Encomiums which would be the least pleasing to Your self I shall Offer up my Prayers to Almighty God for the Continuation of Your Lordship's Life and Health That so His MAJESTY may long have such a Loyal Subject and Wise Counsellour the Church of England such a Worthy Patron the High Court of Chancery such an Oracle of Impartial Justice and the whole Nation such a Pattern of Vertue and Piety Which shall ever be the Hearty Desire of MY LORD YOUR LORDSHIP' 's Most Humble and most Affectionate Servant R. Cudworth THE PREFACE TO THE READER THOVGH I confess I have seldom taken any great pleasure in reading other mens Apologies yet must I at this time make some my self First therefore I acknowledge that when I engag'd the Press I intended onely a Discourse concerning Liberty and Necessity or to speak out more plainly Against the Fatall Necessity of all Actions and Events which upon whatsoever Grounds or Principles maintain'd will as We Conceive Serve The Design of Atheism and Vndermine Christianity and all Religion as taking away all Guilt and Blame Punishments and Rewards and plainly rendring a Day of Judgment Ridiculous And it is Evident that some have pursued it of late in order to that End But afterwards We consider'd That this which is indeed a Controversy concerning The True Intellectual System of the Universe does in the full Extent thereof take in Other things the Necessity of all Actions and Events being maintained by Several Persons upon very Different Grounds according to that Tripartite Fatalism mentioned by us in the beginning of the First Chapter For First The Democritick Fate is nothing but The Material Necessity of all things without a God it supposing Sensless Matter Necessarily Moved to be the onely Original and Principle of all things Which therefore is called by Epicurus The Physiological by us the Atheistick Fate Besides which The Divine Fate is also Bipartite Some Theists supposing God both to Decree and Doe all things in us Evil as well as Good or by his Immediate Influence to Determine all Actions and so make them alike Necessary to us From whence it follows That his Will is no way Regulated or Determined by any Essentiall and Immutable Goodness and Justice or that he hath nothing of Morality in his Nature he being onely Arbitrary Will Omnipotent As also That all Good and Evil Morall to us Creatures are meer Theticall or Positive things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by Law or Command onely and not by Nature This therefore may be called The Divine Fate Immorall and Violent Again There being other Divine Fatalists who acknowledge such a Deity as both suffers other things besides it self to Act and hath an Essentiall Goodness and Justice in its Nature and consequently That there are things Just and Unjust to us Naturally and not by Law and Arbitrary Constitution onely and yet nevertheless take away from men all such Liberty as might make them capable of Praise and Dispraise Rewards and Punishments and Objects of Distributive Justice they conceiving Necessity to be Intrinsecall to the Nature of every thing in the Actings of it and nothing of Contingency to be found any-where from whence it will follow That nothing could possibly have been Otherwise in the whole World then it Is. And this may be called The Divine Fate Morall as the other Immorall and Naturall as the other Violent it being a Concatenation or Implexed Series of Causes all in themselves Necessary depending upon a Deity Morall if we may so speak that is such as is Essentially Good and Naturally Just as the Head thereof the First Contriver and Orderer of all Which kind of Divine Fate hath not onely been formerly asserted by the Stoicks but also of late by divers Modern Writers Wherefore of the Three Fatalisms or False Hypotheses of the Universe mentioned in the beginning of this Book One is Absolute Atheism Another Immorall Theism or Religion without any Naturall Justice and Morality all Just and Unjust according to this Hypothesis being meer Theticall or Factitious things Made by Arbitrary Will and Command onely The Third and Last such a Theism as acknowledges not onely a God or Omnipotent Understanding Being but also Natural Justice and Morality Founded in him and Derived from him nevertheless no Liberty from Necessity anywhere and therefore no Distributive or Retributive Justice in the World Whereas these Three Things are as we conceive the Fundamentals or Essentials of True Religion First That all things in the World do not Float without a Head and Governour but that there is a God an Omnipotent Understanding Being Presiding over all Secondly That this God being Essentially Good and Just there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Something in its own Nature Immutably and Eternally Just and Unjust and not by Arbitrary Will Law and Command onely And Lastly That there is Something 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or That we are so far forth Principles or Masters of our own Actions as to be Accountable to
nor be touched but would run through all things without fastening upon any thing but if Corporeal then the same thing was both Materials and Architect both Timber and Carpenter and the Stones must hew themselves and bring themselves together with discretion into a Structure XX. In the last Place the Atheists argue from Interest which proves many times the most effectual of all Arguments against a Deity endeavouring to perswade that it is First the Interest of Private Persons and of all Man-kind in General and Secondly the Particular Interest of Civil Sovereigns and Commonwealths that there should neither be a God nor the Belief of any such thing entertained by the minds of Men that is no Religion First they say therefore that it is the Interesse of Mankind in General Because so long as men are perswaded that there is an Understanding Being infinitely Powerful having no Law but his own Will because he has no Superiour that may do whatever he pleases at any Time to them they can never Securely enjoy themselves or any thing nor be ever free from disquieting Fear and Solicitude What the Poets Fable of Tantalus in Hell being alwaies in fear of a huge stone hanging over his Head and ready every Moment to tumble down upon him is nothing to that true fear which men have of a Deity and Religion here in this Life which indeed was the very thing mythologized in it Nec miser impendens magnum timet aëre Saxum Tantalus ut fama est cassâ formidine torpens Sed magìs in vita Divûm Metus urget inanis Mortales casúmque timent quemcumque ferat Fors. For besides mens Insecurity from all manner of present Evils upon the Supposition of a God the Immortality of Souls can hardly be kept out but it will crowd in after it and then the fear of Eternal Punishments after Death will unavoidably follow thereupon perpetually embittering all the Solaces of Life and never suffering men to have the least sincere Enjoyment si certam finem esse viderent Aerumnarum homines aliquâ ratione valerent Relligionibus atque minis obsistere Vatum Nunc ratio nulla est restandi nulla facultas Aeternas quoniam Poenas in morte timendum Ignoratur enim quae sit natura Animaï Nata sit an contrà nascentibus insinuetu◠Et simul intereat nobiscum morte dirempta An Tenebras Orci visat vastásque Lacunas Wherefore it is plain that they who first introduced the Belief of a Deity and Religion whatever they might aim at in it deserved very ill of all Mankind because they did thereby infinitely debase and depress mens Spirits under a Servile Fear Efficiunt animos humiles formidine Divûm Depressósque premunt ad Terram As also cause the greatest Griefs and Calamities that now disturb Humane Life Quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi quantáque nobis Volnera quas lachrymas peperere Minoribu ' nostris There can be no comfortable and happy Living without banishing from our Mind the belief of these two things of a Deity and the Souls Immortality Et metus ille foràs praeceps Acheruntis agendus Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo Omnia suffundens Mortis Nigrore neque ullam Esse voluptatem Liquidam Furámque relinquit It was therefore a Noble and Heroical Exploit of Democritus and Epicurus those two good-natured Men who seeing the World thus oppressed under the grievous Yoke of Religion the Fear of a Deity and Punishment after death and taking pity of this sad Condition of Mankind did manfully encounter that affrightful Spectre or Empusa of a Providential Deity and by clear Philosophick Reasons chase it away and banish it quite out of the World laying down such Principles as would salve all the Phaenomena of Nature without a God Quae bene cognita si teneas Natura videtur Libera continuò Dominis privata Superbis Ipsa suâ per se sponte Omnia Dis agere expers So that Lucretius does not without just Cause erect a Triumphal Arch or Monument to Epicurus for this Conquest or Victory of his obtained over the Deity and Religion in this manner Humana ante oculos foedè quum vita jaceret In terris oppressa gravi sub Relligione Quae caput à Coeli regionibus ostendebat Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans Primùm Graius homo mortales tendere contrà Est oculos ausus primúsque obsistere contrà Quem nec fama Deûm nec fulmina nec minitanti Murmure compressit coelum c. XXI That it is also the Interess of Civil Sovereigns and of all Common-wealths that there should neither be Deity nor Religion the Democritick Atheists would perswade in this manner A Body Politick or Common-wealth is made up of parts that are all naturally Dissociated from one another by reason of that Principle of private Self-love who therefore can be no otherwise held together than by Fear Now if there be any greater Fear than the Fear of the Leviathan and Civil Representative the whole Structure and Machin of this great Coloss must needs fall a-pieces and tumble down The Civil Sovereign reigns only in Fear wherefore unlese his Fear be the King and Sovereign of all Fears his Empire and Dominion ceases But as the Rod of Moses devoured the Rods of the Magicians so certainly will the fear of an omnipotent Deity that can punish with eternal Torments after Death quite swallow up and devour that comparatively Petty Fear of Civil Sovereigns and consequently destroy the Being of Commonwealths which have no Foundation in Nature but are mere Artificial Things made by the Enchantment and Magical Art of Policy Wherefore it is well observed by a Modern Writer That men ought not to suffer themselves to be abused by the Doctrine of Separated Essences and Incorporeal Substances such as God and the Soul built upon the vain Philosophy of Aristotle that would fright men from obeying the Laws of their Country with Empty Names as of Hell Damnation Fire and Brimstone as men fright Birds from the Corn with an empty Hat Dublet and a crooked Stick And again If the fear of Spirits the chief of which is the Deity were taken away men would be much more fitted than they are for Civil Obedience Moreover the Power of Civil Sovereigns is perfectly Indivisible 't is either All or Nothing it must be Absolute and Infinite or else 't is none at all now it cannot be so if there be any other Power equal to it to share with it much less if there be any Superiour as that of the Deity to check it and controul it Wherefore the Deity must of Necessity be removed and displaced to make room for the Leviathan to spread himself in Lastly 'T is perfectly inconsistent with the Nature of a Body Politick that there should be any Private Judgment of Good or Evil Lawful or Vnlawful Just or Vnjust allowed but Conscience which Theism and Religion introduces is Private Judgment concerning Good
of Man-Sacrifices against a modern Diatribist 67. That what Faith soever Plato might have in the Delphick Apollo he was no other than an Evil Daemon or Devil An Answer to the Pagans Argument from Divine Providence 68. That the Pagans Religion unsound in its Foundation was Infinitely more Corrupted and Depraved by means of these Four Things First the Superstition of the Ignorant Vulgar 69. Secondly the Licentious Figments of Poets and Fable-Mongers frequently condemned by Plato and other Wiser Pagans 70. Thirdly the Craft of Priests and Politicians 71. Lastly the Imposture of evil Daemons or Devils That by means of these Four Things the Pagan Religion became a most foul and unclean thing And as some were captivated by it under a most grievous Yoke of Superstition so others strongly inclined to Atheism 72. Plato not insensible that the Pagan Religion stood in need of Reformation nevertheless supposing many of those Religious Rites to have been introduced by Visions Dreams and Oracles he concluded that no wise Legislator would of his own head venture to make an Alteration Implying that this was a thing not to be effected otherwise than by Divine Revelation and Miracles The generally received Opinion of the Pagans that no man ought to trouble himself about Religion but content himself to worship God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to the Law of that Country which he lived in 73. Wherefore God Almighty in great compassion to Mankind designed himself to reform the Religion of the Pagan World by introducing another Religion of his own framing in stead of it after he had first made a Praeludium thereunto in one Nation of the Israelites where he expresly prohibited by a Voice out of the Fire in his First Commandment the Pagan Polytheism or the worshipping of other Inferior Deities besides himself and in the Second their Idolatry or the Worshipping of the Supreme God in Images Statues or Symbols Besides which he restrain'd the use of Sacrifices As also successively gave Predictions of a Messiah to come such as together with Miracles might reasonably conciliate Faith to him when he came 74. That afterwards in due time God sent the promised Messiah who was the Eternal Word Hypostatically united with a Pure Humane Soul and Body and so a true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or God-man Designing him for a Living Temple and Visible Statue or Image in which the Deity should be represented and Worshipped as also after his Death and Resurrection when he was to be invested with all Power and Authority for a Prince and King a Mediatour and Intercessour betwixt God and Men. 75. That this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or God-man was so far from intending to require Men-sacrifices of his Worshippers as the Pagan Demons did that he devoted himself to be a Catharma Expiatory Sacrifice for the Sins of the whole World and thereby also abolished all Sacrifices or Oblations by Fire whatsoever according to the Divine Prediction 76. That the Christian Trinity though a Mystery is more agreeable to Reason than the Platonick and that there is no absurdity at all in supposing the Pure Soul and Body of the Messiah to be made a Living Temple or Shechinah Image or Statue of the Deity That this Religion of One God and One Mediatour or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God-man preached to the Pagan World and confirm'd by Miracles did effectually destroy all the Pagan Inferiour Deities Middle Gods and Mediatours Demons and Heroes together with their Statues and Images 77. That it is no way incongruous to suppose that the Divine Majesty in prescribing a Form of Religion to the World should graciously condescend to comply with Humane Infirmity in order to the removing of Two such Grand Evils as Polytheism and Idolatry and the bringing of men to Worship God in Spirit and in Truth 78. That Demons and Angels Heroes and Saints are but different Names for the same things which are made Gods by being worshipped And that the introducing of Angel and Saint-worship together with Image-Worship into Christianity seems to be a defeating of one grand design of God Almighty in it and the Paganizing of that which was intended for the Vnpaganizing of the World 79. Another Key for Christianity in the Scripture not disagreeing with the former That since the way of Wisdom and Knowledge proved Ineffectual as to the Generality of Mankind men might by the contrivance of the Gospel be brought to God and a holy Life without profound Knowledge in the way of Believing 80. That according to the Scripture there is a Higher more Precious and Diviner Light than that of Theory and Speculation 81. That in Christianity all the Great Goodly and most Glorious things of this World are slurried and disgraced comparatively with the Life of Christ. 82. And that there are all possible Engines in it to bring men up to God and engage them in a holy Life 83. Two Errors here to be taken notice of The First of those who make Christianity nothing but an Antinomian Plot against Real Righteousness and as it were a secret Confederacy with the Devil The Second of those who turn that into Matter of mere Notion and Opinion Dispute and Controversie which was designed by God only as a Contrivance Machin or Engine to bring men Effectually to a Holy and Godly Life 84. That Christianity may be yet further illustrated from the consideration of the Adversary or Satanical Power which is in the World This no Mâ—nichean Substantial Evil Principle but a Polity of Lapsed Angels with which the Souls of Wicked men are also Incorporated and may therefore be called The Kingdom of Darkness 85. The History of the Fallen Angels in Scripture briefly explained 86. The concurrent Agreement of the Pagans concerning Evil Demons or Devils and their Activity in the World 87. That there is a perpetual War betwixt Two Polities or Kingdoms in the World the one of Light the other of Darkness and that our Saviour Christ or the Messiah is appointed the Head or Chieftain over the Heavenly Militia or the Forces of the Kingdom of Light 88. That there will be at length a Palpable and Signal Overthrow of the Satanical Power and whole Kingdom of Darkness by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God appearing in an extraordinary and miraculous manner and that this great affair is to be managed by our Saviour Christ as God's Vicegerent and a Visible Judge both of Quick and Dead 89. That our Saviour Christ designed not to set up himself Factiously against God Almighty nor to be accounted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 superiour to God but that when he hath done his Work and put down all Adversary Power himself will then be subject to God even the Father that so God may be all in all 90. Lastly having spoken of Three Forms of Religious the Jewish Christian and the Pagan and there remaining only a Fourth the Mahometan in which the Divine Monarchy is zealously asserted we may now Conclude that the Idea of
these could not be supposed to be Vnmade or Self-existent by those who acknowledged the whole World to have been Generated and had a Beginning But as these Names were used more Properly to signifie Invisible and Vnderstanding Powers Presiding over the Things in Nature and Dispensing of them however they have an appearance of so many several distinct Deities yet they seem to have been all really nothing else but as Balbus in Cicero expresses it Deus Pertinens per Naturam cujusque Rei God passing through and acting in the Nature of every thing and consequently but several Names or so many Different Notions and Considerations of that One Supreme Numen that Divine Force Power and Providence which runs through the whole World as variously Manifesting it self therein Wherefore since there were no other Kinds of Gods amongst the Pagans besides these already enumerated unless their Images Statues and Symbols should be accounted such because they were also sometimes Abusively called Gods which could not be supposed by them to have been Vnmade or without a Beginning they being the Workmanship of mens own hands We conclude universally that all that Multiplicity of Pagan Gods which makes so great a shew and noise was really either nothing but Several Names and Notions of One Supreme Deity according to its different Manifestations Gifts and Effects in the World Personated or else Many Inferiour Vnderstanding Beings Generated or Created by One Supreme so that One Vnmade Self-existent Deity and no more was acknowledged by the more Intelligent of the ancient Pagans for of the Sottish Vulgar no man can pretend to give an account in any Religion and consequently the Pagan Polytheism or Idolatry consisted not in worshipping a Multiplicity of Vnmade Minds Deities and Creators Self-existent from Eternity and Independent upon One Supreme but in Mingling and Blending some way or other unduly Creature-worship with the Worship of the Creator And that the ancient Pagan Theists thus acknowledged One Supreme God who was the only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vnmade or Vnproduced Deity I say Theists because those amongst the Pagans who admitted of Many Gods but none at all Unmade were absolute Atheists this may be undeniably concluded from what was before proved that they acknowledged Omnipotence or Infinite Power to be a Divine Attribute Because upon the Hypothesis of Many Vnmade Self-existent Deities it is plain that there could be none Omnipotent and consequently no such thing as Omnipotence in rerum natura and therefore Omnipotence was rightly and properly styled by Macrobius Summi Dei Omnipotentia it being an Attribute Essentially Peculiar to One Supreme and Sole Self-existent Deity And Simplicius likewise a Pagan confuted the Manichean Hypothesis of Two Self-existent Deities from hence also because it destroyed Omnipotence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For they who assert Two Principles of the Vniverse One Good the other Evil are necessitated to grant that the Good Principle called by them God is not the Cause of all things neither can they praise it as Omnipotent nor ascribe a Perfect and Whole Entire Power to it but only the Half of a Whole Power at most if so much Over and besides all which it hath been also proved already that the ancient Atheists under Paganism directed themselves principally against the Opinion of Monarchy or of One Supreme Deity ruling over all from whence it plainly appears that it was then asserted by the Pagan Theists And we think it here observable that this was a thing so generally confessed and acknowledged that Faustus the Manichean took up this Conceit that both the Christians and Jews Paganized in the Opinion of Monarchy that is derived this Doctrine of One Deity the Sole Principle of all things only by Tradition from the Pagans and by consequence were no other than Schisms or Subdivided Sects of Paganism Vos desciscentes à Gentibus saith he Mâ—narchiae Opinionem primò vobiscum divulsistis id est ut Omnia credatis ex Deo Estis sanè Schisma necnon Priores vestri Judaei De Opinione Monarchiae in nullo-etiam ipsi dissentiunt à Paganis Quare constat Vos atque Judeâ—s Schisma esse Gentililitatis Sectas autem si quaeras non plus erunt quà m Duae Gentium Nostra You revolting from the Gentiles broke off their Opinion of Monarchy and carried it along with you so as to believe all things to come from God Wherefore you are really nothing but a Schism of Paganism or a Subdivided Branch of it and so are your Predecessors the Jews who differ nothing from Pagans neither in this Opinion of Monarchy Whence it is manifest that both Christians and Jews are but Schisms of Gentilism But as for Sects of Religion really differing from another there are but these Two That of the Pagans and That of ours who altogether dissent from them Now though this be false and foolish as to the Christians and Jews deriving that Opinion of Monarchy only by way of Tradition from the Pagans which is a thing founded in the Principles of Nature yet it sufficiently shews this to have been the General Sence of the Pagans that all their Gods were derived from One Sole Self-existent Deity so that they neither acknowledged a Multitude of Unmade Deities nor yet that Duplicity of them which Plutarch contended for One Good and the Other Evil who accordingly denied God to be the Cause of all Things writing thus in his Defect of Oracles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They are guilty of one Extreme who make God the Cause of Nothing and they of another who make him the Cause of all things But this Paradox was both late started amongst the Greeks and quickly cried down by the Succession of their Philosophers and therefore prejudiceth not the Truth of Faustus his General Assertion concerning the Pagans Which is again fully confirmed by St. Austin in his Reply Siquis ità dividat ut dicat eorum quae aliquâ Religione detinentur Aliis placere Vnum Deum colendum Aliis Multos per hanc differentiam Pagani à nobis Remoti sunt Manichaei cum Paganis deputantur nos autem cum Judaeis Hîc fortê dicatis quòd Multos Deos Vestros ex Vna Substantia perhibetis Quasi Pagani Multos suos non ex Vna asserant quamvis diversa illis Officia Opera Potestates illis attribuant sicut etiam apud vos Alius Deus expugnat Gentem Tenebrarum Alius ex eâ captâ fabricat Mundum c. If one should make another Distribution of Religionists into such as Worship either One God or Many Gods according to this Division the Pagans will be removed from us Christians and joyned with You Manicheans But perhaps you will here say that all your Many Gods are derived from One Substance as if the Pagans did not also derive all their Gods from One though attributing several Offices Works and Powers to them in like manner as amongst you One God expugns the Nation
the Pagans did distinguish and put a difference betwixt the One Supreme Vnmade Deity and all their other Inferior Generated Gods Which we are the rather concerned to do because it is notorious that they did many times also confound them together attributing the Government of the Whole World to the Gods promiscuously and without putting any due Discrimination betwixt the Supreme and Inferior the true reason whereof seems to have been this because the supposed the Supreme God not to do all immediatly in the Government of the World but to permit much to his Inferior Ministers One Instance of which we had before in Ovid and innumerable such others might be cited out of their most sober Writers As for Example Cicero in his First Book of Laws Deorum Immortalium vi ratione potestate mente numine Natura omnis regitur The Whole Nature or Vniverse is governed by the Force Reason Power Mind and Divinity of the Immortal Gods And again in his Second Book Deos esse Dominos ac Moderatores omnium rerum eáque quae geruntur eorum geri Judicio atque Numine eosdémque optimè de genere hominum mereri qualis quisque sit quid agat quid in se admittat qua mente qua pietate Religiones colat intueri piorúmque impiorum habere Rationem à Principio Civibus suasum esse debet The Minds of Citizens ought to be first of all embued with a firm perswasion that the Gods are the Lords and Moderators of all things and that the Conduct and Management of the whole World is directed and over-ruled by their Judgement and Divine Power that they deserve the best of mankind that they behold and consider what every man is what he doth and takes upon himself with what Mind Piety and Sincerity he observes the Duties of Religion and Lastly that these Gods have a very different regard to the Pious and the Impious Now such Passages as these abounding every where in Pagan Writings it is no wonder if many considering their Theology but slightly and superficially have been led into an Error and occasioned thereby to conclude the Pagans not to have asserted a Divine Monarchy but to have imputed both the making and Governing of the World to an Aristocracy or Democracy of Co-ordinate Gods not only all Eternal but also Self-existent and Vnmade The contrary whereunto though it be already sufficiently proved yet it will not be amiss for us here in the Close to shew how the Pagans who sometimes jumble and confound the Supreme and Inferior Gods all together do notwithstanding at other times many ways distinguish betwixt the One Supreme God and their other Many Inferior Gods First therefore as the Pagans had Many Proper Names for One and the same Supreme God according to several Particular Considerations of him in respect of his several different Manifestations and Effects in the World which are oftentimes mistaken for so many Distinct Deities some supposing them Independent others Subordinate so had they also besides these other Proper Names of God according to that more full and comprehensive notion of him as the Maker of the Whole World and its Supreme Governour or the Sole Monarch of the Universe For thus the Greeks called him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. the Latins Jupiter and Jovis the Babylonians Belus and Bel the Persians Mithras and Oromasdes the Egyptians and Scythians according to Herodotus Ammoun and Pappaeus And Celsus in Origen concludes it to be a Matter of pure Indifferency to call the Supreme God by any of all these Names either 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Ammoun or Pappaeus or the like 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Celsus thinks it to be a matter of no moment whether we call the Highest and Supreme God Adonai and Sabaoth as the Jews do or Dia and Zena as the Greeks or as the Egyptians Ammoun or as the Scythians Pappaeus Notwithstanding which that Pious and Jealous Father expresseth a great deal of Zeal against Christians then using any of those Pagan Names But we will rather endure any torment saith he than confess Zeus or Jupiter to be God being well assured that the Greeks often really worship under that Name an Evil Demon who is an enemy both to God and Men. And we will rather suffer death than call the Supreme God Ammoun whom the Egyptian Enchanters thus Invoke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And though the Scythians call the Supreme God Pappaeus yet we acknowledging a Supreme God will never be perswaded to call him by that name Which it pleased that Daemon who ruled over the Scythian Desert People and Language to impose Nevertheless he that shall use the Appellative name for God either in the Scythian Egyptian or any other Language which he hath been brought up in will not offend Where Origen plainly affirms the Scythians to have acknowledged One Supreme God called by them Pappaeus and Intimates that the Egyptians did the like calling him Ammoun Neither could it possibly be his intent to deny the same of the Greeks and their Zeus however his great Jealousie made him to call him here a Demon it being true in a certain sence which shall be declared afterward that the Pagans did oftentimes really worship an Evil Demon under those very Names of Zeus and Jupiter as they did likewise under those of Hammon and Pappaeus In the mean time we deny not but that both the Greeks used that word Zeus and the Latins Jupiter sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the Aether Fire or Air some accordingly etymologizing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 others 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whence came those Formes of Speech Sub Jove and Sub Dio. And thus Cicero Jovem Ennius nuncupat ità dicens Aspice hoc sublime candens quem invocant omnes Jovem Hunc etiam Augures nostri cùm dicunt Jove Fulgente Jove Tonante dicunt enim in Coelo Fulgente Tonante c. The reason of which speeches seems to have been this because in ancient times some had supposed the Animated Heaven Ether and Air to be the Supreme Deity We grant moreover that the same words have been sometimes used 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also for an Hero or Deified Man said by some to have been born in Crete by others in Arcadia And Callimachus though he were very angry with the Cretians for affirming Jupiter's Sepulchral Monument to have been with them in Crete as thereby making him Mortal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cretes semper mendaces tuum enim Rex Sepulchrum Extruxerunt Tu verò non es mortuus semper enim es Himself nevertheless as Athenagoras and Origen observe attributed the beginning of death to him when he affirmed him to have been born in Arcadia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because a Terrene Nativity is the Beginning of Death Wherefore this may
terres Which Venus again Aen. 10. bespeaks the same Jupiter after this manner O Pater O Hominum Divûmque Aeterna Potestas Where we have this Annotation of Servius Divûmque Aeterna Potestas propter aliorum Numinum discretionem Jupiter is here called the Eternal Power of the Gods to distinguish him from all the other Gods that were not Eternal but Made or Generated from him Neither ought Horace to be left out in whom we read to the same purpose Lib. 1. Od. 12. Quid prius dicam solitis Parentis Laudibus Qui res Hominum Deorum Qui Mare Terras variisque mundum Temperat horis Vnde nil majus generatur ipso Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum Proximos illi tamen occupavit Pallas honores And again Lib. 3. Od. 4. Qui Terram inertem qui mare Temperat Ventosum Vrbes Regnaque Tristia Divosque Mortalesque turmas Imperio regit VNVS aequo Where from those words of Horace Solitis Parentis Laudibus it appears that the One Supreme Deity the Parent and Maker of all things was then wont to be celebrated by the Pagans as such above all the other Gods And whereas those Pagans vulgarly ascribed the Government of the Seas particularly to Neptune of the Earth and Hades or Inferi which are here called Tristia Regna to Pluto these being here attributed by Horace to One and the same Supreme and Universal Deity it may well be concluded from thence that Jupiter Neptune and Pluto were but Three several Names or Notions of One Supreme Numen whose sovereignty notwithstanding was chiefly signified by Jupiter Which same is to be said of Pallas or Minerva too that signifying the Eternal Wisdom that it was but another name of God also though look'd upon as inferiour to that of Jupiter and next in dignity to it unless we should conclude it to be a Second Divine Hypostasis according to the Doctrine of the Pythagoreans and Platonists probably not unknown to Horace as also to that Scripture Cabbala I was set up from everlasting or ever the Earth was when there were no Depths I was brought forth c. But of this more afterward Lastly we shall conclude with Manilius who lived in the same Augustean age and was a zealous opposer of that Atheistical Hypothesis of Epicurus and Lucretius as appears from these Verses of his Quis credat tantas operum sine Numine Moles Ex Minimis caecoque creatum foedere mundum Wherefore he also plainly asserts One Supreme Deity the Framer and Governour of the whole World in this manner Lib. 2. Namque canam tacitâ Naturam mente potentem Infusumque Deum Coelo Terrisque Fretoque Ingentem aequali moderantem foedere molem Totumque alterno consensu vivere mundum Et rationis agi motu quum SPIRITVS VNVS Per cunctas habitet partes atque irriget Orbem Omnia pervolitans Corpusque Animale figuret c. And again Hoc opus immensi constructum corpore mundi Vis Animae Divina regit Sacroque Meatu Conspirat Deus tacita ratione gubernat And Lib. 4. Faciem Caeli non invidet Orbi Ipse Deus vultusque suos corpusque recludit Semper volvendo seque ipsum inculcat offert Vt bene cognosci possit monstretque videndo Qualis eat doceatque suas attendere Leges Ipse vocat nostros animos ad Sydera Mundus Nec patitur quia non condit sua Jura latere Where notwithstanding we confess that the whole Animated World or rather the Soul thereof is according to the Stoical Doctrine made by Manilius to be the Supreme Numen XX. We now pass from the Poets of the Pagans to their Philosophers A Modern Writer concerning the Religion of the Gentiles affirmeth this to have been the Opinion of very eminent Philosophers That even all the Minor Gods of the Pagans did exist of themselves from Eternity Vnmade they giving many reasons for the same But how far from truth this is will as we conceive appear sufficiently from the Sequel of this Discourse And we cannot conclude otherwise but that this Learned Writer did mistake that Opinion of Aristotle and the latter Platonists concerning the Eternity of the World and Gods as if they had therefore asserted the Self-existence of them the contrary whereunto hath been already manifested Wherefore we shall now make it unquestionably evident by a Particular Enumeration That the Generality of the Pagan Philosophers who were Theists however they acknowledged a Multiplicity of Gods yet asserted One only Self-existent Deity or a Vniversal Numen by whom the World and all those other Gods were Made There being only some few Ditheists to be excepted such as Plutarch and Atticus who out of a certain Softness and Tenderness of Nature that they might free the One Good God from the Imputation of Evils would needs set up besides him an Evil Soul or Daemon also in the World Self-existent to bear all the blame of them And indeed Epicurus is the only Person that we can find amongst the reputed Philosophers who though pretending to acknowledge Gods yet professedly opposed Monarchy and verbally asserted a Multitude of Eternal Unmade Self-existent Deities but such as had nothing at all to do either with the Making or Governing of the World The reason whereof was because he would by no means admit the World to have been made by any Mind or Understanding Wherefore he concluded Naturam Rerum haud Divinâ Mente Coortam That there was no God the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Framer of the World But nevertheless that he might decline the Odium of being accompted an Atheist he pretended to assert a Multitude of Gods Vnmade and Incorruptible such as were unconcerned in the Fabrick of the World Wherein first it is evident that he was not serious and sincere because he really admitting no other Principles of things in his Philosophy besides Atoms and Vacuum agreeably thereunto could acknowledge no other Gods than such as were compounded out of Atoms and therefore Corruptible And thus does Origen declare the Doctrine of Epicurus not indeed as he pretended to hold it but as according to the tenor of his Principles he must have held it had he really asserted any Gods at all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epicurus his Gods being compounded of Atoms anâ—â—â—eâ—efore by their very constitution Corruptible are in continual labour and toyl struggling with their Corruptive Principles Nevertheless if Epicurus had in good earnest asserted such a Commonwealth of Gods as were neither Made out of Atoms nor yet Corruptible so long as he denied the World to have been Made by any Mind or Wisdom as we have already declared he ought not to be reckoned amongst the Theists but Atheists Thales the Milesian was one of the most Ancient Greek Philosophers who that he admitted a Plurality of Gods in some sence is evident from that saying of his cited by Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All things are full of Gods
have but a small Part in your Body of that vast Quantity of Earth which is without you and but a little of that Water and Fire and so of every other thing that your Body is compounded of in respect of that great Mass and Magazine of them which is in the World Is Mind and Vnderstanding therefore the only thing which you fancy you have some way or other luckily got and snatch'd unto your self whilest there is no such thing any where in the world without you all those infinite things thereof being thus orderly disposed by Chance And when Aristodemus afterward objected that he could not see any Artificer that made the World as he could those Artificers which made all other humane things Socrates thus replies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Neither do you see your own Soul which rules over your Body so that you might for the same reason conclude your self to do nothing by Mind and Vnderstanding neither but all by Chance as well as that all things in the World are done by Chance Again when he further disputed in this manner against the necessity of Worshipping the Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I despise not the Deity O Socrates but think him to be a more magnificent Being than that he should stand in need of my worship of him Socrates again answers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How much the more Magnificent and Illustrious that Being is which takes care of you so much the more in all reason ought it to be Honoured by you Lastly Aristodemus discovering his disbelief of Providence as a thing which seemed to him Incredible if not Impossible that one and the same Deity should be able to mind all things at once Socrates endeavours to cure this disbelief of his in this manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Consider Friend I pray you if that Mind which is in your Body does order and dispose it every way as it pleases why should not that Wisdom which is in the Vniverse be able to order all things therein also as seemeth best to it and if your Eye can discern things several miles distant from it why should it be thought impossible for the Eye of God to behold all things at once Lastly if your Soul can mind things both here and in Egypt and in Sicily why may not the Great Mind or Wisdom of God be able to take care of all things in all places And then he concludes that if Aristodemus would diligently apply himself to the worship of God he should at length be convinced 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That God is such and so great a Being as that he can at once see all things and hear all things and be present every where and take care of all affairs Moreover Socrates in his discourse with Euthydemus in Xenophon's Fourth Book speaks thus concerning that invisible Deity which governs the whole world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The other Gods giving us good things do it without visibly appearing to us and that God who Framed and Containeth the whole world in which are all good and excellent things and who continually supplieth us with them He though he be seen to do the Greatest things of all yet notwithstanding is himself Invisible and Vnseen Which ought the less to be wondred at by us because the Sun who seemeth manifest to all yet will not suffer himself to be exactly and distinctly viewed but if any one boldly and impudently gaze upon him will deprive him of his sight As also because the Soul of Man which most of all things in him partaketh of the Deity though it be that which manifestly rules and reigns in us yet is it never seen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which Particulars he that considers ought not to despise Invisible Things but to honour the Supreme Deity taking notice of his Power from his Effects Where we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as also before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 plainly put for the Supreme Deity And we did the rather set down these passages of Socrates here concerning God and Providence that we might shame those who in these latter days of ours are so Atheistically inclined if at least they have any Pudor or Shame left in them But notwithstanding Socrates his thus clear acknowledging One Supreme and Vniversal Numen it doth not therefore follow that he rejected all those other Inferiour Gods of the Pagans as is commonly conceived But the contrary thereunto appeareth from these very passages of his now cited wherein there is mention made of other Gods besides the Supreme And how conformable Socrates was to the Pagan Religion and Worship may appear from those Last Dying words of his when he should be most serious after he had drunk the poison wherein he required his friends to offer a Votive Cock for him to Aesculapius For which Origen thus perstringeth him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And they who had Philosophized so excellently concerning the Soul and discoursed concerning the happiness of the future state to those who live well do afterward sink down from these Great High and Noble things to a superstitious regard of Little Small and Trifling Matters such as the Paying of a Cock to Aesculapius Where notwithstanding Origen doth not charge Socrates with such gross and downright Idolatry as he doth elsewhere for his sacrificing to the Pythian Apollo who was but an Inferiour Demon. And perhaps some may excuse Socrates here as thinking that he look'd upon Aesculapius no otherwise than as the Supreme Deity called by that Name as exercising his Providence over the Sickness and Health or Recovery of Men and that therefore he would have an Eucharistick Sacrifice offered to him in his behalf as having now cured him at once of all diseases by Death However Plato informs us that Socrates immediately before he drunk his Poyson did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pray not to God but to the Gods that is to the Supreme and Inferiour Gods both together as in Plato's Phaedrus he did to Pan and the other Tutelar Gods of that place that his Translation from hence into the other world might be happy to him And Xenophon in his Memoirs informs us that Socrates did both in his Words and Practice approve of that Doctrine of the Pythian Apollo That the Rule of Piety and Religion ought to be the Law of every Particular City and Country he affirming it to be a Vanity for any man to be singular herein Lastly in his own Apology as written by Plato he professes to acknowledge the Sun Moon and Stars for Gods condemning the contrary Doctrine of Anaxagoras as Irrational and Absurd Wherefore we may well conclude this Opinion of Socrates his being Condemned for denying the Many Gods of the Pagans or of his being a Martyr for One only God to be nothing but a Vulgar Errour But if you therefore demand what that accusation of Impiety really was which he was charged with Socrates himself in Plato's Euthyphro will inform you that it
And accordingly Theophrastus Aristotle's Scholar and Successor describeth God after this manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That First and Divinest Being of all which willeth all the Best things Whether of these Two Hypotheses concerning God One of the ancient Pagan Philosophers that God is as essentially Goodness as Wisdom or as Plotinus after Plato calls him Decency and Fitness it self the Other of some late Professors of Christianity that he is nothing but Arbitrary Will Omnipotent and Omniscient I say whether of these Two is more agreeable to Piety and True Christianity we shall leave it to be considered Lastly it is not without Probability that Aristotle did besides the Frame of Nature and Fabrick of the World impute even the very Substance of Things themselves also to the Divine Efficiency nor indeed can there well be any doubt of any thing save only the Matter partly from his affirming God to be a Cause and Principle to all things and partly from his Commending this Doctrine of Anaxagoras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Mind was together with Well and Fit the Cause and Principle of Things themselves However that Aristotle's Inferiour Gods at least and therefore his Intelligences of the Lesser Spheres which were Incorporeal Substances were all of them Produced or Created by One Supreme may be further confirmed from this Definition of his in his Rhetorick 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divinity is nothing but either God or the Work of God Where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is unquestionably used in way of Eminency for the Supreme Deity as in those other places of Aristotle's before cited to which sundry more might be added as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God possesseth all Good things and is Self-sufficient and again where he speaks of things that are more than praise-worthy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such are God and Good for to these are all other things referred But here Aristotle affirming that there is nothing Divine but either God himself or the Work and Effect of God plainly implies that there was no Multitude of Self-existent Deities and that those Intelligences of the Lesser Stars or Spheres however Eternal were themselves also Produced or Caused by One Supreme Deity Furthermore Aristotle declares that this Speculation concerning the Deity does constitute a Particular Science by it self distinct from those other Speculative Sciences of Physiology and the Pure Mathematicks so that there are in all Three Speculative Sciences distinguished by their several Objects Physiology the Pure Mathematicks and Theology or Metaphysicks The Former of these that is Physiology being conversant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 about Things both Inseparable from Matter and Movable the Second viz. Geometry or the Pure Mathematicks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 About things Immovable indeed but not really separable from Matter so as to exist alone by themselves but the Third and Last 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concerning things both Immovable and Separable from Matter that is Inorporeal Substances Immovable This Philosopher there adding 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That if there were no other Substance besides these Natural things which are Material and Movable then would Physiology be the First Science but if there be any Immovable Substance the Philosophy thereof must needs in order of Nature be before the other Lastly he concludes that as the Speculative Sciences in General are more Noble and Excellent than the other so is Theology or Metaphysicks the most Honourable of all the Speculatives Now the chief Points of the Aristotelick Theology or Metaphysical Doctrine concerning God seem to be these Four following First That though all things be not Ingenit or Vnmade according to that in his Book against Xenophanes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is no necessity that all things should be Vnmade for what hinders but that some things may be Generated from other things Yet there must needs be something Eternal and Vnmade as likewise Incorruptible because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If all Substances were Corruptible then All might come to nothing Which Eternal Vnmade or Self-existent and Incorruptible Substance according to Aristotle is not Sensless Matter but a Perfect Mind Secondly that God is also an Incorporeal Substance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Separate from Sensibles and not only so but according to Aristotle's Judgment likewise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Indivisible and Devoid of Parts and Magnitude Nor can it be denied but that besides Aristotle the Generality of those other Ancients who asserted Incorporeal Substance did suppose it likewise to be Vnextended they dividing Substances as we learn from Philo into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Distant and Indistant or Extended and Vnextended Substances Which Doctrine whether True or no is not here to be discussed Thirdly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That in God Intellect is really the same thing with the Intelligibles Because the Divine Mind being at least in order of Nature Seniour to All things and Architectonical of the World could not look abroad for its Objects or find them any where without it self and therefore must needs contain them all within it self Whch Determination of Aristotle's is no less agreeable to Theism than to Platonism whereas on the contrary the Atheists who assert Mind and Vnderstanding as such to be in order of Nature Juniour to Matter and the World do therefore agreeably to their own Hypothesis suppose all Intellection to be by way of Passion from Corporeal things without and no Mind or Intellect to contain its Intelligibles or Immediate Objects within it self Lastly That God being an Immovable Substance his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 His Essence and Act or Operation the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There must therefore needs be some such Principle as this whose Essence is Act or Energy From which Theorem Aristotle indeed endeavours to establish the Eternity of the World that it was not made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from Night and a Confused Chaos of things and from Nothing that is from an Antecedent Non-existence brought forth into being Because God who is an Immovable Nature and whose Essence is Act or Energy cannot be supposed to have rested or Slept from Eternity doing nothing at all and then after Infinite Ages to have begun to move the Matter or make the World Which Argumentation of Aristotle's perhaps would not be Inconsiderable were the World Motion and Time capable of Existing from Eternity or without Beginning Of which more elsewhere However from hence it is undeniably evident that Aristotle though asserting the Worlds Eternity nevertheless derived the same from God because he would prove this Eternity of the World from the Essential Energy and Immutability of the Deity We shall now conclude all concerning Aristotle with this short Summary which himself gives us of his own Creed and Religion agreeably to the Tradition of his Pagans Ancestors 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It hath been
omne convenit Ex quo nata sunt omnia Cujus Spiritu vivimus Totum suis partibus inditum se sustinentem sua vi Cujus Consilio huic mundo providetur ut inconcussus eat actus suos explicet Cujus Decreto omnia fiunt Divinum Spiritum per omnia maxima minima aequali intentione diffusum Deum potentem omnium Deum illum maximum potentissimumque qui ipse vehit omnia Qui ubique omnibus praesto est Coeli Deorum omnium Deum a quo ista Numina quae singula adoramus colimus suspensa sunt and the like The Framer and Former of the Vniverse the Governour Disposer and keeper thereof Him upon whom all things depend The Mind and Spirit of the World The Artificer and Lord of this whole Mundane Fabrick To whom every name belongeth From whom all things spring By whose Spirit we live Who is in all his parts and susteineth himself by his own force By whose Counsel the World is provided for and carried on in its Course constantly and uninterruptedly By whose Decree all things are done The Divine Spirit that is diffused through all things both great and small with equal intention The God whose power extends to all things The Greatest and most Powerful God who doth himself support and uphold all things Who is present every where to all things The God of Heaven and of all the Gods upon whom are suspended all those other Divine Powers which we singly worship and adore Moreover we may here observe from St. Austin that this Seneca in a Book of his against Superstitions that is now lost did not only Highly extol the Natural Theology but also plainly censure and condemn the Civil Theology then received amongst the Romans and that with more Freedom and Vehemency than Varro had done the Fabulous or Theatrical and Poetical Theology Concerning a great part whereof he pronounced that a wise man would observe such things tanquam Legibus jussa non tanquam Diis grata only as commanded by the Laws he therein exercising Civil Obedience but not at all as Grateful to the Gods M. Fabius Quintilianus though no admirer of Seneca yet fully agreed with him in the same Natural Theology and sets down this as the generally received Notion or Definition of God Deum esse Spiritum omnibus partibus immistum That God is a Spirit mingled with and diffused through all the part◠of the World he from thence inferring Epicurus to be an Atheist notwithstanding that he verbally asserted Gods because he denyed a God according to this Generally received Notion he bestowing upon his Gods a circumscribed humane form and placing them between the Worlds And the Junior Pliny though he were a Persecutor of the Christians he concluding qualecunque esset quod faterentur pervicaciam certè inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri that whatsoever their Religion were yet notwithstanding their Stubbornness and Inflexible Obstinacy ought to be punished and who compelled many of them to worship the Images of the Emperour and to sacrifice and pray to the Statues of the Pagan Gods and lastly to blaspheme Christ yet himself plainly acknowledged also One Supreme Universal Numen as may sufficiently appear from his Panegyrick Oration to Trajan where he is called Deus ille qui manifestus ac praesens Coelum ac Sydera insidet that God who is present with and inhabits the whole Heaven and Stars himself making a Solemn Prayer and Supplication to him both in the beginning and close thereof and sometimes speaking of him therein Singularly and in way of Eminency as in these words Occultat utrorumque Semina Deus plerumque Bonorum Malorumque Causae sub diversâ specie latent God hideth the Seeds of good and evil so that the causes of each often appear disguised to men L. Apuleius also whose pretended Miracles the Pagans endeavoured to confirm their Religion by as well as they did by those of Apollonius doth in sundry places of his writings plainly assert One Supreme and Vniversal Numen we shall only here set down one Cum Summus Deorum cuncta haec non solùm cogitationum ratione consideret sed Prima Media Vltima obeat compertaque intimae Providentiae ordinationis universitate Constantia regat Since the Highest of the Gods does not only consider all these things in his mind and Cogitation but also pass through and comprehend within himself the Beginning Middle and End of all things and constantly Govern all by his occult Providence Lastly Symmachus who was a zealous Stickler for the Restitution of Paganism declared the Pagans to worship One and the same God with the Christians but in several ways he conceiving that there was no necessity God should be worshipped by all after the same manner Aequum est quicquid omnes colunt VNVM putari Eadem spectamus Astra Commune Coelum est Idem nos Mundus involvit Quid interest qua quisque prudentia Verum requirat Vno Itinere non potest perveniri ad tam grande Secretum We ought in reason to think that it is One and the same Thing which all men worship As we all behold the same Stars have the same Common Heaven and are involved within the same World Why may not men pursue One and the same thing in different ways One Path is not enough to lead men to so Grand a Secret The Sence whereof is thus elegantly expressed by Prudentius Vno omnes sub sole siti vegetamur eodem Aere Communis cunctis viventibus Aura Sed quid sit qualisque Deus diversa secuti Quaerimus atque Viis longè distantibus Unum Imus ad Occultum suus est mos cuique genti Per quod iter properans eat ad tam Grande Profundum And again afterward Secretum sed grande nequit Rationis opertae Quaeri aliter quà m si sparsis via multiplicetur Tramitibus centenos terat orbita calles Quaesitura Deum variata indage latentem And the beginning of Prudentius his Confutation is this Longè aliud verum est Nam multa ambago viarum Anfractus dubios habet perplexius errat Sola errore caret simplex via nescia flecti In diverticulum biviis nec pluribus anceps c. We shall now instance also in some of the Latter Greek Writers Though the Author of the Book De Mundo were not Aristotle yet that he was a Pagan plainly appears from some passages thereof as where he approves of Sacrificing to the Gods and of Worshipping Heroes and Dead men as also because Apuleius would not otherwise have translated so much of that book and incorporated it into his De Mundo He therefore does not only commend this of Heraclitus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That there is one Harmonious System made out of all things and that All things are derived from One But doth himself also write excellently concerning the Supreme God whom he
calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Cause which Containeth all things and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Best and Most excellent part of the World he beginning after this manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is an ancient Opinion or Tradition that hath been conveyed down to all men from their Progenitors that all things are from God and consist by him and that no Nature is sufficient to preserve it self if left alone and devoid of the Divine assistance and influence Where we may observe that the Apuleian Latin Version altering the sence renders the words thus Vetus opinio est atque in cogitationes omnium hominum penitus incidit Deum esse Originis non habere auctorem Deumque esse salutem perseverantiam Earum quas essecerit rerum So that whereas in the Original Greek This is said to be the general Opinion of all mankind That all things are from God and subsist by him and that nothing at all can conserve it self in being without him Apuleius correcting the words makes the general sence of mankind to run no higher than this That there is a God who hath no author of his original and who is the safety and preservation of all those things that were made by himself From whence it may be probably concluded that Apuleius who is said to have been of Plutarch's Progeny was infected also with those Paradoxical Opinions of Plutarch's and consequently did suppose All things not to have been made by God nor to have depended on him as the Writer De Mundo affirmeth but that there was something besides God as namely the Matter and an Evil Principle Uâ—created and Self-existent Afterwards the same Writer De Mundo elegantly illustrates by Similitudes how God by One Simple Motion and Energy of his own without any labour or toil doth produce and govern all the Variety of Motions in the Universe and how he doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 contein the Harmony and Safety of the Whole And lastly he concludes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That what a Pilot is to a ship a Charioteer to a Chariot the Coryphaeus to a Quire Law to a City and a General to an Army the same is God to the World There being only this difference that whereas the Government of some of them is toilsom and sollicitous the Divine Government and Steerage of the World is most easie and facil for as this Writer adds God being himself Immovable Moveth all things in the same manner as Law in it self Immovable by Moving the minds of the Citizens orders and disposes all things Plutarchus Chaeronensis as hath been already declared was Unluckily engaged in Two False Opinions The First of Matters being Ingenit or Vncreated upon this Pretence Because Nothing could be made out of Nothing the Second of a Positive Substantial Evil Principle or an Irrational Soul and Demon Self-existent upon this Ground because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is no greater Absurdity imaginable than that Evil should proceed from the Providence of God as a Bad Epigramm from the will of the Poet. In which respect he was before called by us a Ditheist Plutarch was also a Worshipper of the Many Pagan Gods himself being a Priest of the Pythian Apollo Notwithstanding which he unquestionably asserted One Sole Principle of All Good the Cause of all things Evil and Matter only excepted the Framer of the Whole World and Maker of all the Gods in it who is therefore often called by him God in way of Eminency as when he affirmeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that God doth always act the Geometrician that is do all things in Measure and Proportion and again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That all things are made by God according to Harmony and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is called a Harmonist and Musician And he hath these Epithets given him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Great God and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Highest or Vppermost God and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The First God and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Vnmade Self-existent God all the other Pagan Gods according to him having been made in Time together with the World He is likewise stiled by Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Sea of Pulchritude and his Standing and Permanent Duration without any Flux of Time is excellently descibed by the same Writer in his Book concerning the Delphick Inscription Lastly Plutarch affirmeth that men generally pray to this Supreme God for whatsoever is not in their own power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dio Chrysostomus a Sophist Plutarch's Equal though an acknowledger of Many Gods yet nevertheless asserteth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the whole World is under a Kingly Power or Monarchy he calling the Supreme God sometime 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the common King of Gods and Men their Governour and Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the God that rules over all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The First and Greatest God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The chief President over all things who orders and guides the whole Heaven and World as a wise Pilot doth a Ship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Ruler of the whole Heaven and Lord of the Whole Essence and the like And he affirming that there is a Natural Prolepsis in the Minds of men concerning him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concerning the nature of the Gods in general but especially of that Supreme Ruler over all there is an opinion in all humane kind as well Barbarians as Greeks that is naturally implanted in them as rational Beings and not derived from any mortal Teacher The meaning whereof is this that men are naturally possessed with a Perswasion that there is One God the Supreme Governour of the whole World and that there are also below him but above men Many other Intellectual Beings which these Pagans called Gods That Galen was no Atheist and what his Religion was may plainly appear from this one passage out of his third Book De Vsu Partium to omit many others 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Should I any longer insist upon such Brutish Persons as those the wise and sober might justly condemn me as defiling this Holy Oration which I compose as a True Hymn to the praise of him that made us I conceiving true Piety and Religion towards God to consist in this not that I should sacrifice many Hecatombs or burn much Incense to him but that I should my self first acknowledge and then declare to others how great his Wisdom is how great his Power and how great his Goodness For that he would adorn the whole world after this manner envying to nothing that good which it was capable of I conclude to be a demonstration of most absolute Goodness and thus let him be praised by us as Good And that he was able to find out how all things might be adorned after the best manner is a Sign of the
maintain it in that forementioned Book De Iside so was it further cleared and made out as Damascius informs us by Two Famous Egyptian Philosophers Asclepiades and Heraiscus in certain writings of theirs that have been since lost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Though Eudemus hath given us no certain account of the Egyptians yet the Egyptian Philosophers of latter times have declared the hidden truth of their Theology having found in some Egyptian Monuments that according to them there is one Principle of all things celebrated under the name of the Vnknown Darkness and this thrice repeated c. Moreover this is to be observed concerning these Egyptians that they are wont to divide and multiply things that are One and the Same And accordingly have they divided and multiplied the First intelligible or the One Supreme Deity into the Properties of Many Gods as any one may find that pleases to consult their writings I mean that of Heraiscus entitled the Vniversal Doctrine of the Egyptians and inscribed to Proclus the Philosopher and that Symphony or Harmony of the Egyptians with other Theologers begun to be written by Asclepiades and left imperfect Of which Work of Asclepiades the Egyptian Suidas also maketh mention upon the Word Heraiscus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But Asclepiades having been more conversant with ancient Egyptian writings was more throughly instructed and exactly skilled in his Country Theology he having searched into the Principles thereof and all the consequences resulting from them as manifestly appeareth from those Hymns which he composed in praise of the Egyptian Gods and from that Tractate begun to be written by him but left unfinished which containeth The Symphony of all Theologies Now we say that Asclepiades his Symphony of all the Pagan Theologies and therefore of the Egyptian with the rest was their agreement in those Two Fundamentals expressed by Plutarch namely the worshipping of One Supreme and Vniversal Numen Reason and Providence governing all things and then of his Subservient Ministers the Instruments of Providence appointed by him over all the parts of the world Which being honoured under several Names and with different Rites and Ceremonies according to the Laws of the respective Countreys caused all that Diversity of Religions that was amongst them Both which Fundamental Points of the Pagan Theology were in like manner acknowledged by Symmachu's The First of them being thus expressed Aequum est quicquid omnes colunt Vnum putari That all Religions agreed in this the Worshipping of One and the same Supreme Numen and the Second thus Varios Custodes Vrbibus Mens Divina distribuit That the Divine Mind appointed divers Guardian and Tutelar Spirits under him unto Cities and Countries He there adding also that Suus cuique Mos est suum cuique Jus That every Nation had their peculiar Modes and Manners in worshipping of these and that these external differences in Religion ought not to be stood upon but every one to observe the Religion of his own Country Or else these Two Fundamental Points of the Pagan Theology may be thus expressed First that there is One Self-Originated Deity who was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Maker of the whole World Secondly That there are besides him Other Gods also to be Religiously worshipped that is Intellectual Beings superiour to men which were notwithstanding all Made or Created by that One Stobaeus thus declaring their sence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the multitude of Gods is the work of the Demiurgus made by him together with the world XXIX And that the Pagan Theologers did thus generally acknowledge One Supreme and Vniversal Numen appears plainly from hence because they supposed the whole World to be an Animal Thus the Writer de Placitis Philos. and out of him Stobaeus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All others assert the World to be an Animal and governed by Providence only Leucippus Democritus and Epicurus and those who make Atoms and Vacuum the Principles of all things dissenting who neither acknowledge the World to be Animated nor yet to be governed by Providence but by an Irrational Nature Where by the way we may observe the Fraud and Juggling of Gassendus who takes occasion from hence highly to extol and applaud Epicurus as one who approached nearer to Christianity than all the other Philosophers in that he denied the World to be an Animal whereas according to the Language and Notions of those times to deny the Worlds Animation and to be an Atheist or to deny a God was one and the same thing because all the Pagans who then asserted Providence held the World also to be Animated neither did Epicurus deny the World's Animation upon any other account than this because he denied Providence And the Ground upon which this opinion of the Worlds Animation was built was such as might be obvious even to vulgar undererstandings and it is thus expressed by Plotinus according to the sence of the Ancients 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is absurd to affirm that the Heaven or World is Inanimate or devoid of Life and Soul when we our selves who have but a part of the Mundane Body in us are endued with Soul For how could a Part have Life and Soul in it the Whole being Dead and inanimate Now if the whole world be One Animal then must it needs be Governed by One Soul and not by Many Which One Soul of the World and the whole Mundane Animal was by some of the Pagan Theologers as namely the Stoicks taken to be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The First and Highest God of all Nevertheless others of the Pagan Theologers though asserting the World's Animation likewise yet would by no means allow the Mundane Soul to be the Supreme Deity they conceiving the First and Highest God to be an Abstract and Immovable Mind and not a Soul Thus the Panegyrist cited also by Gyraldus invokes the Supreme Deity doubtfully and cautiously as not knowing well what to call him whether Soul or Mind Te Summe rerum Sator cujus tot nomina sunt quot gentium linguas esse voluisti quem enim te ipse dici velis scire non possumus sive in te quaedam vis Mensque Divina est quae toto infusa mundo omnibus miscearis elementis sine ullo extrinsecus accedente vigoris impulsu per te ipse movearis sive aliqua supra omne Coelum potestas es quae hoc opus totum ex altiore Naturae arce despicias Te inquam oramus c. Thou Supreme Original of all things who hast as many Names as thou hast pleased there should be languages whether thou beest a certain Divine Force and Soul that infused into the whole world art mingled with all the Elements and without any External impulse moved from thy self or whether thou beest a Power Elevated above the Heavens which lookest down upon the whole work of Nature as from a higher Tower Thee
Pagans but what had Life Sense and Understanding Wherefore those Personated Gods that were nothing but the Natures of Things Deified as such were but Dii Commentitii Fictitii Counterfeit and Fictitious Gods or as Origen calls them in that place before cited 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Figments of the Greeks and other Pagans that were but Things turned into Person and Deified Neither can there be any other sence made of these Personated and Deified Things of Nature than this that they were all of them really so many Several Names of One Supreme God or Partial Considerations of him according to the Several Manifestations of himself in his Works Thus according to the old Egyptian Theology before declared God is said to have both No Name and Every Name or as it is expressed in the Asclepian Dialogue Cum non possit Vno quamvis è Multis composito Nomine nuncupari potius Omni Nomine vocandus est siquidem sit Vnus Omnia ut necesse sit aut Omnia Ipsius Nomine aut Ipsum Omnium Nomine nuncupari Since he cannot be fully declared by any one Name though compounded of never so many therefore is he rather to be called by Every Name he being both One and All Things so that either Every Thing must be called by His Name or He by the Name of Every thing With which Egyptian Doctrine Seneca seemeth also fully to agree when he gives this Description of God Cui Nomen Omne convenit He to whom every Name belongeth and when he further declares thus concerning him Quaecunque voles illi Nomina aptabis and Tot Appellationes ejus possunt esse quot Munera You may give him whatsoever Names you please c. and There may be as many Names of him as there are Gifts and Effects of his and lastly when he makes God and Nature to be really One and the same Thing and Every thing we see to be God And the Writer De Mundo is likewise consonant hereunto when he affirmeth that God is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or may be denominated from Every Nature because he is the Cause of all things We say therefore that the Pagans in this their Theologizing of Physiology and Deifying the Things of Nature and Parts of the World did accordingly Call Every Thing by the Name of God or God by the Name of Every Thing Wherefore these Personated and Deified Things of Nature were not themselves Properly and Directly worshipped by the Intelligent Pagans who acknowledged no Inanimate thing for a God so as to terminate their worship ultimately in them but either Relatively only to the Supreme God or else at most in way of Complication with him whose Effects and Images they are so that they were not so much themselves worshipped as God was worshipped in them For these Pagans professed that they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 look upon the Heaven and World not slightly and superficially nor as meer Bruit Animals who take notice of nothing but those sensible Phantasms which from the objects obtrude themselves upon them or else as the same Julian in that Oration again more fully expresseth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Not view and contemplate the Heaven and World with the same eyes that Oxen and Horses do but so as from that which is Visible to their outward senses to discern and discover another Invisible Nature under it That is they professed to behold all things with Religious Eyes and to see God in Every Thing not only as Pervading all things and Diffused thorough all things but also as Being in a manner All things Wherefore they looked upon the whole World as a Sacred Thing and as having a kind of Divinity in it it being according to their Theology nothing but God himself Visibly Displayed And thus was God worshipped by the Pagans in the whole Corporeal World taken all at once together or in the Universe under the Name of Pan. As they also commonly conceived of Zeus and Jupiter after the same manner that is not Abstractly only as we now use to conceive of God but Concretely together with all that which Proceedeth and Emaneth from him that is the Whole World And as God was thus described in that old Egyptian Monument to be All that Was Is and Shall be so was it before observed out of Plutarch that the Egyptians took the First God and the Vniverse for One and the same Thing not only because they supposed the Supreme God Vertually to contain all things within himself but also because they were wont to conceive of him together with his Outflowing and all the extent of Fecundity the whole World displayed from him all at once as one entire thing Thus likewise do the Pagans in Plato confound 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Greatest God and The Whole World together as being but one and the same thing And this Notion was so Familiar with these Pagans that Strabo himself writing of Moses could not conceive of his God and of the God of the Jews any otherwise than thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 namely That which containeth us all and the Earth and the Sea which we call the Heaven and World and the Nature of the Whole By which notwithstanding Strabo did not mean the Heaven or World Inanimate and a Sensless Nature but an Understanding Being framing the whole World and containing the same which was conceived together with it of which therefore he tells us that according to Moses no wise man would go about to make any Image or Picture resembling any thing here amongst us From whence we conclude that when the same Strabo writing of the Persians affirmeth of them that they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 take the Heaven for Jupiter and also Herodotus before him that they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Call the Whole Circle of the Heaven Jupiter that is the Supreme God the meaning of neither of them was that the Body of the Heaven Inanimate was to them the Highest God but that though he were an Understanding Nature yet framing the whole Heaven or World and containing the same he was at once conceived together with it Moreover God was worshipped also by the Pagans in the Several Parts of the wrorld under Several Names as for example in the Higher and Lower Aether under those Names of Minerva and Jupiter in the Air under the name of Juno in the Fire under the name of Vulcan in the Sea under the name of Neptune c. Neither can it be reasonably doubted but that when the Roman Sea-Captains Sacrificed to the Waves they intended therein to worship that God who acteth in the Waves and whose Wonders are in the Deep But besides this the Pagans seemed to apprehend a kind of necessity of worshipping God thus in his works and in the Visible things of this World because the generality of the Vulgar were then unable to frame any notion or conception at all
Being which is the proper Notion of a Creature So that the Animated World is by Plato made to be only the chief of all the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is the Creature-Gods Wherefore it is plain that in this Trinity of some Platonists and Pythagoreans wherein the World is made to be the Third God there is a confused Jumble of Created and Vncreated Beings together For the First of those Gods is the Father and Fountain of all or the Original of the Godhead And the Second forasmuch as he is called by them both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Maker and the Opificer of the whole World he therefore can be no Creature neither whereas the Third which is said to be the World was by Numenius himself also expresly called both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Work or Thing Made that is plainly the Creature of both the Former Proclus thus fully represents his sence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Numenius called the First of the Three Gods the Father the Second of them the Maker and the Third the the Work or Thing Made so that according to Numenius there were two Opificers or Creators of the World the First and the Second God and the World it self that is the Thing Made and Created by them both is said to be the Third God And that this Notion of the Trinity is an Adulterated One may be also further concluded from hence because according to this Hypothesis they might have said that there were Three Hundred and more Gods as well as that there are Three since all the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Generated Gods might have come into the Number too as well as the World they being Parts thereof and Gods that differ not in kind from it but only in degree Wherefore these Philosophers ought not to have made a Trinity of Gods distinguished from all the rest but rather First to have distributed their Gods into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Eternal or Vncreated and Created Gods and then to have subdivided those Created Gods into the Whole World and the Parts thereof Animated But because it may be here alledged in favour of this Spurious Hypothesis of the Trinity That the World was accounted the Third God only by Accident in respect of its Soul which is properly that Third God though Numenius with others plainly affirm the World it self as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Work and Thing Made to be the Third we shall therefore reply to this that even the Soul of the Mundane Animal it self according to Timaeus and Plato and others is affirmed to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Generated God that is such as was produced from Non-existence into Being and therefore truly and properly a Creature Which Aristotle observing therefore took occasion to taxe Plato as contradicting himself in making the Soul of the World a Principle that is the Third God and yet supposing it to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not Eternal but Made or Created together with the Heaven of which something before Wherefore we conclude that this ancient Cabala of the Trinity was Depraved and Adulterated by those Platonists and Pythagoreans who made either the World it self or else 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Informing Soul of the World to be the Third Hypostasis thereof they Mingling Created and Vncreated Beings together in that which themselves notwithstanding call a Trinity of Causes and of Principles And we think it highly probable that this was the true Reason why Philo though he admitted the Second Hypostasis of the Platonick and Phythagorick if not Egyptian Trinity called by him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Word and styled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Second God and as Eusebius adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Second Cause yet he would not Platonize or Pythagorize any further so as to take in that Third God or Cause supposed by so many of them to be the Soul of the whole World as an Animal because he must then have offer'd violence to the Principles of his own Religion in making the whole Created World a God which Practice is by him condemned in the Pagans It is true that he somewhere sticks not to call God also the Soul of the World as well as the Mind thereof whether he meant thereby 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That God who is before the Word or else rather the Word it self the Second God according to him the Immediate Creator and Governour of the same nevertheless he does not seem to understand thereby such a deeply Immersed Soul as would make the World an Animal and a God but a more Elevated One that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Supermundane Soul To this First Depraviation of that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Theology of Divine Tradition and ancient Cabbala of the Trinity by many of the Platonists and Pythagoreans may be added another That some of them declaring the Second Hypostasis of their Trinity to be the Archetypal World or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls it the World that is compounded and made up of Ideas and conteineth in it all those kinds of things Intelligibly that are in this Lower World Sensibly and further concluding that all these several Ideas of this Archetypal and Intelligible World are really so many distinct Substances Animals and Gods have thereby made that Second Hypostasis not to be One God but a Congeries and Heap of Gods These are those Gods commonly called by them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Intelligible Gods not as before in way of distinction from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sensible Gods which is a more general notion of the word but from from those other Gods of theirs afterwards to be insisted on also called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Intellectual Gods Proclus upon Plato's Politia concludes that there is no Idea of Evil for this reason because if there were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that very Idea of Evil also would it self be a God because Every Idea is a God as Parmenides hath affirmed Neither was Plotinus himself though otherwise more sober altogether uninfected with this Phantastick Conceit of the Ideas being all of them Gods he writing thus concerning the Second God The First Mind or Intellect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That he being begotten by the First God that is by way of Emanation and from Eternity generated all Entities together with himself the Pulchritude of the Ideas which are all Intelligible Gods Apuleius also as hath been already noted grosly and fulsomely imputes the same to Plato in those words Quos Deos Plato existimat Veros Incorporales Animales sine ullo neque fine neque exordio sed prorsus ac retrò aeviternos ingenio ad summam beatitudinem porrecto c. And he with Julian and others reduce the Greater part of the Pagan Gods to these Ideas of
thereof after this manner by distinguishing of a Double Light the One Simple and Vniform the other Multiform or Manifold and attributing the Former of these to the Supreme Deity only whose Simple Original Light he resembles to the Luminous Body of the Sun it self The latter of them to the Second Hypostasis as being the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Circumambient Fulgor or Out-shining Splendour of that Sun Thus Enn. 5. L. 6. c. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That from which this Multiform Light of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Intellect the Second Hypostasis is derived is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Another most Simple Light As he elsewhere accordingly writeth of the First Principle or Supreme Deity that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Knowledge or Vnderstanding but of different kind from that Vnderstanding of the Second Hypostasis called Intellect Sometimes again this Philosopher subtilly distinguisheth betwixt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Intelligence it self and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That which doth Vnderstand or which hath Intelligence in it making the First Principle to be the Former of these Two and the Second Hypostasis of their Trinity to be the Latter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Intelligence it self doth not understand but that which hath Intelligence For in that which doth understand there is a kind of Duplicity But the First Principle of all hath no Duplicity in it Now that Duplicity which he phancies to be in that which Hath Intelligence is either the Duplicity of Him that hath this Intelligence and of the Intelligence it self as being not the same or else of Him and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Intelligible or Object of his Intellection Intellect supposing an Intelligible in order of nature before it And from this Subtilty would he infer that there is a certain kind of Imperfection and Indigence in that which Doth Vnderstand or Hath Intelligence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That which Vnderstandeth is Indigent as that which Seeth But perhaps this Difficulty might be more easily solved and that according to the Tenour of the Platonick Hypothesis too by supposing the Abatement of their Second Hypostasis to consist only in this that it is not Essentially 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Goodness it self but only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Boniform or Good by Participation it being Essentially no higher than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mind Reason and Wisdom for which cause it is called by those Names as the proper Characteristick thereof Not as if the First were devoid of Wisdom under Pretence of being Above it but because this Second is not Essentially any Thing Higher As in like manner the Third Hypostasis is not Essentially Wisdom it self standing or quiescent and without Motion or Action but Wisdom as in Motion or Wisdom Moving and Acting The Chief Ground of this Platonick Doctrine of an Essential Dependence and therefore Gradual Subordination in their Trinity of Divine Hypostases is from that Fundamental Principle of their Theology That there is but One Original of all things and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only One Fountain of the Godhead from whence all other things whatsoever whether Temporal or Eternal Created or Vncreated were altogether derived And therefore this Second Hypostasis of their Trinity since it must accordingly Derive its whole Being from the First as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Splendour from the Original Light must of necessity have also an Essential Dependence upon the same and consequently a Gradual Subordination to it For though they commonly affirm their Second Hypostasis to have been Begotten from their First and their Third from their Second yet do they by no means understand thereby any such Generation as that of men where the Father Son and Nephew when Adulti at least have no Essential Dependence one upon another nor Gradual Subordination in their Nature but are all perfectly Co-equal and alike Absolute Because this is bu◠an Imperfect Generation where that which is Begotten doth not receive its whole Being Originally from that which did Beget but from God and Nature the Begetter being but either a Channel or an Instrument and having been himself before Begotten or Produced by some other Whereas the First Divine Hypostasis is altogether Vnbegotten from any other he being the Sole Principle and Original of all things and therefore must the Second needs derive its whole Essence from him and be Generated after another manner namely in a way of Natural Emanation as Light is from the Sun and consequently though Co-eternal have an Essential Dependence on him and Gradual Subordination to him Moreover the Platonists would recommend this their Gradation in the Deity or Trinity of Hypostases Subordinate from hence because by this means there will not be so vast a Chasm and Hiatus betwixt God and the Highest Creatures or so Great a Leap and Jump in the Creation as otherwise there must needs be Nor will the whole Deity be skrewed up to such a Disproportionate Heigth and Elevation as would render it altogether Uncapable of having any Entercourse or Commerce with the lower world it being according to this Hypothesis of theirs brought down by certain Steps and Degrees nearer and nearer to us For if the Whole Deity were nothing but One Simple Monad devoid of all manner of Multiplicity as God is frequently represented to be then could it not well be conceived by us Mortals how it should contain the Distinct Ideas of all things within it self and that Multiform Platform and Paradigm of the Created Universe commonly called the Archetypal World Again were the Deity only an Immovable Mind as Aristotle's God is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Absolutely Immovable Substance whose Essence and Operation are one and the same and as other Theologers affirm that Whatsoever is in God is God it would be likewise utterly unconceivable not only How there should be any Liberty of Will at all in God whereas the same Theologers contradicting themselves zealously contend notwithstanding that all the Actions of the Deity are not Necessary and but few of them such but also How the Deity should have any Commerce or Entercourse with the Lower world How it should Quicken and Actuate the whole be sensible of all the Motions in it and act pro re natâ accordingly all which the Instincts and Common Notions of Mankind urge upon them Neither can they be denied without rasing the very Foundations of all Religion since it would be to no more purpose for men to make their Devotional Addresses to such an Immovable Inflexible and Vnaffectible Deity than to a Sensless Adamantine Rock But these Difficulties as the Platonists pretend are all removed by that Third Hypostasis in their Trinity which is a kind of Movable Deity And thus are all the Phaenomena of the Deity or the different Common Notions in the Minds of men concerning
Consider them again as if He had indeed such Faculties This is not well and thence is it that they fall into so many Difficulties We ought not to dispute of God's Nature He is no fit Subject of our Philosophy True Religion consisteth in Obedience to Christ's Lieutenants and in giving God such Honour both in Attributes and Actions as they in their several Lieutenancies shall ordain Where the plain and Vndisguised meaning of the Author seems to be this That God is no Subject of Philosophy as all Real things are accordingly as he declareth elsewhere that Religio non est Philosophia sed Lex Religion is not a Matter of Philosophy but only of Law and Arbitrary Constitution He having no Real Nature of his own nor being any True Inhabitant of the World or Heaven but as all other Ghosts and Spirits an Inhabitant of mens Brains only that is a Figment of their Fear and Phancy or a meer Political Scare-Crow And therefore such Attributes are to be given to him without any Scrupulosity as the Civil Law of every Country shall appoint and no other The Wise and Nasute very well understanding that all this Business of Religion is nothing but meer Pageantry and that the Attributes of the Deity indeed signifie neither True nor False nor any thing in Nature but only mens Reverence and Devotion towards the Object of their Fear the manner of expressing which is determined by Civil Law Wherefore to say that God sees all Things and yet hath no Eyes and that he hears all things and yet hath no Ears and that he Understands and is Wise and yet hath no Brains and whatsoever else you will please to say of him as Attributes of Honour and only as signifying Devotion is thus far well enough But when men not understanding the true Cabal will needs go further they mistaking Attributes of Honour for Attributes of Nature and of Philosophick Truth and making them Premises to infer Absolute Truth and convince Falshood from or Matters to Dispute and Reason upon that is when they will needs suppose such a thing as a God Really to Exist in the World then do they involve themselves in all manner of Contradiction Nonsence and Absurdity as for example to affirm seriously that this God Really sees all things in the world and yet hath no Eyes and that He indeed hears all things and yet hath no Ears and Lastly that he Understands and is Wise and yet hath no Brains which things are all Absolutely Contradictious Unconceivable and Impossible The summ of all is this that when Religion and Theology which is indeed nothing but Law and Phantastry is made Philosophy then is it all meer Jargon and Insignificant Non-sence And now we see what those Contradictions are which the Atheists charge upon Theology such as owe all their Being only to the Grossness Sottishness and Brutishness of these mens own apprehensions From whence proceedeth likewise this following Definition of Knowledge and Understanding That it is nothing but a Tumult of the Mind raised by External Things Pressing the Organical Parts of mans Body O Ye Brutish among the People when will ye Vnderstand and ye Fools when will ye be Wise He that Planted the Ear and gave mans Soul a power of hearing thereby shall not He though himself have no Ears hear He that formed the Eye and gave the Humane Soul a power of Seeing by it as an Instrument shall not he though himself have no Eyes see Lastly He that teacheth man Knowledge or gave him an Understanding Mind besides Brains shall not he though himself be without Brains Know and Vnderstand It is certain that no Simple Idea as that of a Triangle or a Square of a Cube or Sphere can possibly be Contradictious to it self and therefore much less can the Idea of a Perfect Being which is the Compendious Idea of God it being more Simple than any of the other Indeed this Simple Idea of a Perfect Being is Pregnant of many Attributes and therefore the Idea of God more fully declared by them all may seem to be in this respect a Compounded Idea or One Idea and Conception Consisting or made up of Many which if they were really Contradictious would render the whole a Non-Entity As for Example This A Plain Triangle whose Three Angles are Greater than Two Right ones it being Contradictious and Unconceivable is therefore no True Idea but a Non-Entitie But all the Genuine Attributes of the Deity of which its Entire Idea is made up are Things as Demonstrable of a Perfect Being as the Properties of a Triangle or a Square are of those Ideas respectively and therefore cannot they Possibly be Contradictious neither to it nor to one another because those things which agree in one Third must needs agree together amongst themselves Nay the Genuine Attributes of the Deity namely such as are Demonstrable of an Absolutely Perfect Being are not only not Contradictious but also necessarily Connected together and Inseparable from one another For there could not possibly be One Thing Infinite in Wisdom Only Another Thing Infinite Only in Power and Another thing Only Infinite in Duration or Eternal But the very same thing which is Infinite in Wisdom must needs be also Infinite in Power and Infinite in Duration and so vice versâ That which is Infinite in any one Perfection must of necessity have all Perfections in it Thus are all the Genuine Attributes of the Deity not only not Contradictious but also Inseparably Concatenate and the Idea of God no Congeries either of Disagreeing things or else of such as are unnecessarily Connected with one another In very truth all the several Attributes of the Deity are nothing else but so many Partial and Inadequate Conceptions of One and the Same Simple Perfect Being taken in as it were by piece-meal by reason of the Imperfection of our Humane Understandings which could not fully Conceive it all together at once And therefore are they Really all but One thing though they have the Appearance of Multiplicity to us As the One Simple Light of the Sun diversly Refracted and Reflected from a Rorid Cloud hath to us the Appearance of the variegated Colours of the Rainbow Wherefore the Attributes of God are no Bundle of Vnconceivables and Impossibles huddled up together nor Attributes of Honour and Complement only and nothing but the Religious Nonsence of Astonish'd Minds expressing their Devotion towards what they Fear but all of them Attributes of Nature and of most severe Philosophick Truth Neither is the Idea of God an Arbitrarious Compilement of things Vnnecessarily Connected and Separable from one another it is no Factitious nor Fictitious thing made up by any Feigning Power of the Soul but it is a Natural and most Simple Vncompounded Idea such as to which nothing can be Arbitrariously added nor nothing detracted from Notwithstanding which by reason of the Imperfection of humane Minds there may be and are different Apprehensions concerning it
For as every one that hath a Conception of a Plain Triangle in general doth not therefore know that it includes this Property in it to have Three Angles Equal to Two Right ones nor doth every one who hath an Idea of a Rectangular Triangle presently understand that the Square of the Substense is Equal to the Squares of both the Sides so neither doth every one who hath a Conception of a Perfect Being therefore presently know all that is included in that Idea Moreover men may easily mistake things for Absolute Perfections which are not such as hath been partly already shewed And now whereas the Atheists pretend in the next place to give an Account of that Supposed Contradictiousness in the Idea and Attributes of God namely that it proceeded principally from Fear or the Confounded Nonsence of mens Astonished Minds huddling up together all Imaginable Attributes of Honour Courtship and Complement without any Philosophick Truth Sence or Signification as also in part from the Fiction and Imposture of Politicians all this hath been already prevented and the Foundation thereof quite taken away by our shewing that there is nothing in the Genuine Idea of God and his Attributes but what is Demostrable of a Perfect Being and that there cannot be the least either Added to that Idea or Detracted from it any more than there can be any thing Added to or Detracted from the Idea of a Triangle or of a Square From whence it follows unavoidably that there cannot possibly be any thing either Contradictious or Arbitrarious in the Divine Idea and that the Genuine Attributes thereof are Attributes of Necessary Philosophick Truth namely such as do not only speak the Piety Devotion and Reverence of mens own Minds but declare the Real Nature of the thing it self Wherefore when a Modern Atheistick Writer affirmeth of all those who Reason and conclude concerning God's Nature from his Attributes That Losing their Vnderstanding in the very first attempt they fall from one Inconvenience or Absurdity to another without end after the same manner as when one ignorant of Court-ceremonies coming into the presence of a greater person than he was wont to speak to and stumbling at his entrance to save himself from falling lets slip his Cloak to recover his Cloak le ts fall his Hat and so with one disorder after another discovers his Rusticity and Astonishment We say that though there be something of Wit and Phancy in this yet as it is applied to Theology and the Genuine Attributes of the Deity there is not the least of Philosophick Truth However we deny not but that some either out of Superstition or else out of Flattery for thus are they stiled by St. Jerome Stulti Adulatores Dei Foolish Flatterers of God Almighty have sometimes attributed such things to him as are Incongruous to his Nature and under a pretence of Honouring him by Magnifying his Power and Sovereignty do indeed most highly Dishonour him they representing him to be such a Being as is no way Amiable or Desirable But the Atheists are most of all concerned to give an Account of that Vnquestionable Phenomenon the General Perswasion of the Existence of a God in the Minds of men and their Propâ—nsity to Religion in all ages and places of the world whence this should come if there be really no such thing in Nature And this they think to do in the Last place also Partly from mens Own Fear together with their Ignorance of Causes and Partly from the Fiction of Lawmakers and Politicians they endeavouring thereby to keep men to Civil Subjection under them Where we shall First plainly and Nakedly dâ—clare the Atheists meaning and then manifest the Invalidity and Foolery of these their Pretences to salve the forementioned Phenomenon First therefore these Atheists affirm That mankind by reason of their Natural Imbecillity are in perpetual Solicitude Anxiety and Fear concerning Future Events or their Good and Evil Fortune to come and this Passion of Fear inclining men to Imagine things Formidable and Fearful and to Suspect or Believe the Existence of what really is not I say that this Distrustful Fear and Jealousie in the Minds of men concerning their Future Condition raises up to them the Phantasm of a most Affrightful Spectre an Invisible Vnderstanding Being Arbitrarily Governing and Swaying the affairs of the whole World and at pleasure Tyrannizing over Mankind And when mens Exorbitant Fear and Fancy has thus raised up to it self such a Mormo or Bugbear such an Affrightful Spectre as this a thing that is really no Inhabitant of the World or of Heaven but only of mens Brains they afterward stand in awe of this their Own Imagination and Tremblingly worship this Creature and Figment of their own Fear and Phancy as a thing Really Existing without them or a God devising all manner of expressions of Honour and Reverence towards it and anxiously endeavouring by all ways conceivable to Propitiate and Atone the same And thus have they brought upon themselves a most heavie Yoke of Bondage and filled their Lives with all manner of Bitterness and Misery Again to this Fear of Future Events the Atheists add also Ignorance of Causes as a further Account of this Phenomenon of Religion so generally entertained in the world For Mankind say they are Naturally Inquisitive into the Causes of things and that not only of the Events of their Own Good and Evil Fortune but also of the Phaenomena of the World and the Effects of Nature And such is their Curiosity that wheresoever they can discover no Visible and Natural Causes there are they prone to Feign and Imagine other Causes Invisible and Supernatural As it was observed of the Tragick Dramatists that whenever they could not well extricate themselves they were wont to bring in a God upon the Stage and as Aristotle recordeth of Anaxagoras that he never betook himself to Mind or Vnderstanding that is to God for a Cause but only then when he was at a loss for other Natural and Necessary Causes From whence these Atheists would infer that nothing but Ignorance of Causes made Anaxagoras to assert a Deity Wherefore it is no wonder say they if the Generality of Mankind being Ignorant of the Causes almost of all Events and Effects of Nature have by reason of their Natural Curiosity and Fear Feigned or Introduced one Invisible Power or Agent Omnipotent as the Supreme Cause of all things they betaking themselves thereto as to a kind of Refuge Asylum or Sanctuary for their Ignorance These two Accounts of the Phenomenon of Religion from mens Fear and Solicitude about Future Events and from their Ignorance of Causes together with their Curiosity are thus joyned together by a Modern Writer Perpetual fear of Future Evils always accompanying mankind in the Ignorance of Causes as it were in the Dark must needs have for Object Something And therefore when there is nothing to be seen there is nothing to accuse for their Evil Fortune but some
of Humane Nature mens Fear and Ignorant Credulity do much dispose and incline them to the Belief of a God or else of a Rank of Beings Superiour to men whether Visible or Invisible commonly called by the Pagans Gods yet would not this be so generally entertained as it is especially that of One Supreme Deity the First Original of all things and Monarch of the Universe had it not been for the Fraud and Fiction of Lawmakers and Civil Soveraigns who the better to keep men in Peace and Subjection under them and in a kind of Religious and Superstitious Observation of their Laws and Devotion to the same devized this Notion of a God and then possessed the Minds of men with a Belief of his Existence and an Awe of him Now we deny not but that Politicians may sometimes abuse Religion and make it serve for the promoting of their own private Interests and Designs which yet they could not so well do neither were the thing it self a meer Cheat and Figment of their own and had no Reality at all in Nature nor any thing Solid at the bottom of it But since Religion obtains so universally every where it is not conceivable how Civil Sovereigns throughout the whole World some of which are so distant and have so litle Correspondence with one another should notwithstanding all so well agree in this One Cheating Mystery of Government or Piece of State-Coozenage nor if they could how they should be able so effectually to posses the Generality of mankind as well wise as unwise with such a Constant Fear Awe and Dread of a meer Counterfeit thing and an Invisible Nothing and which hath not only no manner of Foundation neither in Sense nor Reason but also as the Atheists suppose tends to their own great Terrour and Disquietment and so brings them at once under a miserable Vassallage both of Mind and Body Especially since men are not generally so apt to think that how much the more any have of Power Dignity they have therefore so much the more of Knowledge and Skill in Philosophy and the Things of Nature above others And is it not strange that the world should not all this while have suspected or discovered this Cheat and Juggle of Politicians and have Smelt out a Plot upon themselves in the Fiction of Religion to take away their Liberty and enthral them under Bondage and that so many of these Politicians and Civil Soveraigns themselves also should have been unacquainted herewith and as simply awed with the Fear of this Invisible Nothing as any others All other Cheats and Juggles when they are once never so little detected are presently thereupon dashed quite out of countenance and have never any more the Confidence to obtrude themselves upon the world But though the Atheists have for these Two Thousand years past been continually buzzing into mens Ears that Religion is nothing but a meer State-Juggle and Political Imposture yet hath not the Credit thereof been the least impaired thereby nor its Power and Dominion over the Minds of men abated from whence it may be concluded that it is no Counterfeit and Fictitious thing but what is deeply rooted in the Intellectual Nature of man a thing Solid at the bottom and Supported by its own strength Which yet may more fully appear from Christianity a Religion founded in no Humane Policy nor tending to promote any Worldly Interest or Design which yet by its own or the Divine Force hath prevailed over the Power and Policy the Rage and Madness of all Civil States Jewish and Pagan and hath Conquered so great a Part of the Persecuting World under it and that not by Resisting or Opposing Force but by suffering Deaths and Martyrdoms in way of Adherence to that Principle That it is better to obey God than Men. Which thing was thus Presignified in the Prophetick Scripture Why do the Heathen Rage and the People imagine a Vain thing The Kings of the Earth set themselves and the Rulers take Counsel together against the Lord and against his Christ c. He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh the Lord shall have them in Derision Then shall he speak unto them in his Wrath c. Yet have I set my King upon my Holy Hill of Sion I will give thee the Heathen for thine Inheritance and the Vttermost Parts of the Earth for thy Possession Be wise now therefore O ye Kings c. But that Theism or Religion is no Gullery or Imposture will be yet further made unquestionably Evident That the generality of Mankind have agreed in the acknowledgment of one Supreme Deity as a Being Eternal and Necessarily Existent Absolutely Perfect and Omnipotent and the Maker of the whole World hath been already largely proved in the foregoing Discourse To which purpose is this of Sextus the Philosopher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All men have this common Prolepsis concerning God that he is a Living Being Incorruptible Perfectly Happy and Vncapable of all manner of Evil. And the Notion of that God which Epicurus opposed was no other than this An Vnderstanding Being having all Happiness with Incorruptibility that Framed the whole World Now I say that if there be no such thing as this Existing and this Idea of God be a meer Fictitious Thing then was it altogether Arbitrarious But it is unconceivable how the Generality of Mankind a few Atheists only excepted should universally agree in one and the same Arbitrarious Figment This Argumentation hath been formerly used by some Theists as appeareth from the forementioned Sextus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is altogether Irrational to think that all men should by Chance light upon the same Properties in the Idea of God without being Naturally mov'd thereunto Neither is that any sufficient account which the Atheists would here give that Statesmen and Politicians every where thus possessed the Minds of men with One and the same Idea the Difficulty still remaining how Civil Soveraigns and Law-makers in all the distant parts of the world and such as had no Communication nor Entercourse with one another should universally Jump in one and the same Fictitious and Arbitrarious Idea Moreover were there no God it is Not Conceivable how that forementioned Idea should ever have Entred into the Minds of men or how it could have been Formed in them And here the Atheists again think it enough to say that this Notion or Idea was Put into the Minds of the Generality of mankind by Law-makers and Politicians Telling them of such a Being and perswading them to believe his Existence or that it was from the first Feigner or Inventor of it propagated all along and conveyed down by Oral Tradition But this argues their great Ignorance in Philosophy to think that any Notion or Idea is put into mens Minds from without meerly by Telling or by Words we being Passive to nothing else from words but their Sounds and the Phantasms thereof they only occasioning the
also said by him to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Above Essence Page 407 Xenophon though with other Pagans he acknowledged a Plurality of Gods yet a plain Asserter also of One Supreme and Universal Numen Page 408 XXIV Aristotle a frequent Acknowledger of Many Gods And whether he believed any Demons or no which he sometimes mentions though sparingly and insinuates them to be a kind of Aerial Animals more Immortal than Men yet did he unquestionably look upon the Starrs or their Intelligences as Gods Page 408 c. Notwithstanding which Aristotle doth not onely often speak of God Singularly and of the Divinity Emphatically but also professedly opposes that Imaginary Opinion of Many Independent Principles or Unmade Deities He confuting the same from the Phenomena or the Compages of the World which is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but all Uniform and agreeably Conspiring into one Harmony Page 410 411 Aristotle's Supreme Deity the First Immoveable Mover The difference here betwixt Plato and Aristotle Plato's Original of Motion a Self-moving Soul Aristotle's an Immoveable Mind But this Difference not so great as at first sight it seems because Aristotle's Immoveable Mind doth not Move the Heavens Efficiently but onely Finally or As being Loved Besides which he must needs suppose another immediate Mover which could be nothing but a Soul of them Page 412 Aristotle's Immoveable Mind not onely the Cause of Motion but also of Well and Fit all the Order Pulchritude and Harmony that is in the world Called therefore by Aristotle the Separate Good thereof This together with Nature its Subordinate Instrument the Efficient Cause of the whole Mundane System which however Co-eternal with it yet is in Order of Nature Junior to it Page 413 414 Aristotle and other Ancients when they affirm Mind to have been the Cause of all things Vnderstood it thus That all things were made by an Absolute Wisedom and after the Best Manner The Divine Will according to them not a meer Arbitrary Humoursome and Fortuitous thing but Decency and Fitness it self Page 415 From this passage of Aristotle's That the Divinity is either God or the Work of God Evident that he supposed All the Gods to have been derived from One and therefore his Intelligences of the Sphears Page 415 That according to Aristotle this Speculation of the Deity constitutes a Particular Science by it self distinct from Physiology and Geometry the Former whereof Physiology is Conversant about what was Inseparable and Movable the Second Geometry about things Immovable but not Really Separable but the Third and Last which is Theology about that which is both Immovable and Separable an Incorporeal Deity Page 416 Four Chief Points of Aristotle's Theology or Metaphysicks concerning God First that though all things are not Eternal and Unmade yet something must needs be such as likewise Incorruptible or otherwise all might come to Nothing Secondly that God is an Incorporeal Substance separate from Sensibles Indivisible and devoid of Parts and Magnitude Thirdly that the Divine Intellect is the same with its Intelligibles or conteineth them all within it self because the Divine Mind being Senior to all things and Architectonical of the World could not then look abroad for its Objects without it self The contrary to which supposed by Atheists Lastly that God being an Immovable Substance his Act and Energy is his Essence from whence Aristotle would infer the Eternity of the World Page 416 417 Aristotle's Creed and Religion contained in these Two Articles first That there is a Divinity which comprehends the whole Nature or Universe And Secondly that besides this There are other Particular Inferiour Gods But that all other things in the Religion of the Pagans were Fabulously superadded hereunto for Political Ends. Page 417 Speusippus Xenocrates and Theophrastus Monarchists Page 418 XXV The Stoicks no better Metaphysicians than Heraclitus in whose footsteps they trode admitting of no Incorporeal Substance The Qualities of the Mind also to these Stoicks Bodies Page 419 420 But the Stoicks not therefore Atheists they supposing an Eternal Unmade Mind though lodged in Matter the Maker of the whole Mundane System Page 420 The Stoical Argumentations for a God not Inconsiderable and what they were Page 421 422 The Stoical God not a meer Plastick and Methodical but an Intellectual Fire The World according to them not a Plant but Animal and Jupiter the Soul thereof From the supposed Oneliness of which Jupiter they would sometimes inferre the Singularity of the World Plutarch on the Contrary affirming that though there were Fifty or an Hundred Worlds yet would there be for all that but one Zeus or Jupiter Page 423 Nevertheless the Stoicks as Polytheistical as any Sect. But so as that they supposed all their Gods save One to be not Onely Native but also Mortal made out of that One and resolved into that One again these Gods being all Melted into Jupiter in the Conflagration Page 424 425 Wherefore during the Intervals of Successive Worlds the Stoicks acknowledged but one Solitary Deity and no more Jupiter being then left all alone and the other Gods Swallowed up into him Who therefore not onely the Creatour of all the other Gods but also the Decreatour of them Page 425 426 The Stoicks notwithstanding this Religious Worshippers of their Many Gods and thereby sometime derogated from the Honour of the Supreme by sharing his Sovereignty amongst them Page 426 427 Nevertheless the Supreme God praised and extolled by them far above all the other Gods and acknowledged to be the Sole Maker of the World Page 427 c. Their Professing Subjection to his Laws as their greatest Liberty Page 430 And to submit their Wills to his Will in every thing so as to know no other Will but the Will of Jupiter ibid. Their Pretending to Look to God and to doe nothing without a Reference to him as also to Trust in him and Rely upon him Page 431 Their Praising him as the Authour of all Good ibid. Their Addressing their Devotions to him Alone without the conjunction of any other God and particularly imploring his Assistence against Temptations Page 432 Cleanthes his Excellent and Devout Hymn to the Supreme God Page 433 XXVI Cicero though affecting to write in the way of the New Academy yet no Sceptick as to Theism Nor was he an Asserter of Many Independent Deities Cicero's Gods the Makers of the World the same with Plato's Eternal Gods or Trinity of Divine Hypostases Subordinate This Language the Pagans in S. Cyrill would Justifie from that of the Scripture Let us make Man Page 434 435 c. Varro's Threefold Theology The Fabulous the Natural and the Civil or Popular agreeably to Scaevola the Pontifex his Three Sorts of Gods Poetical Pholosophical and Political The Former condemned by him as False the Second though True said to be above the Capacity of the Vulgar and therefore a Necessity of a Third or Middle betwixt both Because many things True in
Plutarch in Herodotus as spoken Universally Plutarch himself restraining the Sense thereof to his Evill Principle Plato's ascribing the World to the Divine Goodness who therefore made all things most like Himself The true meaning of this Proverb That the Deity affecteth to Humble and Abase the Pride of men Lucretius his Hidden Force that hath as it were a Spite to all Overswelling Greatnesses could be no other then the Deity Those amongst Christians who make the worst Representation of God yet Phansy him Kind and Gracious to Themselves Page 659 660 True that Religion often expressed by the Fear of God Fear Prima Mensura Deitatis the First Impression that Religion makes upon men in this Lapsed State But this not a Fear of God as Mischievous and Hurtfull nor yet as a meer Arbitrary Being but as Just and an Impartiall Punisher of Wickedness Lucretius his acknowledging mens Fear of God to be conjoyned with a Conscience of Duty A Naturall Discrimination of Good and Evill with a Sense of an Impartiall Justice presiding over the World and both Rewarding and Punishing The Fear of God as either a Hurtfull or Arbitrary and Tyrannicall Being which must needs be joyned with something of Hatred not Religion but Superstition Fear Faith and Love Three Steps and Degrees of Religion to the Son of Sirach Faith better Defined in Scripture then by any Scholasticks God such a Being as if he were not Nothing more to be Wished for Page 660 661 The Reason why Atheists thus mistake the Notion of God as a Thing onely to be Feared and consequently Hated from their own Ill Nature and Vice The latter disposing them so much to think that there is no Difference of Good and Evill by Nature but onely by Law which Law Contrary to Nature as Restraint to Liberty Hence their denying all Naturall Charity and Acknowledging no Benevolence or Good Will but what arises from Imbecillity Indigency and Fear Their Friendship at best no other then Mercatura Utilitatum Wherefore if there were an Omnipotent Deity this according to the Atheistick Hypothesis could not have so much as that Spurious Love or Benevolence to any thing because standing in Need of Nothing and Devoid of Fear Thus Cotta in Cicero All this asserted also by a late Pretender to Politicks He adding thereunto that God hath no other Right of Commanding then his Irresistible Power nor men any Obligation to obey him but onely from their Imbecillity and Fear or because they cannot Resist him Thus do Atheists Transform the Deity into a Monstrous Shape an Omnipotent Being that hath neither Benevolence nor Justice in him This indeed a Mormo or Bugbear Page 661 662 But as this a false Representation of Theism so the Atheistick Scene of things most Uncomfortable Hopeless and Dismall upon severall Accounts True that no Spightfull Designs in Sensless Atoms in which Regard Plutarch Preferred even this Atheistick Hypothesis before that of an Omnipotent Mischievous Being However no Faith nor Hope neither in Sensless Atoms Epicurus his Confession that it was better to believe the Fable of the Gods then that Materiall Necessity of all things asserted by the other Atheistick Physiologers before himself But he not at all mending the Matter by his supposed Free Will The Panick Fear of the Epicureans of the Frame of Heaven's Cracking and this Compilement of Atoms being dissolved into a Chaos Atheists running from Fear plunge themselves into Fear Atheism rather then Theism from the Imposture of Fear Distrust and Disbelief of Good But Vice afterwards prevailing in them makes them Desire there should be No God Page 663 664 Thus the Atheists who derive the Origin of Religion from Fear First put an Affrightfull Vizard upon the Deity and then conclude it to be but a Mormo or Bugbear the Creature of Fear and Phancy More likely of the Two that the Opinion of a God sprung from Hope of Good then Fear of Evill but neither of these True it owing its Being to the Imposture of no Passion but supported by the Strongest and clearest Reason Nevertheless a Naturall Prolepsis or Anticipation of a God also in mens Minds Preventing Reason This called by Plato and Aristotle a Vaticination Page 664 665 The Second Atheistick Pretence to salve the Phaenomenon of Religion from the Ignorance of Causes and mens innate â—uriosity Vpon which Account the Deity said by them to be nothing but an Asylum of Ignorance or the Sanctuary of Fools next to be Confuted Page 665 That the Atheists both Modern and Ancient here commonly Complicate these Two together Fear and Ignorance of Causes making Theism the Spawn of both as the Fear of Children in the Dark raises Bugbears and Spectres Epicurus his Reason why he took such great pains in the Study of Physiology that by finding out the Naturall Causes of things he might free men from the Terrour of a God that would otherwise Assault their Minds ibid. The Atheists thus Dabbling in Physiology and finding out Materiall Causes for some of those Phaenomena which the unskilfull Vulgar salve onely from a Deity therefore Confident that Religion had no other Originall then this Ignorance of Causes as also that Nature or Matter does all things alone without a God But we shall make it manifest That Philosophy and the True Knowledge of Causes Lead to a Deity and that Atheism from Ignorance of Causes and want of Philosophy Page 665 666 For First No Atheist who derives all from Senslesse Matter can possibly assign any Cause of Himself his own Soul or Mind it being Impossible that Life and Sense should be Naturally produced from what Dead and Sensless or from Magnitudes Figures Sites and Motions An Atheistick Objection nothing to the purpose That Laughing and Crying things are made out of Not-Laughing and Crying Principles because these result from the Mechanism of the Body The Hylozoists never able neither to produce Animal Sense and Consciousness out of what Sensless and Inconscious The Atheists supposing their own Life and Understanding and all the Wisedom that is in the World to have sprung meerly from Sensless Matter and Fortuitous Motion Grossely Ignorant of Causes The Philosophy of Our Selves and True Knowledge of the Cause of our own Soul and Mind brings to God Page 666 667 Again Atheists Ignorant of the Cause of Motion by which they suppose all things done this Phaenomenon being no way Salvable according to their Principles First undeniably certain That Motion not Essential to all Body or Matter as such because then there could have been no Mundane System no Sun Moon Earth c. All things being continually Torn in Pieces and Nothing Cohering Certain also That Dead and Sensless Matter such as that of Anaximander Democâ—itus and Epicurus cannot Move it self Spontaneously by Will or Appetite The Hylozoists further considered elsewhere Democritus could assign no other Cause of Motion then this That one Body moved another from Eternity Infinitely without any First Cause or Mover Thus also a Modern Writer To
of an Invisible Deity and therefore unless they were detained in a way of Religion by such a worship of God as was accommodate and suitable to the lowness of their apprehensions would unavoidably run into Atheism Nay the most Philosophical Wits amongst them confessing God to be Incomprehensible to them therefore seemed themselves also to stand in need of some Sensible Props to lean upon This very account is given by the Pagans of their practice in Eusebius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That God being Incorporeally and Invisibly present in all things and Pervading or Passing through all things it was reasonable that men should worship him by and through those things that are Visible and Manifest Plato likewise represents this as the opinion of the generality of Pagans in his time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that as for the Greatest God and the Whole World men should not busily curiously search after the knowledge thereof nor pragmatically enquire into the causes of things it being not pious for them so to do The meaning whereof seems to be no other than this that men ought to content themselves to worship God in his Works and in this Visible World and not trouble themselves with any further curious Speculations concerning the Nature of that which is Incomprehensible to them Which though Plato professeth his dislike of yet does that Philosopher himself elsewhere plainly allow of worshipping the First Invisible God in those Visible Images which he hath made of himself the Sun and Moon and Stars Maximus Tyrius doth indeed exhort men to ascend up in the Contemplation of God above all Corporeal Things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The End of your Journey saith he is not the Heaven nor those shining Bodies in the Heaven for though those be beautiful and Divine and the Genuine Off-spring of that Supreme Deity framed after the best manner yet ought these all to be transcended by you and your head lifted up far above the Starry Heavens c. Nevertheless he closes his discourse thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. But if you be too weak and unable to contemplate that Father and Maker of all things it will be sufficient for you for the present to behold his Works and to Worship his Progeny or Off-spring which is various and manifold For there are not only according to the Boeotian Poet Thirty Thousand Gods all the Sons and Friends of the Supreme God but innumerable And such in the Heaven are the Stars in the Aether Demons c. Lastly Socrates himself also did not only allow of this way of worshipping God because himself is Invisible in his works that are Visible but also commend the same to Euthydemus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That I speak the truth your self shall know if you will not stay expecting till you see the Forms of the Gods themselves but count it sufficient for you beholding their works to worship and adore them Which he afterward particularly applies to the Supreme God who made and containeth the whole World that being Invisible he hath made himsâ—lf Visible in his Works and consequently was to be worshipped and adred in them Whether Socrates and Plato and their genuine Followers would extend this any further than to the Animated Parts of the World such as the Sun Moon and Stars were to them we cannot certainly determine But we think it very probable that many of those Pagans who are charged with worshipping Inanimate Things and particularly the Elements did notwithstanding direct their Worship to the Spirits of those Elements as Ammianus Marcellinus tells us Julian did that is Chiefly the Souls of them all the Elements being supposed by many of these Pagans to be Animated as was before observed concerning Proclus and Partly also those Demons which they conceived to inhabit in them and to preside over the parts of them upon which account it was said by Plato and others of the Ancients that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All things are full of Gods and Demons XXXIII But that these Physiological Gods that is the Things of Nature Personated and Deified were not accounted by the Pagans True and Proper Gods much less Independent and Self-existent ones may further appear from hence because they did not only thus Personate and Deifie Things Substantial and Inanimate Bodies but also meer Accidents and Affections of Substances As for example First the Passions of the Mind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith S. Greg. Nazianzen They accounted the Passions of the Mind to be Gods or at least worshipped them as Gods that is built Temples or Altars to their Names Thus was Hope not only a Goddess to the Poet Theognis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Where he Fancifully makes her to be the only Numen that was left to men in Heaven as if the other Gods had all forsaken those Mansions and the World but also had Real Temples Dedicated to her at Rome as that consecrated by Attillius in the Forum Olitorium and others elsewhere wherein she was commonly pictured or feigned as a Woman covered over with a green Pall and holding a Cup in her hand Thus also Love and Desire were Gods or Goddesses too as likewise were Care Memory Opinion Truth Vertue Piety Faith Justice Clemency Concord Victory c. Which Victory was together with Vertue reckoned up amongst the Gods by Plautus in the Prologue of his Amphytrio and not only so but there was an Altar erected to her also near the entrance of the Senate-house at Rome which having been once demolished Symmachus earnestly endeavoured the restauration thereof in the Reign of Theodosius he amongst other things writing thus concerning it Nemo Colendam neget quam profitetur Optandum Let no man deny that of right to be worshipped which he acknowledgeth to be wished for and to be desirable Besides all which Eccho was a Goddess to these Pagans too and so was Night to whom they sacrificed a Cock and Sleep and Death it self and very many more such Affections of things of which Vossius has collected the largest Catalogue in his eighâ—h Book De Theologia Gentili And this Personating and Deifying of Accidental Things was so familiar with these Pagans that as St. Chrysostome hath observed St. Paul was therefore said by some of the Vulgar Athenians to have been a Setter forth of strange Gods when he preached to them Jesus and the Resurrection because they supposed him not only to have made Jesus a God but also Anastasis or Resurrection a Goddess too Nay this Humour of Theologizing the Things of Nature transported these Pagans so far as to Deifie Evil things also that is things both Noxious and Vicious Of the former Pliny thus Inferi quoque in genera describuntur Morbique multae etiam Pestes dum esse placatas trepido metu cupimus Ideoque etiam publicè Febri Fanum in Palatio dedicatum est Orbonae ad aedem Larium Ara Malae Fortunoe