rule to all other his actions And truely if Princes ground many of their designeâ— upon profound reasons of State the knowledge whereof is never diffused among their subjects but lockt up in the cabinet of their own heart why may not God who is all Counsel and Prudence be afforded the prerogative of having some weighty respects that moved him to create the World then when he did rather then either sooner or later Which respects for ought we can explore is Mercy in him to conceal from us sure I am t is a pride not much beneath if not equal to that of Lucifer in us to dare to enquire T is a confest truth that no man can know the thoughts of another who is constant to his resolve to reserve them sealed up within his own breast and can any man be so incurably over-run with the itch of vanity when he despaires of pretending certainly to divine the cogitations of his familiar friend whose inclinations he hath so frequently read in the book of his conversation yet to arrogate to himself an ability of searching into the abscondite counsels of him whom neither Minde nor Sense can touch Wherefore t is our duty to reclaim our wild curiosities to set bounds to our inquisitions and gratefully sate our boulimie of science with this wholsome morsel that from hence that the World was once created we may safely inferre that the Creator was pleased to declare himself so Potent that no impediment could intervene betwixt his eternal decree and the opportune execution thereof so Free as to be above the impulsion or constraint of any necessity so Wise as to prevent all temerity and collusion of Fortune so Good that the prescience of mans future ingratitude and so the infertility of his masterpeice could not dehort him from fulfilling his purpose of conferring that inestimable blessing of Existence both upon him and all things else for his sake As for the last clause of this foolish demand An vigilarit tanto aeternitatis spatio an verò dormierit mundi opifex Whether God continued vigilant or dormant from eternity untill he set about the fabrick of this vast All This includes a manifest incongruity and speaks a contradiction loud enough to answer and refute it self For those two terms Sleep and Divinity stand at open defiance and placed in one notion reciprocally deny each other the one importing an Affection of a Body or the effect of the Concidence or Augustation of the ventricles of the brain and slender conduits of the nerves in an Animal caused either by a deficiency or quiet of the spirits inservient to the Animal Faculties and causing a temporary and periodical cessation from the offices of sense and Arbitrary motion the other expressing an Eternal simple Essence neither opprest with corporeity nor therefore subject to defatigation upon any exolution or wast of spirits and consequently not capable of sleep However to manifest the extreme stupidity of their reply viz. that if he were perpetually awake yet we must grant him to have been constantly idle before he began his work of Creation I shall vouchsafe them that judicious rejoynder of many Fathers whose studies were also not rarely infested with these vermine that in all that precedent tract of eternity mortality will excuse the necessary solecisme he was fully imployed in the most blissfull contemplation of himself Which is an operation most easie most quiet most pleasant as all Philosophers who ever have by the steps of abstracted meditation advanced their minds so high as token that perfection of beatitude have observed CHAP. III. Why God Created the World SECT I. THat every Action presupposeth an end or scope is Canonical and hence is it customary amongst Article 1. The improbability of the worlds creation by God insinuated by the Atheists from his defect of any possible Motive scope or final cause men by so much the more hardly to beleive that such or such a considerable Action was done by such or such a Person by how much the less either of probable Pleasure or Emolument may appear to have invited him to that enterprise Nor was Velleius a stranger to this rule for fighting the unjust quarrel of that usurpress Fortune and having at first invaded Providence Divine with direct and down-right blowes unsuccesfully he at last contrives to wound it with oblique thrusts and attempts to stab the opinion of the Worlds Creation by God by striking at the End or more plainly by cutting off all possibility of either Pleasure or Profit to accrew to him thereby And in pursuance of this stratagem he endevours to prove 1. Conditum non fuisse mundum Dei causa that the World was not created for Gods sake i. e. that he is no more concerned in the construction of it then if it had never been altered from its Chaos 2 neque hominum gratia nor for the behoof of man i. e. that man hath no juster plea to the Royalty of the World then the meanest Animal nor did Nature look with a more amorous and indulgent aspect upon him then upon any other of her productions The First position he essays to illustrate and inferre by a Socratical Article 2. Their first Argument that the divine Nature is above the capacity of either emolument or delâ—ctation from the Universe way of argumentation or by circumventing our judgements with a chain of Interogatories all whose links are dependent each upon other though by a connexion so subtile as to be imperceptible to the incircumspect the Abstract whereof as taken by Cicero 1. De Natur. Deorum lies in these words Quid autem erat quod concupisceret Deus mundum signis luminibus tanquam Aedilis ornare Si ut Deus melius habitaret antea videlicet tempore infinito in tenebris tanquam in gurgustio habitaverat post autem varietaté ne eum delectari putamus qua Coelum Terras exornatas videmus quae ista potest esse oblectatio Deo quae si esset non ea tamdiu carere potuisset What politique respect put God upon the servile office of an Aedile What motive prevailed with him to trim the Universe with gawdy Asterisms and imbellish the azure roof thereof with variety of refulgent studs if to better his habitation t is a signe that forever before he was but ill accommodated with a dark and narrow mansion But afterwards can we conceive that he entertained and solaced himself with that variety of beauteous forms wherewith we observe both stories of this great Palace to be adorned What delight is that wherewith divinity can be affected if any such there be why would he so long deny himself the fruition of it Nor did Velleius want a second to joyne with him in this bloudy design for the assassination of that sacred Truth That God made the World chiefly for his own Glory for that witty villain Lucretius and the finest wits if not maturely pruned and kept under by the severe
though he escape all these yet doth the Palsic hand of Time soon shake down his ounce of sand and then turn him over to be devoured by oblivion 8. Tum porro puer ut saevis projectus ab undis Navita nudus humi jacet infans indigus omni Vitai auxilio cum primum in luminis oras Nixibus ex aâ—vo matris natura profudit Vagituque locum lugubri complet ut aequum ' st Quoi tantum in vita restet transire malorum c. That Nature seems more a step-mother to man then any other Animal having cast him into the world naked â—eeble unarmed unprovided for in all but want and by his early tears portending that deluge of calamities which in case he be so miserable to survive his birth must drown all the comforts of his life and wash him into earth again after a short slight of time in brief she exposeth him as a bastard to be taken up and nursed by the charity of that giddy headed gossip Fortune who hath no sooner smiled him into strength enough to suffer but she contracts her browes disinherits and abandons the desolate wretch to all the hardship and afflictions that the witty malice of Fate to whom our tortures are pleasures and the hoarse groans of the rack sound perfect melody can either invent or inflict And thus have we heard in Summary the plea of those three eminent Levellers who endevoured to supplant man of his birth-right to take away the prerogative of his nature and reduce him to no greater a share in the favour of his Maker then the meanest of his fellow Animals It comes now to our turn to examine whether their Arguments are strong enough to carry the Cause The Refutation That God in his atcheivem of the Universe had a principal regard to Man above all other the works of his hands and Article 2. The total redâ—rgution thereof by a com nonstâ—aÌ„ce that tâ—e benefit and felicity of man was Gods secondary end and the impossibility of satisfaction to the first end by any creâ—ture but man concluded from his considered him tanquam sinem interjectum as the Mediate or Secondary End his own Glory being the Immediate or Primary or more plainly the end of that end is clearly deduceable even from this that man only among that infinite variety of natures listed in the inventory of the Creation is constituted in a capacity to satisfie that first end his intellectuals or cogitative essence being by a genial verticity or spontaneous propension qualified to admire in admiration to speculate in speculation to acknowledge in acknowledgement to laud the Goodness Wisdome and Power of the Worlds Creator while the ignoble Faculties of all other Animals are terminated in the inferior offices of sense nor ever attain above the inconsiderate operations of their brutal appetites And this one reason if duely perpended will be found of weight enough to counterpoize all those empty frothy sophisms 1. Rationality alleaged to the contrary nor can any aequitable consideration if I rightly understand its value allow it to be much less then Apodictical I say if duely perpended for we are not rashly to understand this peculiar Adaequation or Praeeminence of man to consist in the bare Vprightness of his Figure which accommodates him Coelum intueri erectos ad sidera tollere vultus For according to the vulgar acceptation of Erectness and as it is considered to be a position opposite to Proneness or the horizontal situation of the Spina dorsi or rack bones in Animals progredient with their bellies toward the earth man hath no reason to boast a singularity therein Since many other Animals as the Penguin a kind of water fowle frequent upon the straights of Magellan the devout insect of Province or Prega Dio the praying Grashopper so called because for the most part found in an upright posture answerable to that of man when his hands are elevated at his devotions the Bitour which my self hath sometimes observed standing upright as an arrow falne perpendicular and his eyes so advanced as to shoot their visual beams point blank at the zenith or vertical point of heaven all Plane Fishes that have the apophyses or processes of their spine carried laterally or made like the teeth of a Comb as the Thornback Plaice Flounder Soles c. and their eyes placed in the upper side of their head and so pointing directly upward and diverse others attaining an erectness beyond his and by reason of the sublimimity of their faces taking a far larger prospect of the firmament For man cannot look so high as the Aâ—quinoctial circle unless he either recline the spondils of his neck and loyns or place himself in a supine position And therefore Lactantius though he conceived his argument impregnable when he said Lib. 7. cap. 5. Quod planius argumentum proferri potest mundum hominis hominem suâ caussa Deum fecisse quam quod ex omnibus Animantibus solus it a formatus est ut oculi ejus ad coelum directi facies ad Deum spectans vultus cum suo parente communis sit to him that shall literally interpret the same cannot appear to have stopt the mouth of contradiction unless perhaps we shall afford him so much favour as to restrain the erectnes of man to that precise definition of our Master Galen De usu part lib. 1. which allowes those Animals only to have an erect figure whose spines and thigh bones are situate in right lines For in this strict signification no Animal for ought Zoographers or those that write the Natural Histories of living Creatures have discovered or our selves observed can exactly fulfill that figure but man all others having their thighs pitched at angles either right or obtuse or acute to their spines And for this respect was it that having premised that Man only was constituted in a capacity to satisfie that prime end of the Creation the glory of God I thought necessary to subjoyn his intellectual or Cogitative soul being naturally disposed to admire c. thereby importing that the basis of my Argument was fixt upon the very root of his Essence or better Nature as Plato calls it whose propriety is sursum aspicere to look up to his original and speculate the excellencies of his Maker And thus understood I prefer Plato's etymologie of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and am perswaded that the primitive Grecian so denominated man quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Contemplantem quae videt nor can I conceive that Anaxagoras spake other then tropologically when being askt cur natus esset he smartly and pathetically returned ut videret coelum terras by that figurative expression intending that man was made not to gape about or gaze upon the external beauties of heaven and earth with the dull eye of his body but to have his thoughts sublime and with the acies of his mind to speculate the Wisdome c. of him that made them
cujus tu pars es conducibile Porro autem quod natura Vniversi fert quódque ad eam facit conservandam id bonum est unicuivis Vniversi particulae Conservant autem mundum quemadmodum elementorum ita ex iis concretarum rerum mutationes Libri 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 primi sect ultima Secondly that no Natural Agent hath the rains in its own hands or the liberty to act in a loose and arbitrary way but all Article 2. The Authors Antithesis that all Natural Agents are under the strict laws of their distinct species things observe that immutable Tenor or setled course which they began to operate in at their first inauguration to essence provided that we understand this assertion under a twofold restriction First that this Tenor or establisht method was not instituted Article 3. A second Counterposition that those laws were instituted and sancited by an infinite wisdom by the improvidence of Fortune as our Atheists would have it but ordained enrolled and enacted by the counsel of an infinite Wisdome Secondly that this supernatural Nature which excogitated Article 4. A third that the legislator hath reserved to himself a praerogative power to alter transcend invert or repeal the laws of Nature and decreed this convenient law and endowed each single entity with a Power or Faculty respective to its duty thereto and observance or execution thereof hath not thereby so tied up his own hands or limited his Praerogative as not to have reserved to himself an absolute superiority or capacity at pleasure to infringe transcend or pervert it by giving special dispensation to any of his Creatures to vary the manner of their Activities in order to the Causation of any effect which his own prudence shall think expedient For the First and Second of these Positions viz. that as well Article 5. The verity of the first and second Positions amply demonstrated the general Law of Nature as those particular and oeconomical rules which being engraven not only upon every distinct species but also upon every single or individual entity stand both for warrant and directions to them in their several operations were made and established by the counsel of an infinite Wisdome may if we may assume the liberty to aggravate what we have formerly adferd toward the attestation of the same subject be thus demonstrated In the whole Scale of Creatures we finde but five Gradations or roundles by which our contemplations may orderly ascend to the highest pinnacle or summity of Nature and thence take a full survey of all her Provinces at large and those are Existence Life Sense Locomotion voluntary and Reason To speak yet more perspicuously First there are some things which have obtained a bare Existence or meer Being only and remain devoid of all the other four such are all simple bodies as the Heavens and those four which common Physiology calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Elements and all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inanimate Concretions or Compositions as Stones Metals Minerals c. Secondly some have not only Existence but also Vitality or Vegetability allotted unto them and yet want sense and motion arbitrary as all Vegetables A Third Classis is endowed with Being Life and Sense and yet hath not attained so high as Animal or voluntary motion to which belong all Conchylia as Oysters Muscles Cockles c. which Aristotle 3. De Gener. Animal cap. 2. for the same reason facetiously calls Aquatiles Plantas a kind of Water Plants as by an inversion he calls earthly Plants Ostrea Terrena a kind of Land Oysters because they have not as he opinioned the power of translating themselves de loco in locum though our Democritus Londinensis that incomparable indagator of Natures Arcana D r. Harvey hath observed that Oysters protrude or belch out on the conical extreme of their shells a certain Filme or natural saile by the help whereof they remove veer tack about and so observing the Tides conduct themselves to shoars rocks and other places of advantage both for their feeding and quiet but are tumbled up and down by the impulse of the Current Others of a fourth order are admitted to goe higher and to their Existence Vitality and Sensibility is also superadded Locomotion arbitrary or the Faculty of removing their stations at pleasure but yet they are excluded from the perfection of Rationality and know nothing good or evill but by the discernment or discrimination of Sense as all brute Animals Quadrupeds Birds Fishes Amphibions and Insects And Lastly others there are which being highest in the favour of their maker possess all these accumulated endowments together and have Existence Life Sense Voluntary motion and Ratiocination contorted together into one excellent Nature which seems in an epitomy or contraction to comprehend all the others and these are our selves Some over pregnant Wits there have been I well remember who have added one round more to this Ladder of Corporeal Natures making the Zoophytes or Plant-Animals an half-pace or midle step betwixt the 2 and 3 degrees but untill either an autoptical experiment or the observation of some who are more curious of Truth then exotique Rarities shall remove those scruples which I have in me concerning the fidelity of those large stories obtruded upon us by Travellers of the Herba mimosa or mimick Plant described by Christopher Acosta first afterwards by Clusius and since grown traditional amongst all Botanicks of the Boramez or Vegetable Lambe of Tartary no sparing relation whereof was first communicated to the world in the common language of Europe by Sigismund Baron of Verbestein in rerum Moscoviarum Commentariis then countenanced by the glorious Pen of Jul. Caesar Scaliger Exercit. 181. Sect. 29. since made more passant by Fortunius Licetus Lib. 3. de spont vivent ortu cap. 4. and Libavius part 2. singul exercitat de Agno vegetabili Scythiae and now taken for granted by all or most Herbarists of our age of the Sponge c. I shall beg leave to suspend my belief that there are any such Heteroclites or midle Natures half Vegetable half sensible or at least that both Faculties are so conspicuous and eminent in them as that thence they should deserve really to be accounte a distinct order of Creatures Now the Faculties or essential proprieties of all things being thus incommunicable downward and each distinct classis so confined to its proper orb of endowments that it can never advanced upward and usurpe more perfection then what it already stands possessed of by the Charter of its particular specification it follows that we explore the reason or original of this Limitation and why those Natures of the first degree are limited to meer Existence and cannot aspire to Vegetation why those of the second are chained down to Existence and Vegetation without possibility of being ever promoted to Sense those of the third preferd to Sense but denied the additional favour of Locomotion voluntary those of
of mans Life by any mortal disease and on the other manifesteth the possibility of the Prolongation of the same by the seasonable and right use of the means conductive thereunto viz. remorse of Conscience repentance supplication and medical remedies For prescribed it was by Isaiah thus Let them take a Bunch of Figgs and lay it for a plaister upon the boyle or Carbuncle and he shall recover And to bring up the reare of these Sacred Arguments militant on our side let us instance in the semblably pertinent story of the Ninivites who by the counter-violence of those holy spells Penitence severe Humiliation as well of the outward as of the inward man and Prayer distracted with nought but tears and groans seem to have abrogated the Decree of Destiny For the Bowels of Divinity yearning with paternal compassion towards so populous a City wherein though all were guilty yet many millions must have bin blended in the chaos of common ruine who were yet too young to share in the actual Depravities smoothed the brow of his Justice and prevailed with him to interpret their universal mortification of Impiety as an Allegorical accompletion of his resolve concerning the general devastation and mortality denounced against their Persons and Habitations to accept the slames of their thick sacrifices as Expiatory and preventive to the impendent Combustion of their City and heighten the wholsome virtue of their Abstinence observed in the strict Fast to a generous Prophylactique or Preservative against the Pestilence now ready to be kindled by the breath of his Indignation Nor are we destitute of Instances in holy Chronicles to teftify the Reverse part of our assertion viz. That the Term of mans life hath bin Abbreviated For who can read the story of the General Deluge and not observe that the whole stock of Humanity except 8. beleivers who committed themselves prisoners to the Ark of Preservation was immaturely extinguished and by the most proper and expedite way of corruption resolved into its Hyle or Watery Principle Who can rehearse Moses his relation of those many thousands of incredulous and murmuring Israelites buried in the wilderness to whom God had promised nay sworn to give them possession of the land of Canaan and not be satisfied that their Rebellion and Infidelity anticipated their funerals and who examine the fate of those Cowards who being sent to explore the fertility of the promised Land and the forces of the Amalekites returned a discouraging answer to their brethren and were therefore cut down by the revenging sword of the Lord of Hosts in the noon of their lives and not be convicted that the Wages of Sin is Death and may be paied as justly though not so naturally in the morn or noon as evening of life Now so fiduciary are these Testimonies that whoever shall justly compute their Number perpend their Gravity and clearly discern their Perspicuity must confess it no less then open injustice to all the Inducements of beleife to debase them so much as to a Competition for the priority of perswasion with those Few Light and Obscure Allegations upon whose Credit the Factors of Immoveable Destiny have adventured to take up their opinion However that we may add a brighter polish to this our Gold by scouring off the rust of all Exceptions made against it it deserves our time and sweat to dispossess our Article 6. A full vindication of the Fourth Testimony from the several Exceptions made against the appropriation thereof to our scope by the patrons of Fatality Adversaries of all their pretended interest in the importance of Three the chiefest of our Testimonies First they attempt to infirme our title to that definitive and emphatical sentence of the Psalmist The bloody and deceitfull men shall not live out half their days and this under the pretext of several perverse Interpretations as 1 by understanding the place thus Impii sanguinarii non dimidiabunt negotia sua they shall not accomplish half their Designes or contrary to their expectation they shall fall before they have brought their evil Purposes to pass To this unlawfull Construction we reply that this subterfuge was contrived by that profest Libertine of Christianity Luther to the end he might support his doctrine of Absolute Fate which with so much Ardor and Pertinacy he had once maintained against that ornament not only of Germany but of Europe also Erasmus But the Connexion of these with the former words manifestly prohibite any such Comment Thou O God sayth David shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction i. e. thou shalt irretiate or insnare them and suddainly precipitate them into the same pit which they have digged for me thy servant or thou shalt according to the concernment of the Hebrew phrase destroy them subita praematura morte by a suddain premature death that from the experiment of their unexpected ruine the world may learn thy justice and be satisfied of thy favour and indulgence to the pious and thy hatred and indignation to the impious For if we accommodate this text meerly to the Natural expiration of the term of life which is appointed as well to the Righteous as to the Reprobate and generally to all men pray what Energy or Emphasis can remain to that saying of David Tu facies eos descendere in puteum foveae for then we shall reduce all the meaning only to this illi morientur statuto suo tempore sicut mortales alii omnes they shall dye in their appointed time as all other mortal men and if so who might not have justly made this retort upon David te etiam tuo tempore sive cum finis vitae tuae praestitutus aderit Deus faciet descendere in puteum foveae and thee also when thy appointed time shall come or when the temperamental lease of thy life shall be worn out shall God bring inro the pit of destruction Again if we exchange Negotia for Dies then must we renounce the appropriation of the sense to the Wicked and make it common also to the Godly For who ever lived to accomplish all his purposes But the expression sufficiently illustrates the intention for it exactly responds to many other phrases used by the Holy Spirit to the same scope as They shall not fulfill the number of their days their days shall be abbreviated c. 2 By Translating the Text thus Non dimidiabunt dies suos i. e. peribunt antequà m sperent they shall perish in the immaturity of their Hopes not of their Lives For the sensuall Affections of their earthly minds having determined their judgements only to the expectation of enjoying blessings inservient to the satisfaction of their domineering Concupiscence make them promise to themselves long subsistence in this their paradise nay extend their vain projects as far as the impossible period of Eternity so though they survive even life it self by dwindling out their bedrid days till the marasmus of extream old age hath