it hath been before observed that he that goes about to make the whole Universe and all the several parts thereof the business of his Enquiry as he shall find that there are many things therein that he cannot come at or make any discovery of so among those parts of the Universe that are objected to a greater discovery of our Senses the multiplicity is so great that a man of the most equal and firm constitution must despair of Life enough to make a satisfactory particular and deep enquiry into them But the Object in hand is but one it is Man and the Nature of Man I confess it is true that he that shall make it his business to take in as it were by way of a common place all those things that may be taken up under this consideration and follow all those Lines that concenter in this or almost any other the most single piece of Contemplation will make this Subject large enough and upon that account may be drawn in almost all things imaginable We find in the consideration of the Humane Nature a Substance a Body a Spirit We find the several Objects of his Senses Light Colour Sound and infinite more He that upon this account will take in the distinct and large considerations of these and the like Appendices to Humane Nature in their full amplitude will have a large Plain that will more than exhaust his Life before he come to the Subject it self which he designes Again there is an infinite multitude of collateral considerations that yet are relative to man hither comes all the considerations of Theology Physick Natural Philosophy Politicks the considerations of Speech Government Laws of History Topography of Arts of those Sciences that relate to the Senses of Opticks Musick and infinite more for all these have a relation to Man and are like so many Lines drawn from several Objects that some way relate to him and concenter in him and he that shall make it his business to follow all those Lines to their utmost shall make the contemplation of Man almost as large as the contemplation of the whole Universe When I say therefore the contemplation of Man is the contemplation of a single Object I mean when it is kept into those single bounds of Man in his own specifical Nature and under the physical contemplation of his Nature Parts and Faculties as they are appropriate unto him And then it is a Subject that we may possibly make some progress in its contemplation and conception within the period of the time that by the ordinary time of Life and the permission of necessary avocations a man may employ in such a contemplation And yet secondly though in this restrained notion the Subject seems to be restrained and single we shall find it no very narrow Subject but there will be business enough in it to employ our Faculty and to take up that time which either more necessary or more imporunate thoughts or employments will allow us and variety enough to entertain our thoughts with delight contentation and usefulness 3. The Third Commendation of this Object to our contemplation is this that therein we have more opportunity of certainty and true knowledge of the Object enquired into than we can have in any other Object at least of equal use worth and value Many excellent things there are in Nature which were very well worth our Knowledge but yet as hath been said either by reason of their remoteness from us unaccessibleness to them subtilty and imperceptibleness to us either are not at all suspected to be or are not so much as within any of our Faculties to apprehend or discover what they are or in case we have any conception that there may be something of that kind yet our Notions touching them are but products of Imagination and Phantasie or at best very faint weak ungrounded and uncertain conjectures and such as we can never prove to the satisfaction of others or our selves Our Sense is the best evidence that we have in Nature touching the existence of corporeal things without us and where that is not possibly to be exercised we are naturally at a great uncertainty whether things are or what they are Now the Understanding perceives or understands things by the assistance of Sense in a double manner 1. It either perceives them immediately as being immediately objected to and perceptible to the Sense as I perceive the Sun and the Stars by my sight I find that there is a Body hard or gentle or hot or cold by my Touch and accordingly my Understanding judgeth of them Or secondly though the Sense perceive not the Object immediately yet it doth represent certain sensible effects or operations and though by those effects or operations the Understanding doth not immediately conclude anything else to be but what the Sense thus feels or sees yet the Understanding sometimes by ratiocination and sometimes by the Memory doth infer and conclude something else to be besides what the Sense immediately represents either as the cause or the concomitant of it and doth as forcibly and truly conclude the thing to be and also sometimes what the nature of that cause or concomitant is as if it were seen by the Eye or felt by the Hand I do not see nor by any Sense perceive the quiet undisturbed Air yet because I do see that a Bladder that was before flaccid doth swell by the reception of that which I see not I do as truly and certainly conclude that there is such a subtil Body which we call Air as if I could see it as plain as I see the Water I do not see the Animal or Vital Spirits neither can they by reason of their subtilty and volatileness be discovered immediately to the Sense yet when I see that forcible motion of the Nerves and Muscles I do as certainly conclude there are such Instruments which the Soul useth for the performance of those motions as if I saw them I come into a Room where there is no visible or tangible Fire yet I find by my Sense the Smoke ascending I do as forcibly conclude that Fire is or hath been near as if I saw it because my sensible experience and memory tells me they are concomitant Upon the same account it is that when my Sense and sensible experience shews me that these and these effects there are and that they are successively generated and corrupted though my eye sees not that God that first made those things yet my Sense having shewed me these sensible Objects and the state and vicisstude of them my Understanding doth truly conclude that all this vicissitude of things must terminate in a first cause of things with as great evidence and conviction as if my Sense could immediately see or perceive him So that in the ordinary way of Nature and without the help of divine Revelation all our certainty of things natural begins at our Senses namely the immediate sense of the things themselves
or the sense of those effects and operations which after by the help of the Understanding are carried up to the discovery of things not perceptible by Sense immediately Now there may be many things in Nature unto which we can have neither of these accessions of Sense How many Stars are now discovered by the Telescope which were never before known because not perceived by Sense And how many more there may be which are not visible to us by that help we cannot yet know till that discovery We cannot know what the extent of the Universe is whether there be any Worlds without the compass of this whether the Heavenly Bodies are inhabited and with what Creatures We cannot know the Nature Constitution Faculties of created and separate Intelligences nor the manner of their Ubi Motion Intellection mutual Intercourse or detection of their Minds These things are out of the reach of our Sense either mediately or immediately and consequently without the help of Divine Revelation we can never upon a natural account come to any certainty in them or the most we can otherwise know is by considering the reflexed acts of our Understanding whereby we know many acts of our own minds and Soul which are not perceptible to our external Senses and upon that account we may think that 〈…〉 their perception may be something analogical But Man is an Object of greatest vicinity to himself and hath thereby and by other contributions the best opportunity to know and understand himself with the greatest certainty and evidence And yet it cannot be denied that notwithstanding this great proximity of Man to himself yea and notwithstanding the many and great Essayes Attempts Enquiries and Observations that have been made in all successions of Ages by men of excellent Parts Learning and Industry we still remain and are like still to remain ignorant of many things of importance concerning our selves The great and wise God whose Glory it is to conceal a matter having lodged many things in the Humane Nature and Fabrick and Constitution thereof so secretly and so closely that notwithstanding the Experience and Observation of near 6000 years and the search and industry of the best Judgments in all Ages and the close proximity of Man to himself there are very many things in our Nature whereof we neither can and probably never shall be able to give any account to our selves or others with any evident nay with any tolerable certainty as if the Divine Wisdom meant hereby to give to the Children of Men an instance to keep them humble that cannot find out the certainty of what they hourly most intimately converse withal and an indication of his own profound and infinite Wisdom that can thus keep secret those things which in regard of their proximity to us we have great opportunity to know And of this nature are many things which we know to be but we cannot give our selves any sufficient explication of the manner or reason of them We are certain we have a vital active Principle in us by which we see understand remember which we call the Soul But whence that Soul comes or how and when and in what manner it is united to the Body whether it be extended with the Body or indivisible and in every point of the Body how and in what manner it exerciseth its nobler acts of Intellection and Volition or how far forth it stands in need of the Organs actually to exert any of those operations or how far forth it doth or may exert them without it how or by what means the Species not only of sensible Objects but even of Notions of the Mind are preserved in the Memory without confusion and dissipation notwithstanding lapse of time and intervention of infinite variety of Objects whether it be the same individual principle that exerciseth the acts of Intellection and likewise of Sense and Vegetation and if it be what become of these Faculties subservient to a temporal Life in the state of separation of the Soul where it is that the exercise of Sense is performed whether in the Brain or by the Soul by the mediation of the Spirits in the extremity of the Nerves and if the former how the Species of Visibles are carried through those dark Caverns between the Organ and Cerebellum supposed to be the Seat of the common Sense These and many more difficulties scarce explicable with any sufficient certainty do occur in the little Shop of the Fabrick of Humane Nature We must not therefore think that because of this nearness to our selves all the Phaenomena of our Nature can be rendred as evidently explicable as we do or may understand the Fabrick of our Hand by Anatomical Dissection But though this vicinity of our selves to our selves cannot give us the full prospect of all the Intrigues of our Nature yet we have thereby and by other opportunities much more advantage to know our selves than to know other things without us and by that opportunity of knowing of our selves to know the truth or falshood or analogy of very many things without us which otherwise could not be so well known or explicated 1. We have hereby an opportunity to know the Constitutions Frame and Order of our Bodies It is true the great advance of the practice and skill of Anatomy hath laid open to ocular inspection the Fabrick of the Bodies as well of Brutes and Birds as Men and therein they seem to be equally obvious to our knowledge But a Brute or a Man are another thing when they are alive from what they are when dead Anatomy can give us the Position Frame Situation Figure and connexion of all the several Integrals of the Body of Man or Beast but it is the living Mans observation of himself that must give account of those Vital motions that are in the Body when living as the Pulsations of the Heart the Circulation of the Blood the Communication of the Parts the Congruity or Disagreement between my Nature and other things variously qualified The Humor that separates divides attenuates and digests the Nourishment the several exertions of the several Organs relating to their several Functions the things that impede or advance the vital or sensible operations in a man what impressions are made upon the Blood and Spirits by the several passions of the Mind what things increase or advance the Spirits what disorder or discompose them the immediate and agil subservience of the Spirits to the Empire of the Mind or Soul These and infinite more touching the Body are discoverable by Observation and by no other Observation so well as by a mans Observation of himself 2. We have hereby an opportunity to know much more of the Nature Operations and other things relating to our Souls than we can touching other things or Natures There hath been much Dispute among Learned men concerning the manner of the Intellection of Spirits and Intelligences and by others touching the knowledge of Brutes touching their
the least inconsiderable Herb and these Signatures are bound to their natures by certain connatural instincts planted in them but still they want the active principle of Sense in them Now this Sense or Sensitive Faculty in Animals is of two kinds the external Senses and the internal The external Senses are five all which belong to the more perfect Animals and that of the Soul to all Animals viz. Seeing Heiring Tasting Smelling and Touching And it is admirable to consider that the great Lord of Nature hath so disposed of sensible Beings that although for ought we know there may be many more impressions or motions of external Bodies that we know not by their communication unto Sense because we have not Faculties receptive of them Yet the Faculties of the five Senses are adequate and proportioned to all those impressions of Objects from without that are conducible to the use and well-being of Animals in a sensible station or nature The internal Senses are of two kinds viz. 1. Such as concern perception of Objects 2. Such as concern the motion to them as useful or from them as noxious Those of the first sort have some adumbration of the Rational Nature as Vegetables have of the Sensible and they seem to be these the Common Sense the Phantasie the Estimative Faculty and the Memory The Common Sense or Commune Sensorium which receives the several reports of the several Senses by their several Nerves into that common receptacle or seat of this useful office the Brain where it distinguisheth the Objects of the several Sensories The Phantasie that in a way unsearchable unto us 1. Creates the 〈◊〉 Images of the things delivered from the several Senses to the Commune Sensorium 2. Compounds those Images into some things not unlike Propositions though confusedly and indistinctly 3. Makes particular applications of them one to another though still darkly and confusedly whereby it excites the Appetite either to prosecute their attainment or fly from them The Estimative Faculty which is indeed no other than the last operation or composition of the Phantasie before-mentioned whereby it concludes that this is a sensible good or a sensible evil that it is attainable or feasible or not attainable that though it be good yet sometimes it is not safe to be attempted by reason of the impendence of a greater sensible evil This seems to be the dark and confused shadow of the decision of the practical Intellect in Man The Memory which is an impression of the Image of some sensible Object made by the Phantasie which remains some time after the impression and by the return of a like Objedt again is sometimes revived and reinforced But how this Image is made where it is imprinted how conserved are things we cannot at all attain the knowledge of they are wonderfull though common effects of a most wise and stupendious Wisdom and Power that hath thus constituted even the Faculties of the Animal Nature Only it seems to me that these Images are not made in the Brain it self as the Pencil of a Painter or Engraver makes the Image in the Table or Metal but are imprinted in a wonderfull method in the very Soul it self For it is plain that Sounds and Voices are remembred and yet no real configurations are possible to be made thereof in the Brain for what Image can there be of a Sound Now as to that Faculty or those Faculties that concern the pursuit or flight of what is thus propounded by the Phantasie or Estimative Faculty they are generally two The Appetitus naturalis which bears some analogy to the Will in the Reasonable Nature and the acts thereof are either prosecution of the Sensible Object propounded if presented by the Phantasie and Estimative Faculty as good or else aversation from it if presented as evil This is the Faculty of Empire or Command for in conformity to the determination of the Appetite the motion of the Body follows The other Faculties that concern pursuit or aversation are the Passions the Satellites appetitus serving either in the prosecution of the good propounded as Love Desire c. or in opposition of the evil presented as Anger Revenge c. And thus far touching the Senses in Animals both External and Internal 2. The second superadded prelation of the sensible nature above the vegetable is the faculty and exercise of animal and local motion whereas Vegetables have naturally no other motion but that which is determined and natural and what is within it self as the motion of Attraction Digestion Nourishment Augmentation and Increase Animals have the faculty and power of animal motion which hath these accessions 1. It is or may be spontaneous for though the object moves objectively yet the faculty or power moves ab intrinseco and spontaneously 2. It moves the parts spontaneously the Leg the Eye the Ear or any other part which cannot be done by Vegetables 3. Again it can move the whole Compositum from one ubi to another at least in all Animals except those that are almost in the nature of Plants called Zoophyta or Plantanimali a which cannot be done by Plants who are mancipated and fixed to the place of their station or growth unless removed by an extrinsecal agent 3. The third superadded advantage of Animals is their Instincts It is true Vegetables have their instincts radicated in their nature as we have before observed yea even things Inanimate have certain simple instincts as in the motions of ascent of light bodies and descent of heavy bodies But the instincts of Animals are sensible instincts of a more noble kind and nature than those of Vegetables and such as seem to savour more of an active principle as sagacity of Brutes in taking their prey defending themselves providing against the inclemency of the weather care for their young building their nests and infinite more which are too long to name These are the superadded Faculties of the Animal Nature and proportionate and accommodate to their faculties are their organizations of their Bodies And in as much as there is great varieties in the temperaments dispositions faculties and uses of several Animals of several kinds their organizations are not only fitted to the common natures uses and powers of sensible Creatures but every several Species hath its several accommodation as well of his Organs as of his Faculties to the exigence use and convenience of his proper specifical nature Thus the ranks of the vegetable perfections are not only included within the rank of sensible Beings but these have greater perfections in what is common to both and superadditions of other more noble Faculties and Organs not communicable to the former The Vegetable Nature is indeed like a curious Engin but it hath but some simple and single motions like a Watch that gives the hour of the day or a Trochea with one Wheel But the Animal Nature is like an Engin that hath a greater composition of Wheels and more variety of motions and
accommodation and adaptation and mutual subservience of the things in Nature are the product of one most wise decree counsel and purpose of that one most wise intelligent and soveragâ—n in Being It is not here seasonable to make a large prosecution of the particular instances of that accommodation of things in Nature nor of the necessity of the former consequences arising from it The instances thereof that are sutable to the Design meant in this Discourse shall be only these two which I shall but shortly touch 1. The admirable accommodation of Sensible Faculty to the Objects of Sense and of those Objects to it and of both to the well-being of the Sensible Nature 2. The admirable accommodation of the Intellectual Faculty in Man to Intellectual Objects and of those Objects to it and of both to the well-being of the Humane or Rational Nature Touching the former the Sensible Nature in its complement and integrity hath five exterior powers or faculties that are accommodated to all those motions or impressions of natural bodies and their accidents which are useful to it and by these five ports or gates all those impressions which are useful for the perception of the Sensible Nature are communicated to it namely the five exterior Senses It is not only possible but very likely that there may be such motions or qualities of Bodies that make not any impression upon any of those Senses but if there be such they are such as are not of use for the perception or convenience of the Sensible Nature But for such as are necessary for such perception of the Sensible Nature there is no motion quality or operation of external Bodies but what hath accommodated to it a Faculty in Sense receptive of it Is there such a motion or objectiveness of external Bodies which produceth light or colour figure vicinity or distance the Faculty of Sight is fitted to receive that impression or objectiveness and that objectiveness fitted and accommodate to that Faculty Is there that motion or objectiveness that causeth sounds the Faculty of Hearing is fitted to be receptive of it and that objectiveness or motion or what ever it is fitted to make an impression upon that Faculty And so for the other Senses And by this adaptation and congruity of these Faculties to their several proper Objects and by the fitness and proportionateness of these objective Impressions Qualities or Motions upon their respective Faculties accommodated to their reception the Sensible Nature hath so much of perception and reception of things as is necessary for its sensible Being I speak not here of those other interior Senses of Discrimination of the Objects of Sense Phantasie Memory Appetite and the rest for they are not at present to my purpose II. And what is thus excellent and admirable in the accommodation between the sensitive Faculties and their Objects is to be observed in the intellectual Faculty though the Faculty and Object are far more noble and excellent than that of Sense As there is an accommodation between the visive Faculty and its Object and as there is an accommodation between the Faculty of the Taste and the Object the Object fitted to make an impression upon the Faculty and Faculty fitted to take the impression from the Object so there is an accommodation and sutable adaptation between the intellective Faculty and the intelligible Object the Object as it were thrusting it self into the Faculty and the Faculty receiving and perceiving the Object The means of derivation and immediate union of these intelligible Objects to the Understanding are various Sometimes divine and supernatural as by immediate irradiation or revelation sometimes artificial and instituted as by discourse and instituted signs and thus Intelligibles are conveyed from one man to another by words or writing sometimes natural and that seems to be by three kinds of means 1. by the mediation of Sense which is ordinarily the first basis of all humane intellectual knowledge 2. by ratiocination or discourse of the Mind whereby even from sensible Objects the Intellect receives a farther prospect of other Intelligibles not immediately presented by or to the Sense but by consequences deductions and conclusions deduced from things more obvious to Sense and perchance at first represented by it 3. there seems to be a third means which is a kind of intuition there are some truths so plain and evident and open that need not any process of ratiocination to evidence or evince them they seem to be objected to the Intellective Nature when it is grown perfect and fit for intellectual operation as the Objects of Light or Colour are objected to the Eye when it is open they are understood and assented unto quasi per saltum intuitum and though these truths are such as are also deducible by ratiocination and rational process yet the connexion between the premisses and the conclusion in them are so clear and the transition from the premisses to the conclusion is so swift short and clear that it seems to be in a moment and the assent to them and evidence of them is instantaneous such are many conclusions of moral and intellectual truths which seem upon this accompt to be congenite with us connatural to us and engraven in the very frame and compages of the Soul because they are Intelligibles of that nature that present themselves and thrust themselves into the Understanding immediately and many times without the mediation of Sense or Ratiocination There is that primitive congruity between these Intelligibles and the Intellectual Faculty that they are immediately united as I said by a kind of intuition and though they are deducible by ratiocination as conclusions from premisses yet in respect of their swift transitus in the Understanding they seem to be principles Now this excellent Faculty of the Understanding though it seems to be passive in relation to its reception of its Object yet it is not barely a passive Faculty it hath an activity about that Object that it receives and it actively trades upon it to its farther improvement And therefore according to the nature of this excellent Faculty the Understanding which as it hath been said is partly active and partly passive there are two things that do much improve and enrich this Faculty First It is improved by its Exercise and Employment the very Faculty it self will degenerate and grow sluggish dull and rusty by idleness The exercise of the Intellective Faculty makes it agil quick and lively yea though the object about which it is exercised be poor little and low yet a Man hath this advantage by the exercise of this Faculty about it that it keeps it from rust and torpidness it enlargeth and habituates it for a due improvement even about nobler Objects Secondly It is enriched by the nobleness and worth of the Object about which it is exercised when the Object is noble generous useful and sutable at least in a convenient degree to the worth of the Faculty
as they proceed from or are found in the Integrals of the Universe are devoid not only of Reason but of Sense And he that after all this shall see the World upheld without any considerable decay or defect in the same state and order as it hath been for many Thousands of years will upon a due and impartial search find that it were far more impossible that this could be without the Wisdom Power and Influx of a most Infinite Omnipresent Omniscient and Omnipotent Fixed Being than for the Humane Body to be kept without dissolution and putrefaction being destitute of the influx and regiment of its Vital Principle the Soul And therefore some of the Ancients that were willing to solve the Phaenomena of the World have though erroneously thought that the World was Animate and that all these Operations in the World proceeded from that Anima Mundi as the Operations in the Bodies of Men proceeded from that Anima Humana that lodged in it and at length finding so great effects that are and may be done by this supposed Anima Mundi according to their Hypothesis have at last proceeded in plain terms to determine that this Anima Mundi was in truth no other than the Glorious God whereas they might with much more ease and truth have attributed all the great Oeconomy of the Universe to the most Glorious God without dishonouring him into the existence of a Forma informans or a constituent part of that World which he made Others to amend that absurdity and yet out of a piece of mannerliness and respect as they think to God though they deny this Universal Soul or Form informing of the whole Universe yet without any sufficient ground have devised several Systems of the Universe and assigned several Souls to each System or Vortex at least which should be the immediate Regent in every such System as the Soul is in the Body This as it supposeth something without evident ground so it doth without any necessity For the Divine Wisdom and Power is sufficient for the management and government of the whole Universe and if such Animae Systematum should be granted yet still there must be some one common Regent of all these Systems and their respective Souls or otherwise disorder would follow between the Systems themselves But thus far even those suppositions bear witness to the necessity of a Providential Regiment of the parts of the Universe that bare Matter Motion and Chance cannot perform this business but that there is a perfect necessity of a Regent Principle besides it which may govern and dispose it as the Soul of Man doth his Body And even that supposed regiment of these particular Souls of every System as they must needs have it if they had it at all from the institution and efficiency of the Wise God so they are all continually influenced from him and the whole College of them governed guided and ordered by him as their sovereign Regent 3. The Third thing that I design is this That although it is impossible for any Created Being or the Operations thereof to hold a perfect Analogy or adequate Representation of the Divine Wisdom Power and Providence in the governing of the World because the Wisdom and the Ways of Almighty God are unsearchable and past finding out they are of such a perfection that no Created Being or Operation thereof can be a just Parallel or adequate Resemblance of them yet there seems to be such an instance in the regiment which the Humane Soul exerciseth in relation to the Body that with certain correctives and exceptions may give some kind of Explication or Adumbration thereof whereby though we can never get a complete Idea of the Divine Regiment yet we may attain such a notion thereof as may render it evidently credible and in some kind explicable 1. The first act of the Divine Nature relating to the World and his administration thereof is an immanent act The most wise counsel and purpose of Almighty God terminated in those two great transeunt or emanant acts or works the works of Creation and Providence The Divine Counsel relating to the work of Creation is that whereby he purposed to make the World and all the several Integrals thereof according to that most excellent Idea or Exemplar which he had designed or chosen according to his infinite Wisdom in those several ranks and methods and in that order and state wherein they were after created and made The Divine Counsel relating to his Providence or Regiment of the World seems to consist in these two things 1. A purpose of communication of an uncessant influence of his power and goodness for the support and upholding of things created according to the several essential states and conditions wherein they were made some being created more durable some less some in one rank of being or existence some in another 2. A purpose of instituting certain laws methods rules and effluxes whereby he intended to order and rule all the things he had made with the greatest wisdom and congruity and according to the natures and orders wherein he had created them And this is that which I call the law rule and regiment of Divine Providence and seems to be of two kinds namely general Providence and special Providence The general Providence I call that whereby every created Being is governed and ordered according to that essential connatural implanted method rule and law wherein it was created And thus the state and several motions and influences of the Heavenly Bodies is that general providential law wherein they were created and according to which they are governed and the susceptibility of those influences and the effects thereof and of that motion is the general providential law whereby other physical Beings are governed in relation thereunto the activity of the active Elements and the passiveness of the passive the methods and vicissitudes of generation and corruption the efficacy of natural causes and the proper effects consequential to them the natural properties or affections of Bodies according to their several constitutions as motion alteration ascent of light descent of heavy Bodies These and the like are the general providential Laws relating to them Again that things indued with sense should have a sensible perception and certain instincts connatural to them that rational and free Agents should move rationally and freely These and infinite more are the standing and ordinary Rules and Laws of general Providence and the wise God who sees all things from the beginning to the end and therefore can neither be disappointed nor overseen in any of his Counsels hath with that great and admirable Wisdom so ordered these Laws of his general Providence that he thereby governs most excellently the World and they are never totally changed and but rarely altered in particular and that only to most wise ends and upon most eminent occasions And the reason is because the Infinite Wisdom of God hath so instituted and modelled
give rain Jer. 14.22 Thus the wise God who doth nothing vainly or unnecessarily nor infringeth the more constant Laws of Nature when those parts thereof that are more anomalous and more easily applicable to his imperate acts and ends of Providence may serve more ordinarily chuseth those parts of Nature to execute his special Providences that may do it without any great fracture of the more stable and fixed parts of Nature or the infringment of the Laws thereof Again as the Empire of the Divine Will doth exercise its imperate acts in the Methods of special Providence upon things simply in themselves natural so it doth upon Agents or Natures intellectual and free Sometimes immediately by Himself sometimes by the Instrumentality of Angels or proposed Objects This Exercise of the imperate Acts of the Divine Providence may be upon the Understanding or Will Upon the Understanding principally these ways 1. By immediate afflatus or impression as anciently was usual in prophetick Inspirations 2. By conviction of some Truths and this may be either by a strong and over-bearing presenting of them to the Understanding with that light and evidence that it is under a kind of necessity of believing them which was often seen in the primitive times of Christianity wherein God was pleased many times irresistibly and by immediate overpowering the Understanding by the powerful impression of the Object or Truth propounded to conquer as it were the Understanding into an assent Or 2. By advancing and enlightning the understanding Faculty with a superadded light and perception whereby it was enabled to discern the truth of things delivered For as the Understanding receives some Truths proposed by reason of the congruity between the Faculty and the Object as the Eye sees some visible Objects by reason of the congruity between it and them so the reason why it perceives not all Objects of Truth is because of some defect of the Faculty whereby it holds not a full and perfect congruity with them either by reason of the remoteness or sublimity of the Object or some deficiency of light in the Faculty which is aided by the Collyrium of the Divine Assistance Rev. 2. Or else 3. By some extraordinary concomitant moral evidence such was that of the Miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles the Seals and Credentials of the Truths they delivered And as thus the imperate acts of the Divine special Providence are exercised upon the Understanding so they are exercised upon the Will and that either immediately or mediately Immediately 1. By an immediate determining of the Will For although the Will be naturally free yet it is naturally and essentially subject to the imperium divinae voluntatis when He is pleased to exercise that empire upon it This although he rarely doth yet he may do it and sometimes doth it irresistibly determining the Will to chuse this or that good and yet this without any such force or violence as is simply contrary to the nature of it because as there is no Power in the World but owes most naturally an obediential subjection to the Lord of Nature so even the Will it self is naturally and essentially subject to the determination of the Lord and Author of it 2. By immediate inclining and inflecting it to determin of it self This is that secret striving of the Spirit of God with the Will inflecting and perswading it to this or that good It differs from the former way because that it is irresistible this though potent yet in its own nature resistible by the Will of Man though it many times prevails by its efficacy V. Gen. 6.3 Eph. 4.30 Again 2. Sometimes it is done Mediately more humano and yet not without the mediate special Empire and Regiment of the Divine Will and thus it is done two ways viz. 1. By an irresistible or at least powerful conviction of the Understanding that the thing in proposal is fit and necessary to be done or omitted for although some think that the Will hath a power of choosing or refusing or suspending notwithstanding the final decision of the practical Understanding yet certain we are that ordinarily and when the Will acts as a Rational faculty it is or ought to be determined by the last decision of the practical Understanding and 2. By proposing Moral objects that do more humano guide the Will to determine it self accordingly and these are various sometimes Intervention Perswasion or Examples of others and sometimes even the junctures of Natural occurrences For as I shall have occasion to shew and is partly touched before even the Natural occurrences of things are under the guidance and conduct of the Divine Providence even when to us they seem to be either Accidental or to be the meer product of Natural Causes And surely if we should deny the intervention of Imperate Acts of Divine Providence in relation to actions Natural or Moral that appear in the World we should exclude his Regiment of the World in a great measure and chain up all things to a fatal necessity of Second Causes and allow at most to the glorious God a bare prospect or prescience of things that are or shall be done without any other Regency of things but meerly according to the instituted nature and operations of things And thus far of the Imperate Acts of the Divine Providence Only this farther I must subjoyn as a certain truth That neither the Empire of the Divine Providence or his mediate or immediate determinations perswasions or inflexions of the Understanding or Will of Rational Creatures doth either naturally morally or intentionally deceive the Understanding or pervert the Will or necessitate or incline either to any falshood or moral evil 3. The third Analogy that is between the regiment of the Soul over the Body and the Divine regiment of the Universe is in relation to the acts of general Providence or that ordinary Law wherein Almighty God governs ordinarily the Universe and the things in it without the particular mixture of those that I have called the Imperate Acts of special Providence which seems to consist of two parts 1. The institution of certain common Laws or Rules for all created Beings which without a special intervention of his Will to alter or change they should regularly observe as that the Heavenly Bodies should have such Motions and Influences that the Inferiour or Elementary World should have its several Mixtures and Transmutations by the application of the active principles and particles in it to Passives and by the virtue of the Heavenly Motions and Influences That there should be vicissitudes of generations and corruptions that Vegetables should have the operation of vital vegetation increase duration and productions according to their several kinds that Sensible Natures should enjoy a life of Sense and those several powers or faculties of Sensation Phantasie Memory Appetition Digestion Local Motion Generation and those several instincts whereby they should be managed and governed according to the conveniencies of a
appearances as one of the compound Engins of Archimedes or as a Watch that besides the hour of the day gives the day of the month the age of the Moon the place of the Sun in the Zodiack and other curious Motions wrought by multiplication of Wheels Now touching the Sensitive Natures there have been two extreme opinions both of them extremely contrary one to another and yet both of them as they are delivered by their Authors untrue 1. That Opinion that depresseth the natures of sensible Creatures below their just value and estimate rendring them no more but barely Mechanisms or Artificial Engins such as were Archytas his Dove Regiomontanus his wooden Eagle or Walchius his iron Spider that they have no vital Principle of all their various Motions but the meer modifications of Matter or at least the elementary Fire mingled with their other Matter that they have no other form or internal principle of Life Motion or Sense but that which is relative and results from the disposition texture organization and composition of their several Limbs Members or Organs This fancy began by Des Cartes in his Fundamenta Physica and hath been followed and improved by some of his admirers and particularly much favoured by Honoratus Faber in his Book De Generatione Animalium and herein they think they have given a fair solution to all the Phaenomena of the Sensitive Nature and given a fair prelation to the Soul of Man which they agree to be a substantial Principle of humane actions But in both these they have been disappointed for this supposition as it gives not at all a tolerable explication of the Phaenomena of sense and animal motions so if it did it would easily administer to a little more confidence and boldness a temptation to resolve all the Motions of the reasonable Soul into the like supposition only by advancing the Engin or Automaton humanum into a more curious and complicated constitution For he that can once suppose that the various modifications of Matter and Motion and the due organization of the Bodies of Brutes can produce the admirable operations of Sense Phantasie Memory Appetite and all those instincts which we find in Brutes is in a fair way of resolving the operation of the Reasonable Nature into the like supposition only by supposing the organization of the latter somewhat more curiously and exactly disposed and ordered as much above that of Brutes as theirs is above that of Vegetables It is true the organization of the humane and animal Body with accommodation to their several functions and offices is certainly fitted with the most curious and exact Mechanism imaginable as appears by the structure of the Heart the Lungs the Brain the Tongue the Hand the Nerves the Muscles and all other parts and the several orders and methods of their motions and adaptations to their several offices and the exercise by them of those Faculties to whose service they are consigned This must needs be acknowledged by every man that observes them or that takes the pains to read the Tracts of those that have written of them and especially Galen his divine Book De Usu Partium Des Cartes and Fabritius concerning the structure of the Eye the same Fabritius and Steno De motu Musculorum and divers others But that the Principle that sets on work these Organs and worketh by them is nothing else but the modification of Matter or the natural motion thereof thus or thus posited or disposed or the bare conformation of the Organs or the inclusion and expansion of any natural inanimate particles of elementary Fire is most apparently false even to the view of any that observes or considers impartially It is impossible to resolve Perception Phantasie Memory the sagacities and instincts of Brutes the spontaneousness of many of their animal motions into those Principles nor are they explicable without supposing some active determinate power force or virtue connexed to and inherent in their Spirits or more subtil parts of a higher extraction than the bare natural modification or texture of Matter or disposition of Organs or as they are often pleased to stile them their plexus partium Again it is visible to the Eye that that power or virtue or principle whatever it is that in the generative process first immediately formeth and organizeth the parts of the Body is that which guides orders and governs all the animal motions of it after That power which first forms the Brain the Heart the Liver the Eye is that which afterward increaseth augmenteth exerciseth and employeth them after And no man living can force himself to imagin that that Principle which forms organizeth disposeth and modifieth the parts is any thing that results from the organization or modification of those parts which are not yet moulded or framed but must have its modification from that Principle which is antecedent to any manner of organization or texture of parts into an animal composition No man therefore that hath not abjured his Reason and sworn allegiance to a preconceived fantastical Hypothesis can undertake the defence of such a supposition if he have but the patience impartially to consider and look about him 2. The other extreme Opinion seems to advance the Animal Nature too high at least without a due allay of their general expression namely those who attribute Reason and a reasoning faculty or power to Animals as well as to Men though not altogether in the same degree of perfection so that they will not have Reason to be the specifical or constitutive difference of the Humane Nature but common to them and Brutes This Opinion seems generally to be favoured by the Pythagoreans that held Transmigration of Souls by Plutarch in Grillo and his second Oration De Esu Carnium by Sextus Empiricus Contra Mathematicos by Porphyry Lib. 3. de Abstinentia ab Esu Animalium which he endeavours to prove and illustrate by divers reasons and instances and among the latter by Patricius in his fifth Book de Animis irrationalibus but above all by the ingenious and learned De Chambre in his Book of the Knowledge of Beasts wherein he asserts not only the simple apprehension of Beasts by phantasms or images wrought by the Phantasie but the conjunction of images with affirmations and negations which make up Propositions and the conjunction of Propositions one to another and illation of Conclusions upon them which is Ratiocination or Discourse And that in farther evidence thereof there is a certain kind of Language whereby Beasts or Birds especially of the same Species communicate their conceptions one to another only this discursive Ratiocination of Brutes he calls Ratio imaginativa and differenceth it from Ratio intellectualis which belongs properly to Men principally in this That the imaginative or brutal Ratiocination keeps still in particulars and within the verge of particular propositions and conclusions but intellectual Reason hath to do with universals and for the most part grounds and directs its
latitude such as are moral and supernatural Good 3. The Acts of this Faculty are generally divided into Volition Nolition and Suspension That division that herein better suits with my purpose are these Election and Empire 1. Election or choice and this in reference both to means and end for though the Schools tell us that Electio is only mediorum non finis this is to be intended of the general end or good at large and in its universal conception for when several particular ends are in proposal there is belonging to the Will a power of Election of these as well as of the means to attain them 2. The Imperium voluntatis over the Body and the Faculties We may observe in the humane as well as the animal Body two kinds of motions or exertions of Faculties some are stiled natural or involuntary such is the motion of the Heart the Circulation of the Blood the perception of the Senses when the Organs are open and the Object applied these natural though vital Faculties and Motions are not under the command of the Will immediately for whether I will or will not while I live my Heart beats my Blood circulates my Ventricle digests what is in it my Eye sees when open But there be other Motions in the humane and also in the animal Nature that are subject to the command of the Will in Man and to the appetite in Brutes as local motion which in Animals is under the regiment of the Appetite in Man under the regiment of the Will Now this Imperium voluntatis may be considered in relation 1. To it self It can suspend its own acting either of electing or rejecting 2. To the Understanding Though it cannot suspend its perception omnibus ad percipiendum requisitis adhibitis yet it may suspend its decision or determination or at least its obsequium to such decision 3. The Passions which are as it were the Satellites voluntatis and follow the command of the Will where the Will acts according to its power and authority 4. To the animal Spirits and the Vessels in which they are received when designed to Motion namely the Nerves and Muscles those are all subject to the Empire of the Will as to Local Motion of the whole Body or any part thereof when the Spirits Nerves and Muscles are in their due and natural state 5. To the sensual Appetite And indeed herein is evident both the Empire and Sovereignty of the Will and also the visible discrimination between the Humane Nature and the Animal or Brutal Nature and its preference before it In the animal Nature it is evident that the sensual Appetite is that which hath and exerciseth the sovereignty and dominion over the spontaneous actions of the animal Nature that commands the Foot to go the Mouth to eat and all other the spontaneous motions in order to a sensible good But in Man the sensual Appetite is Regimen sub graviere regimine the government of the Appetite is under the government of the Will and controlled by it at least where the reasonable Faculty is not embased and captived by ill custom or disorder And this appears two ways 1. Sometimes the very motion of the Appetite it self is restrained by the Empire of the Will so that a man doth not appetere that sensible good which otherwise he might or would because he will not and this is the most natural and noble regiment of the Will over the sensual Appetite 2. Though it may fall out that the sensual Appetite may appetere bonum sensibile yet the Will may and doth controll the empire of the Appetite in the execution of that appetition As for instance A man sees delicious fruit and he desires it in so much that were there not a controll over the empire of his Appetite it would command the Hand to reach it and the Mouth to eat it But the contrary command of the Will supersedes the command of the Appetite the Appetite desires it but the Hand is forbidden by the Will to reach it Now if any man shall say this contradiction appears not only in the reasonable Nature but even in the sensible The sensible Appetite is checked in its execution oftentimes by sensual Fear as in Dogs and Horses and other Brutes yea sometimes by the remembrance of a former suffering for the like attempt to gratifie his sensual Appetite and yet they are destitute of any superior faculty of Will to interpose a prohibition upon the Appetite I answer this is true for in such cases the impendent Fear is either present or in memory and so expected and it being of a sensible evil hath the same influence upon the sensual Appetite as the present good and therefore if the evil feared or impendent be a greater sensible evil than the good it over-rules the Appetite to aversation as the Fish that loves the bait yet feareth the hook which it discerns as a greater sensible evil the very Appetite is thereby determined to aversation But the controll of the Will upon the Appetite in the reasonable Nature is many times and indeed most often done not upon the account of a sensible evil felt or feared which of it self were sufficient to determin the Appetite but sometimes upon the account of such hopes or fears as fall not under a sensitive notice as of the command or prohibition by God yea many times upon a bare Moral account of the indecorum unreasonableness unseasonableness or utter unfitness of the thing it self without any other motive of fear either of a present or future sensible inconvenience thereby which Moral consideration can no way move the sensible Appetite were it not for the Will which being a rational Faculty is moved by it And this is all that I shall say touching the two great Faculties of the Soul the Understanding and Will I shall not add any thing here touching Passions or Affections of the Mind 1. Because they are but a kind of appendices to the Will the Satellites voluntatis those of the concupiscible kind being as it were the flowers of the motion of Volition those of the irascible kind the flowers of the motion of Aversation 2. Because the Passions for the most part are found in the sensible Nature namely those of love hatred delight grief expectation and fear and therefore I shall not here treat of them 3. I come now to consider of those rational Instincts as I call them the connate Principles engraven in the humane Soul which though they are Truths acquirable and deducible by rational consequence and argumentation yet they seem to be inscribed in the very crasis and texture of the Soul antecedent to any acquisition by industry or the exercise of the discursive Faculty in Man and therefore they may be well called anticipations prenotions or sentiments characterized and engraven in the Soul born with it and growing up with it till they receive a check by ill customs or educations or an improvement and advancement
these yet certainly of all the visible Creatures that we are acquainted with Man seems to have a very great Prerogative of excellence And though he may not bear so fair and so noble an Image of the Divine Glory as the Universe in its full Systeme and Order or as those nobler Beings that are of a Rank and Nature above him yet certainly he bears a greater measure of the Divine Image than any one visible Creature we know and so far forth as we know God himself affirms thus much of Man that he created him after his own Image which he sayes not of any of the Celestial Bodies themselves Gen. 1. Man therefore is a Creature that of all visible Creatures that we know is the noblest We may observe in the Creatures of a subordinate rank to us how the more inferiour and ignoble bear somewhat of the Image of the superiour a kind of shadow or adumbration of those perfections that in the superiour are more perfect not only by a gradually but specifically differing perfection We see in some Metals an Analogical resemblance of those vital effects of Vegetables growth digestion and augmentation that is more perfectly in Plants and perfect Vegetables We see in Vegetables a resemblance of Appetition Election Generation and in some of them an imperfect Image of that universal sense of Feeling which we find more perfectly in Animals We find in Animals especially some of them as Foxes Dogs Apes Horses and Elephants not only Perception Phantasie and Memory common to most if not all Animals but something of Sagacity Providence Disciplinableness and a something like unto a Discursive Ratiocination bearing an analogy image or imperfect resemblance of what we find though in a degree specifically more excellent in the humane Nature insomuch that Porphiry Plutarch Sextus Empericus Patricius and some others have been bold to make reasonableness not the specifical difference of the Humane Nature and some latter persons would not have the Definition of a man to be Animal Rationale without the addition of Religiosum wherein he seems particularly to exceed the Brutal Nature Although in truth that which seems to be Reason in the Brutes is nothing else but the Image and Analogical representation of that true Reason that is in Man as the Water-gall is the Image Shadow or weak Representation of the Rainbow And we have reason to think that that intellective and volitive power which is in Man bears an Image and Representation of the like power that is in Angels and separate Intelligences though neither of equality to that perfection that is in them either in degree or kind And although it were too great presumption to think that there is any thing in any created Nature that can bear any perfect resemblance of the incomprehensible perfection of the Divine Nature very Being it self not predicating univocally touching him and any created Being and Intellect and Will as we attribute them to God are as we may reasonably think not only of a Perfection infinitely transcending any created Intellect and Will but of another kind and nature from it yet though we are not able to comprehend the excellence of the Divine Nature we cannot frame unto our selves a conception of him without the notion of Intellect and Will though infinitely perfect It seems that those two great Faculties in us bear a weak Analogy with and Representation of the Divine Nature And therefore in that respect Man is the Image and Representation of the Glorious God though the disproportion between him and this his Image be infinitely more than the disproportion between Caesar and his Image upon his Coin or the Sun in the Heaven and the Shadow of him in a Bason of Water And in this respect the Humane Nature is a worthy and noble Object of our Enquiry and Knowledge because here is the best visible Image of Almighty God that we can fully acquaint our selves with next to him that was the Brightness of the Fathers Glory and express Image of his person Christ Jesus our Lord. And besides this relative consideration of the Humane Nature with relation to those Beings that are above him Man is an excellent Object of contemplation so if we look upon him either absolutely in himself or with relation to Creatures of an inferiour nature he is a worthy and noble object of our contemplation If we consider him absolutely in himself he is an Object worthy of our contemplation he is admirable in excellent composure and figuration of his Body and in every part apart and in the whole structure put together admirable in the Nature Faculties and Excellence of his Soul admirable in the conjunction of both together admirable in all the operations of Life Sense Intellect and Will which he exerciseth in this state of conjunction and union admirable in his production and generation and admirable as to the condition of his Soul in its state of disunion and separation The speculations concerning him are all full of great variety curiosity and worth because the Subject it self is such If we consider him with relation to other created Beings of an inferiour nature First he comprehends all the excellencies that are in the inferiour ranks of Being and that for the most part in a more excellent and perfect manner The Life that is in Vegetables and the operations of that Life the Life and Sense that is in Sensibles and the excellent operations of them all Sensation Perception Memory Phantasie Nutrition with its several process the faculties of Appetition Passion Generation The disposition of Parts and Organs that are best in any Animal are to be found in the disposition order and texture of the Body of man and wherein it differs it differs with much advantage and prelation over the structure of the Bodies of Animals so that the knowledge of Man gives us a full account of the excellence of others either Animals or Vegetables He that well knows Man knows whatsoever is excellent in the Animal or Vegetable Nature Secondly Besides these Excellencies common either to the Vegetable or Animal Nature and Man there are certain excellencies superadded to the Humane Nature certain specifical prelations in his Body the Structure Posture Beauty and Majesty thereof certain specifical excellencies and usefulness in some of his Organs the disposition of his Hand Brain Nerves and other Integrals Again the specifical Excellencies of his Soul in those great and admirable Faculties of Intellect and Will Of all which in their due time So that he that is well acquainted with and knows Man knows whatsoever is excellent in the Vegetable and Animal Nature and much more So that upon the whole account we have a Noble and Worthy Object of our Contemplations in the contemplation of Man 2. In the contemplation of Man we have an Object that doth not overmuch confound us with its excessive multiplicity and yet it doth not satiate nor proves ingrateful for want of sufficient variety Touching the former of these
remembring Faculty whether they have a kind of Discursive Faculty which some call Reason whether they do prescind or abstract touching their Voyces how far they are significant and whether they intentionally signifie by them how far their Animal motions are spontaneous or meerly mechanical and which are of one kind which of another or whether as Des Cartes would have it all are purely Mechanical Many vain things have been asserted by men that would be counted eminent Wits but without debating in this place the truth of any of these things it is no marvel if we are to seek what are the manner of these operations of abstract Spirits or Brutes we cannot know them unless we were in them so as to be acquainted with their inward motions or at least unless they had some such way of communicating their Perceptions and Phantasms unto us as we have to our selves or one to another But whatever can be known of them we may easily by inspecting and observing our selves know much concerning our own Souls and the operations of them We may know that we have a principle within which we do as it were feel distinct from our Bodies whereby we think and we know we think whereby we do discursively and by way of ratiocination deduce one thing from another whereby we abstract divide and define whereby we have notions of things which were never derived to us by Sense as the Substance or the Substratum of those Accidents of things which are derived to us by our Sense whereby we do correct the errors of our Sense and judge otherwise touching things represented than the Sense represents them The Sense represents the Sun no bigger than a Bushel there is somewhat within us tells and that truly that it is bigger than the Earth because we find Distance diminisheth the appearance of Bodies Our Sense tells us that the representation in the Looking-Glass hath all the motions the bulk figure colour of that corporeal Moles it represents and represents the same under all the renditions of a Body as it doth the thing it self reflected but there is that within tells us and that truly that it is but a meer shadow and no real Substratum under that appearance of any such corporeal Moles We do most certainly know that there is that within us that doth exercise a rational Empire over our passions and sensual appetite that believes hopes and acts in order to ends that respect another Life than that of Sense We do find as it were the principal seats of these operations we feel our selves to understand in our Head and that we will and resolve and love and hate and pity in our Heart almost as plainly as we find our selves see with our Eyes or hear with our Ears I feel the propensions and inclinations of my Mind as really as I feel my Body to be cold or warm I find in my self that this inward principle doth exert many of its actions intentionally and purposely I resolve and cast about to remember things that I would remember I cast about for all circumstances that may revive my Memory or Reminiscence When I command any Muscle of my most remote Limb to move it doth it in an instant in the moment I will it and hereby I understand the motions of my Mind are no way Mechanical though the motion of the Muscle be such I move ride run or speak because I will do it without any other physical impulse upon me and when I see many analogal motions in Animals which though I cannot call them voluntary yet I see them spontaneous I have reason to conclude that these in their principle are not simply mechanical although a Mouse-trap or Architas his Dove moved mechanically from an artificial principle And because I find that the remotest Muscle in my Body moves at the command of my Will and since I see the energy of my Soul in every particle of my Body though not using intellectual actions in every part yet using some that are imperate as Local Motion some that are natural and involuntary as the Pulse of my Heart the Circulation of my Blood my Digestion Sanguification Distribution Augmentation And because at the same time I understand consider determine speak walk digest and exercise as well intelectual imperate and involuntary actions and all from the same vital Principle though operating differently in several Faculties and Operations I therefore experimentally feel that my Soul though it hath the residence of the exercise of his nobler Faculties in my Head and Heart yet it pervades my whole Body and exerciseth Vital Offices proportionate to the Exigences or Use of every part the Flesh the Bones the Blood the Spirits Nerves Veins Arteries Seminal Parts and this I feel to be through my whole Body and if I find any part of my Body be so mortified as it becomes like a rotten Branch of a Tree whether it be Nerve or Joint whereby that principle cannot communicate it self to it it putrifies and corrupts and is not participant of the motion or influence derived from my Soul because it is now no longer in it to quicken it And as I find my whole Body the Province or Territory of my Soul in which it universally acts according to the different organization and use of every part so I find that my Soul as to its substantial existence is confined within the precints of it and doth not physically act without it and by all this I learn that my Soul if it be a Spirit may be circumscribed within the compass of a determinate space that though it be a Spirit yet its operations while it is in the Body may be if not altogether yet in a great measure organical I understand remember and reason better in my health than in my sickness and better in my riper years than when I was a Child and had my organical Parts less digested and inconcocted And though it be a Spirit yet I find it is no inconvenience to have some analogy at least of co-extension with my Body And although it may be a simple Spirit and univocally and essentially the same as well in my Toe as my Head yet according to the variety of the disposition and organization of the several parts of my organical Body it exerciseth variety of operations the same Soul that understands in the Brain and sees in the Eye and hears in the Ear neither understands nor sees nor hears in the Fingers but moves and feels These and many such Perceptions I have touching that principle of Life Sense and Intellection within me and of these I have as great a certainty as possibly I can have of any thing in the world First Although I cannot immediately have any immediate sight of my Soul or of its immediate operations or internal actings yet I sensibly see and feel the effects thereof with as great an evidence and demonstration that it is such as if I saw the Principle it self and its immediate
qualities common to other Bodies it hath in it some parts more active and fiery others more passive and waterish or earthy it hath its tendencies to corruption and dissipation And though after the separation of the Soul from the Body it perchance loseth some of those particular Qualities Figurations and Properties that it had before yet it retaineth many of them for many of these Proprieties of a Body as such do not depend upon the Specifical Form of the Humane Nature as such Again there is in this Body a certain Active Specifical Form whereby it is constituted in Esse Hominis which hath in it and doth communicate to the Body certain operations specifical to it by this he exerciseth those operations which either flow from or are communicated by that Form as Life Sense Intellection Volition and the like And though Life and Sense be common to Man and Brutes and their operations in many things alike yet by this Form he lives the Life of a Man and not of a Brute and hath the Sense of a Man and not of a Brute For there is no such thing as Animal or Vivens not determined unto some particular Species as there is no such thing as a Man not determined in some individual For Universals are but Notions and Entia Rationis having their existence only in the understanding power and not in reality And these Operations and Faculties of Humane Life Humane Sense and Humane Understanding and Volition flow not from the corporeal Moles but from some other active regent Principle that resides in the Body and governs it whiles it lives which we call the Soul And therefore although the corporeal Moles after some kinds of Deaths retain the same bulky Integrals the same Figure Colour and many other accidents yet the Soul being removed the Faculties and Operations of Life Sense and Intellection cease from that Moles corporea and are no longer in it This Principle of Life Sense and Intellection in Man called the Soul hath the Body as its Province and Districtus wherein it exerciseth these Faculties and Operations and we shall find the Actions which are performed by it in the Body are of three kinds or natures 1. Some are immanent and not terminated immediately in any external or corporeal action 2. Some are transient and spontaneous terminating in the Body or some parts or motions thereof 3. Some transient but involuntary and exercised and terminated in or upon the Body These seem to be the several kinds of Actions of the Soul at least relating to the Regiment and Oeconomical Government of the Soul upon the Body 1. The internal and immanent Faculties and Acts of the reasonable Soul besides those of Common Sense Phantasie Memory Passion and Appetite common to Men and inferiour Animals are Intellect and Will and the proper Acts of the Intellect are Intellection Deliberation and Determination or Decision The proper Acts of the Will are Volition Nolition Choice Purpose or Resolution and Command in relation to Subordinate Faculties And although there be many actings both of the Intellect and Will that are relative to other things or objects than what immediately concern the Microcosm it self yet the principal part of that analogical Providence that the Soul exerciseth in relation to the Microcosm or Humane Compositum are Intellection Deliberation and Determination in the Understanding and Choice Volition Nolition and Purpose in the Will and these do or should regularly precede all those imperate Acts of the Soul that relate to the Compositum Before I write or speak or go a journey or eat or any the like action there is the deliberation of the Understanding whether I shall do this action the decision of the Understanding that it is fit to be done the choice of the Will to do it the purpose of the Will that it shall be done And although many times the distinction of these several procedures of the Soul do not always appear distinct especially in sudden or ordinary actions which seem to have but one act antecedent to the thing done namely the willing of it to be done yet in actions of weight and importance all these have their distinct order and procedure For although in the most incomprehensible and perfect Will of Almighty God there is no such succession of procedure yet in the operations of the rational Soul that is linked to the Body there is ordinarily that successive procedure of those immanent acts of the Soul that relate to any thing to be done This therefore is the first part of that analogical Providence that the Soul exerciseth in relation to the Body namely deliberation or counsel and decision in the Intellect and choice and purpose in the Will 2. The next Act which immediately succceds Purpose is the Command that is given by the volitive Faculty of the Soul and the Execution thereof and herein are considerable First The Power commanding which is the Will now determined by purpose or resolution Secondly The things to which these commands relate or the Object of them which in relation to the Body is in effect nothing but motion of the Spirits Nerves Muscles parts of the Body or the entire Compositum by virtue of this command the Muscles the Hand the Eye the Tongue perform those imperate commands of the Will I do not digest sanguifie nor my Heart move nor my Blood circulate nor my Meat digest by any immediate command of my Will but I eat I drink I move my Eye my Hand my Muscles my whole Body in pursuance of this command of my Will Thirdly The executive Instrument of this command mediately are my Nerves and Muscles but immediately those subtil invisible and forcible Engins which we call the Animal Spirits these being the most subtil parts in Nature and parts of matter subtilized next in degree of purity to that Soul that commands them are in their nature proper fit and suitable to be the first recipients of the Empire of the Soul they are the nimblest agil strongest Instruments fittest to be executive of the commands of the Soul they are a middle nature between the Soul and the Body the nexus animae to the Body and these subtil Messengers speedily dispatch themselves through the Nerves to the Muscles which are by these Spirits and the native Indoles that is in them and the exact texture of them fitted to move those Integrals of the Body to which they serve and as the Spirits shot through the Nerves are the first and immediate Instruments of the Soul in its imperate acts so the Muscles are as it were the Instruments of the Spirits or the remote Instruments of these imperate motions And by this means the Soul hath the actual imperium and command of all those motions of the Body which are spontaneous or capable of being commanded by the volitive Power of the Soul 't is by this the Eye-lid opens or shuts the Eye is converted to this or that object the Lungs are intended or
discovered ex praenotis per viam rationalis discursus Thus probably Men by the Signatures Tasts and Colours of Herbs bearing analogy to other things they knew concluded fairly touching their Nature and Use which by Tryal and Experience they improved into more fixed and stable Theorems and Conclusions And upon this account also many Practical Arts especially relating to Numbers Weight Measure and Mechanism had their production for the Rudiments of Proportion being lodged in the Mind they seem to have grown intentionally and ex industria into those various practices of Arithmetick Geometry and Mechanicks resulting from those principles per media processus rationalis and thus those practices of the Rules of Proportion Mechanical Motions Staticks Architecture Navigation Measuring of Distances and Quantities and infinite more did arise 4. Some things in their first discovery seem purely accidental and although possibly the operation of Reason and Tryal and Experiment might or may carry on the Invention into farther Improvements and Advances yet in the very first primo primum of the Discovery it may be accidental The old whether true or fabulous Discovery of Fire may serve to explain my conception wherein it is supposed that one sitting upon a Hill and tumbling down Flint stones upon the collision thereof he observed sparks of Fire which nevertheless he after improved by adding combustible materials to it and doubtless upon such and the like occurrences many Chymical and other accidental Discoveries have been made besides and beyond and without the intention of the Operator And I well knew a Person that had not capacity enough to deduce any thing of curiosity per processum rationalem yet by accidental dealing with Water and some Canes did arrive to a most admirable excellence in some Mechanical Works of that nature though he never had the Wit to give a reason of his performance of them 5. Some things have been found out by a kind of necessity and exigence of Humane Nature such as Clothes Societies Places of Defence and Habitation and possibly much of the plainer sort of Tillage and Husbandry Venter magister artis ingeniÃque largitor and commonly these were the earliest Inventions because Nature stood early in need of them And hence it came to pass that they who had Coelum clementius that afforded them necessaries without the assistance of considerable Industry continued longest rude and uncultivated And therefore if the Husbandry of Ceres or Triptolemus came late into the World it was because those Eastern Countries then inhabited abounded with plenty of Fruits which supplied the defect of Husbandry till the World grew more dispersed and fuller of Inhabitants and transmigrated into parts of less natural fertility 6. Some things have been discovered not only by the Ingeny and Industry of Mankind but even the inferior Animals have subministred unto Man the invention or discovery of many things both Natural and Artificial and Medicinal unto which they are guided and in which they are directed by secret and untaught instincts which would be infinite to prosecute The Fable or History of Glaucus observing Fishes to leap into the Sea upon tasting an Herb by the shore the Weasel using Plantane as an Antidote the wounded Stag using Dittany to draw out the Arrow if true and divers others give us some Analogical Instances And these are ordinarily the Methods of Discoveries The Things or Objects discovered are principally of two kinds viz. 1. Such things as are already lodged in Nature as Natural Causes and Effects and those various Phaenomena in Nature whereof some lye more open to our Senses and daily observation others are more occult and hidden and though accessible in some measure to our Senses yet not without great search and scrutiny or some happy accident others again are such as we cannot attain to any clear sensible discovery of them either by reason of their remoteness distance and unaccessibleness as the Heavenly Bodies and things closed up in the bowels of the Earth or by reason of their subtil and curious texture escaping the clear and immediate access of Sense as Spiritual Natures the Soul and its various Faculties and Operations and the Reasons or Methods of them wherein for the most part our acquests touching them are but Opinion and Conjecture wherein Men vary according to the variety of their Apprehensions and Phantasies and wherein because they want that manuduction of Sense which is our best and surest Guide in the first Instance in matters Natural Men range into incertain inevident and unstable Notions 2. Such things as are Artificial wherein some Discoveries are simply new others are but accessions and additaments to things that were before mentioned Some things are of convenience utility or necessity to Humane Nature or the condition of Mankind some things are of curiosity some things are found out casually or accidentally some things intentionally and out of those Principles or Notions that seem to be lodged originally in the Mind Now upon these Considerations premised it seems that the late Discovery of many things in Nature and many Inventions in Art are not a sufficient Evidence of the Origination or late Origination of Mankind at least taken singly and apart 1. In things Natural the variety is so great and the various combinations therein so many that it seems possible that there should not have been a full discovery of the whole state of things Natural unto the Minds of Men although there were supposed an eternal duration of Mankind We may give our selves a Specimen hereof if we look but back upon that one Piece of Nature with which we have reason to be best acquainted namely our selves which by reason of our vicinity to our selves our daily conversation with our selves and others of the same Species our daily necessities and opportunities of inquiring into our selves and the narrowness of our own nature in comparison of the vast and various bulk of other things seems to render us a Subject capable of being very fully discovered And besides all this the more inquisitive and judicious part of Mankind have industriously set themselves for many Ages to make the best discovery they could of the nature of Man Hippocrates the Father of Physicians who lived in the 82 d Olympiad and above 2000 years since busied himself much and profoundly in this Enquiry and a succession of industrious observing and learned Physicians and Naturalists have pursued the Chase with all care and vigilancy and by the help of Anatomical Dissections have searched into those various Maeanders of the Veins Arteries Nerves and Integrals of the Humane Body Yet for all this in this sensible and narrow part of Humane Nature the husk and shell thereof how much remains after all this whereof we are utterly ignorant So that notwithstanding all the Discoveries that have been made by the Ancients and those more curious and plentiful Discoveries by the latter Ages there still remains so much undiscovered that leaves still room for Admiration
and Industry and gives us a powerful conviction of our Ignorance that the things we know in this little narrow obvious part of Nature the Body of Man is the least part of that we know not touching the same But when we yet consider how small a part of the Humane Nature is that which is the Corporeal part and how little we know with any tolerable certainty touching the more noble Parts Acts and Operations of the Humane Nature the Principle of Life Sense and Intellection we have still reason to conclude that this little narrow near Subject of our Knowledge is yet very difficult for us actually and fully to comprehend and furnisheth our search with more Materials than we are possibly able to exhaust with all our Industry Care Study and Observation When I consider those difficulties that occurr touching the Production of that we call the Soul whence it is what it is what power it is that performs the processus formativus that digests disposes models the prima stamina naturae humanae that acts with most admirable skill dexterity infallible order and in the most incomparable way of Intelligence and yet wholly destitute of those Organs whereby we exercise the operations of Life Sense and Intellection That incomparable accommodation of all parts and things fittest for use for time for convenience Again when I consider those various powers of the Sensible Nature that Regiment that it performs and exerciseth by the Spirits Nerves and Muscles the admirable powers of Sensation of Phantasie of Memory in what Salvatories or Repositories the Species of things past are conserved Again when I consider the strange powers of Intellection Ratiocination Reminiscence and what that Thing or Nature is that performs all those various operations And when I consider how little how incertain how contradictory those Sentiments of Mankind have been touching these things wherein nevertheless they have searched and toyled Age after Age I must needs conclude That if we had no other subject of our search and enquiry besides our selves we should have for ought I know for infinite Ages a continued stock for our discovery and when we had learned much yet still even in this narrow Subject there would be still somewhat to be learned and we should never be able actually to overtake the plenary discovery of what would remain Sic rota posterior currit sed in axe secundo And if this one small near piece of Nature still affords new matter for our discovery where or when should we be ever able to search out all the vast Treasuries of Objective Knowledge that lyes within the compass of the Universe So that the new Discoveries that have been made in Natural things is not a sufficient evidence of the newness of the existence of Mankind because of that inexhaustible Magazin of Natural Causes and Effects which possibly will store Mankind with new Discoveries unto an everlasting continuance 2. And the same that is said for the redundance of matters intelligible and cognoscible in things Natural may be also applied to things Artificial There are these things that render Artificial Inventions prodigiously fertil and various 1. The variety of the materials of things that may be applied to Artificial ends and uses as we have Iron Brass Wood Stones Sounds Light Figuration Tactile qualities some things of a more active some things of a more passive nature some things diversified in degrees of heat cold dryness moisture various Elements Meteors and infinite variety of these Materials we have which may be the material constituents or ingredients into Artificial Structures Engins Motions or Effects 2. The variety of the Apprehensions and Fancies of several Men in the destination and application of things to several ends and uses and this arising in them partly by the various texture and frame of their very temper of their Brains Blood and Spirits partly by variety of Education partly by Necessity partly by Accidental Emergency by this means possibly the same Material is variously managed into various Artifices according to this variety of Phantasy or Imagination As take the same Wool for instance one Men felts it into a Hat another weaves it into Cloth another weaves it into Kersey or Serge another weaves it into Arras and possibly these variously subdiversified according to the phantasy of the Artificer For it is most certain that there is not greater variety in the figures and complexions of Mens Faces and Features and in the contemperations of their natural Humours than there is in their Phantasies Apprehensions and Inclinations And hence it is that for instance the texture of Zeuxes or Apelles inclines him to the invention or improving of Painting Archimedes to Mechanical Motions Euclid to Geometrical Conclusions and hence it must necessarily come to pass that according to the variety of Men that either casually or industriously apply themselves to Artificial Discoveries or Inventions there will ensue variety of Inventions That Invention that did arise from the Genius or temperament of the Phantasie or Imagination of Apelles would probably never in the same individual Invention have been found out before him though the World of Men had lasted millions of Years before him because perchance in that long Period no Man had ever the same Syntax of Phantasie or Imagination that he had and consequently though some Artificial Inventions are as it were of that common congruity to the general Phantasies of Men or seem to arise upon a common sutableness to the use or exigence of Mankind as digging planting ploughing sowing making of Apparel and Houses yet some have that particular respect or cognation to the Phantasie of this or that particular Man that they would never have been found out till such a Man had had his being in the World and consequently the Invention was not found sooner because the Man to whose Phantasie this Invention was accommodate was not born nor lived sooner 3. The variety of Application and Combination of several Materials of Artificial things in their several Artificial Complements For it is very plain that even where things are finite and determinate in their number yet they arise to a strange and prodigious multitude if not indefinitude by their various Positions Combinations and Conjunctions The Letters of the Alphabet which arise from the several apertures and conjunctions of the Tongue the Teeth the Palate the Lips the Throat are but 24 in number yet various combinations of these Letters are the formal constituents of all the Words and Languages in the World And yet all the Words and Languages in the World do not amount to the hundredth part of those other articulate Languages that might be made out of the remaining combinations of the Letters of the Alphabet which are not in use in any or all the Languages of the World The general division of Lines in Geometry is into streight and crooked but the various combinations and positions of these two sorts of Lines would make more Figures of
Position of Cardanus and contends not only that it is possible but that de facto it is true The sum of his Opinion seems to be this That although the Soul of Man be of a higher nature and extraction yet the Body and these Powers or Faculties of Life and Sense may be and have been formed ex putredine without the conjunction of Sexes as Weeds Vegetables and Insects And that he meaneth such a Production to be by an ordinary course of Nature he largely insists upon that Axiom of Aristotle Sol homo generant hominem which he understands in sensu diviso and that there is in the heat of the Sun an active generative Principle which in Matter prepared for its operation commonly called Putrefaction produceth a Seminal Formative Seed sufficient of it self for the production of the Humane Nature as also of the nature of other Animals That the Species of Animals are eternal not upon the account of an eternal succession by ordinary propagation but by that succession that would arise in certain great Conjunctions of the Heavens and the heat of the Sun which would be productive of the Individuals of the several Species though all the Species of Animals were destroyed by Floods or other accidents as possibly they might be That although the ordinary Method of preserving the Species of Men and Animals by ordinary Generation be fitted for the ordinary continuation of the Species yet without this Method of production out of prepared Earth Nature were defective and wanted a sufficient Expedient for the preservation of Species upon great Occurrences That although this production of Men and perfect Animals ex putri be not obvious to our ordinary Experience it is not because the Supposition wants truth but because 1. Every place is not fit for such a production but where there is a constant and sufficient heat duly to prepare and digest the Matter But the likeliest place for such production is some unknown place between the Tropicks where the heat is great and constant 2. Because the maturation and ripening of such Productions require longer time than that which is sufficient for the production of Insects for we see greater Animals even with all the advantages of the calor uterinus require a longer time for their formation and maturation as a Man nine months an Elephant two years and consequently their productions without this auxilium uterinum must require longer time Then he gives us a large account touching Insects that arise ex putredine and yet are of the same Species with those that are produced per coitum and that when they are produced ex putri materia yet they propagate successively Individuals of the same kind and that if greater Animals were thus produced they would be of the same Species with the like Animals propagated per generationem ordinariam and would accordingly propagate their kind as many Herbs and Trees arise spontaneously yet are of the same Species with others that are per seminationem and produce Seed and thereby continue their Species as well as others that arise per proseminationem This I take to be the effect of his Position and his Reasons which are very learnedly and smartly refuted by Fortunius Licetus in his first Book de Spontaneo Ortu But yet there was one difficulty which Caesalpinus doth not at all as I remember obviate which yet renders his Supposition utterly inexplicable namely since the Heat and Influences of the Heavens even in their supposed extraordinary Conjunctions must needs be uniform at those times and in or near those Climates wherein they happen how comes it to pass that the same univocal Heat doth produce at that time any variety of Animals why should it not produce only Men as the best of Animals rather than Horses Tigers Lions c. Again on the other side since the disposition of all the parts of Terrestrial Matter is so divers and qualified with infinite combinations of Qualities and Particles how it comes to pass that in these great Conjunctions there are not infinite varieties of things produced but they are determinate in certain Ranks and Species of Being whereas the modifications of the Matter are so various and infinite that the Species of things would be infinite irregular Humano capiti cervicem equinam So that there seems necessary some superintendent Intellectual Nature that by certain election and choice determined things in those determinate Ranks and contained them within it For the heat and influence of the Heavenly Conjunctions and of the Sun being common and universal and the various Particles of the Earth variously modified and qualified there could never only by these means be any determining or containing the Species of Animals within any determinate constant figures or bounds And this we shall hereafter find necessary when we come to consider the determination of Insects also in their several Species Again he gives us not any reasonable Explication by this Hypothesis how the discrimination of Sexes happen how all things thus produced come to propagate their kind and to contain their Productions within the specifick limits of the natures of such Animals all which were necessary to be done to render his Supposition of this natural production of Men or Animals ex putredine to be any way tolerable Beregardus therefore in his 10 th Circulus Pisanus hath refined and rectified this Hypothesis of Caesalpinus and of Pomponatius that went before him and though he can never make out the truth or probability of his Supposition yet he hath rendred it more tolerably explicable especially in relation to the forementioned deficencies I will give the sum of his Supposition briefly as I understand it And it seems thus That the Calidum innatum is that Altrix anima and Princâ—pium seminale sine quo nihil gignitur and is the Basis of Life in all things that have it but yet it is never single and by it self but is the first Rudiment of Life and determined by the particular Species of Life in every Individual that hath Life for there is no vivens that is not either Equus or Canis or Vitis or some other determinate Vegetable or Animal That there are three kinds of this Life wherein it is specifically determined viz. Vegetable Sensible and Rational That at least the two former he means the latter also if he durst speak out are raised out of certain Seminal Principles whereby the Calidum innatum is specifically determined to this or that Specifical Life That these Semina are not eternal because made up of things or Principia that are pre-existing this seems perfectly to agree with the Doctrine of Epicurus before mentioned whose Patronage he seems to take in the Person of Aristaeus yet with some Correctives as is hereafter shewn That there were in Nature various kinds of Calida or Fiery Particles or Spiritus ignei and various kinds of Humida and Frigida these were eternally floating up and down in small Particles and
will gather life and the form of an Insect 4. As the Animal vivum thus communicates a Sensible Nature to Insects produced from it so doth the Cadaver or dead Body Hence come generally Worms which in the heat of the Sun sometimes turn into Flies and according to the Tradition of the Ancient and Moderns Bees grow out of the dead Bodies of Cows Wasps and Hornets of Horses which nevertheless some attribute to a refiduum of those Seminal Particles of the very Insects which these Beasts devour with the Flowers and Herbs where they are lodged And to maintain that general Supposition before insisted upon That Viva sentientia non generantur ex non vivis sentientibus they say That even in the Cadaver there remain certain Animal Spirits tanquam in vase which serve for the production of Animal Natures of this base and low allay And so in all those productions of Insects ex animale vivo vel cadavere the Semen of that Insect is a Vital and Animal Principle though it be not immediately at least of the same kind And because these Productions are not immediately of the Seminal Particles of the Insect but of a living nature of another kind therefore always the Productum or Insect is of a different baser and more imperfect nature than the Producent And this is the Sum of what is observed by Licetus de Sponte ortis and Kircherus ubi supra viz. Lib. 12. Mundi subterranei But yet though much of this be very true and that Insects are not therefore sponte nata as people think yea they are never sponte nata ex non viventibus yet I do doubt that it may be found by experience that some sorts of Insects do arise from Vegetables at least of a very exalted nature for the truth is that some sort of Vegetables seem to be in the next degree to the lowest sort of Insect Animals as may appear in the Plant called the Sensitive Plant and some others And therefore it is not impossible but some sort of Insects may arise immediately out of some sort of Vegetables as the Gurgulio that ariseth in the Wheat the Wivel that riseth in the Malt and the Hippuris or Horse-tail and the Liburnus or White Vine that Kircher himself mentions in the same 12 th Book Sect. 1. Cap. 9. to grow into an Insect in the Water and those Instances in the same Chapter of Franciscus Corvinius that in every Vegetable had observed a proper Insect bred in it and living upon it and the experience of the growing of Moths out of the Seeds of Lavender and Worms in Rose-Cakes these experimented Observations seem to correct the universality of the Assertion that Non nascuntur Insecta animalia ex non animalibus though I think it may be universally true that they are not produced ex non viventibus they are always the production of the Semen or Seminal Particles of an Insect or of the Parts of an Animal or Cadaver animalis or of that which is or was vegetable Yet some there are that think that these Insecta animalia that seem to be produced immediately ex herbis stirpibus arboribus vegetabilibus or Animals of another kind yet the first Seminium of these Insecta are either the Semina or the Seminial Particles of Insects of the same Species percolated through the various parts of Vegetables or Animals In so much that Gassendus that inquisitive Naturalist seems to think that the very Lice and Fleas and Worms in a Man are but the Productions of the several Seeds of Animals of the like kind Cum in eodem homine ex sordibus capitis Pediculi ex sordibus barba Alae inguinis Ricini ex intercutaneo humore Cyrones oriantur ita de caeteris quonam alio id referamus quam ad diversa semina quae à diversis sive plantis sive animalibus proliciantur sese ad diversas partes quatenus congruunt recipiant accommodántve inter nutriendum I do not here take upon me a distinct and exact Discourse touching production of Insects it is one of the most abstruse curious and various Inquiries in Nature There be many that have busied themselves on purpose in it to which any one may have recourse as Cardanus in his Book de Subtilitate and scaliger his Animadversions thereupon Gassendus in Physicis sect 3. l. 4. cap. 1. Kircher l. 12. sect 1 2. Aldrovandus per totum Fortunius Licetus his Book De Ortu Sponte nascentium Vossius De Origine Idololat lib. 4. cap. 65. seqq All that I shall say farther in it is but this First that it is most certain that many of those productions of Insects which Men ordinarily take to be spontaneous are yet in truth univocal from Insects of the same species their formal Seeds or Seminal Particles Secondly that it is not certain that any production of Insects is spontaneous or not from the Seed of other Animals that were of the same species for we are not certain but that the seminia or Seminal Particles of these Insects may be percolated or derived by divers Maeanders and long obscure passages into or through the Bodies of Vegetables or Animals of another species Thirdly that it is very probable that they are so traduced by these experimental Assays that have been either experimented by Observation or by Art whereby it is rendred evident to Sense that their production at this day may be and often is of the semina or Seminal Particles of Insects of the same kind The Consequence whereof is That the production of all these little Particles of Sensitive Life as well as of the greater Animals though at the first it were ex non genitis by the Power and Fiat of Almighty God yet since that time it may be probable they have their propagations univocal Ex semine vel seminio praeexistentis Insecti ejusdem speciei vel formato vel analogo This Consideration may assure us That the production at least of the generality of Insects which seem to be spontaneous is truly seminal and univocal though possibly upon a severe disquisition it may be found that some are meerly spontaneous and equivocal Productions ex putri whereof I shall give a farther account in something that follows especially in the next Section CAP. V. If it be supposed that any of those Insects at this day have their Original ex non genitis or spontaneè whether yet the same may be said a Natural or Fortuitous Production I Come now to the Second Particular which is this That admitting there were any such production of Insects at this day whether the same were purely Natural Wherein I shall briefly say 1. That it seems very probable that the species of Insects were at first in their first Creation determinate and certain and although since partly by degeneration partly by various mixtures their species are changed and multiplied even as the perfect Animals in Africa are by a mixture
of species yet they were at first determinate 2. That it seems the production of the first Insects was like to that of perfect Animals they were not produced ex semine or per processum seminalem whether ex Ovo or ex Verme but were produced in the complement of their specifical and individual existence For it is much more suitable to Reason and to the nature of things that the Animal should have an antecedence to the Seed and that the semen should be rather the effect of an Animal at first than an efficient or according to Plutarch's Discourse that the Hen should be before the Egg rather than the Egg before the Hen. 3. That yet if we should suppose that in the first production of Insects at least they should arise ex praeexistente semine or that at this day they should arise de novo yet bare Matter were not possibly sufficient for its production without some Seminal Principle that might determin the Insect to its kind and advance in it that formation and organization of Parts and effect those admirable Faculties of Sense and Imagination which we see in them For it were exceedingly above the bare activity of Elementary qualities though the most active as that of Heat to raise so curious and admirable a Fabrick as the Bodies of those little Animals much less the Faculties of Life Sense and Imagination And if it were possible that some of the qualities and dispositions or modifications or temperament of Matter could arrive to the production of any such little sensible Being yet it could never be contained nor contain it self within any determinate species or kinds but as the modifications temperaments and qualities of Matter are infinite and various according to its various Mixtures and Combinations so the Productions would be ever irregular monstrous and never colligated or contained in any certain species It remains therefore that in the first production of Insects whether at this day or in the first eduction of their species if they were not produced in the complement of their individual and specifical nature they must necessarily be produced ex aliquo semine congruo determinante materiam And certainly the Constitution of such a semen is as I have before observed a work of great Wisdom Intelligence and Power no way less than such a Power that must have made an Individual of the same kind in his complete existence For the semen of every thing contains in it the small idea of that Nature which it is to produce which is as it were minted and stamped upon it and contains an admirable power of evolving and dilating it self and bringing forth that admirable Fabrick and that singular Conformation of Parts and those wonderful Faculties of Life Sense and Imagination and the several Organs and Operations belonging to it Some there are that have said and with very great truth That the smallest Animal in the World sets forth the Wisdom and Excellence of the great Architect of the World more conspicuously than the Fabrick of the greatest Whale or Elephant as the smaller an excellent Watch is if it have all its parts motions order and constancy it more sets forth the skill of the Artist than a greater Fabrick When a Man shall see in that Animal that well near escapes his sight by reason of its smalness as the Acarus the Cyro or Hand-worm yet he shall plainly by the help of a Microscope behold in it all the conformation of its little Limbs useful for its being all the Operations of Senses and Organs thereof the several Faculties Offices and Parts subservient to it the several Viscera that serve for the exercise of Life and Sense it must needs render the Skill of the Author thereof admirable But yet again when possibly the Seminal Principle of this little Animal bears it may be as small a proportion to it as the Insect it self doth to greater Animals it may be a little imperceptible Egg and yet in that little Body all the Ideal parts of this Animal and that Principle that immediately conforms the several Faculties and Organs of this little Animal The Power and Wisdom that conforms such a little semen is no less wonderful than if it had immediately conformed the Animal without the intervention of such a Seminal Particle And therefore most certainly the Conformation of these little Moleculae seminales if any be antecedent to the production of these Insects is a work of intelligence choice election design and that of a most wise and intelligent Being and cannot be the production either meerly of Chance as the Epicureans would have it nor of that which little differs namely an ignorant unknowing unelective Principle for such is barely Nature unless they that use that denomination mean by it Almighty God And when I assert that these Moleculae seminales antecedent to the production of any living or sensible nature if there be any such are produced by Almighty God it is not my meaning that they are therefore immediately created or immediately put together or compounded by the immediate Finger of God if I may use that Expression to render the sense I intend But it is sufficient that the great and supreme intellectual Being having in his infinite Wisdom the Prospect of all things hath so set and ordered the Motion of Second Causes to bring together and mingle the constituent Materials of these semina and he by his Almighty Fiat hath annexed to such Compositions and imprinted upon them the stamp and efficacy of a Seminal Principle it will be equally the Work of Almighty God if these Compositions be brought together by the Motion and Heat of the Sun or by the powerful Motion and Determination of various kinds of Ferments some possibly originally created and dispersed in the Earth Air and Waters others accidental arising from the corrupted and mingled Matter of dissolved Animals and Vegetables whereof I shall in due time God willing give a more distinct Account as if they were immediately created out of nothing But the Mint the Stamp the Signature the Seminal Efficacy of this Molecula seminalis is the Intention Election and Fiat of the glorious God and can never be the bare production of a surd unintelligent nature So that although it should be granted that the excrescence of those Insecta animalia is not at this day from the semina insectorum but that both in the first production of them in Nature and the yearly or daily production of them now they were ex seminibus non ex insectis decisis yet those seminia or seminales moleculae were not meerly natural as Nature imports a surd production of things but were the Work and Intention of the great and glorious God of Nature So then we may hereby see what would be purely natural in these semina what not 1. It were thus far natural that the material Particles thereof possibly might have an existence in Nature before their Composition whether these
and fitted for this production which could not be but after some great and long continuing Flood or Inundation that might prepare and dispose the Matter for the Activity of that great Revolution and if these should not meet together or in some convenient nearness the production of Mankind and perfect Animals would be frustrated 3. That in as much as provident Nature hath had for many Ages and yet hath a sufficient Seminium and stock for the preservation of the Species of Men and perfect Animals raised by propagation and the mutual conjunction of Sexes Nature is not necessitated to have recourse to this extraordinary way of peopling and furnishing the World and therefore it cannot be expected but after some vast devastation that may endanger at least the extinguishing of the species of things To these things I say first in general That if Men shall upon such a Method of Arguing go about to establish a Supposition that neither they nor any else have ever known or experimented and make a Conclusion of a thing as natural upon such Suppositions as never any Man knew or heard to produce such effects Men may assume any thing to be natural which yet hath not footsteps in Nature bearing any analogy to it But to the particulars As to the first it is unreasonable to make such a Supposition for since it is not possible for any Man to know whether there be any such Influence of the Heavens to effect such productions unless by Experience and Observations of some Men or some other way the notice thereof were given to Mankind it being a Matter of Fact that can no other way be known but by Experience or Revelation and since the bare beholding of those Heavenly Bodies being of that distance can never without Observation of Events give us any natural estimate of their Effects what they are or may be and since it must needs be granted that such imagined Conjunctions as may be effectual for such productions are at vast unknown distances and such as no Age before hath or indeed can leave us any Memorial of it must needs be a vain and precarious assumption to attribute any natural Efficacy to any Conjunction whatsoever for such a production The Ancient and Divine Historian Moses gives us indeed an account of the Origination of Man and all other Animals but not upon any natural causation or activity of the Heavens or Heavenly Bodies but as he gives us the History of the Things so he gives us the true Resolution of the Cause not a natural but a supernatural Cause namely the Intention and Volition of the Great and Wise God and to exclude any imagination of a natural or necessary Cause of these productions doth not only tell us in express terms that the production of them was by the Energy of the Divine Fiat but also that the production even of Vegetables themselves that seem to have the greatest dependance upon Celestial Influences was antecedent to the Constitution of those Heavenly Bodies 1. As the Supposition of such a Natural Causality in the Heavens is meerly precarious so it seems even to our Sense apparently false for we see every year without any other than an ordinary Conjunction by the Access of the Sun Insects and Plants sponte nascentia do arise and we know that ordinarily in the compass or revolution of 800 or 1000 years very great and considerable mutations happen in the Position and Conjunction of the Heavenly Bodies and we know that within the compass of Authentick History these Revolutions have happened above thrice and since the latest Epocha of the Worlds Inception above five times yet none of these great Revolutions have for any thing we ever knew or heard produced any one Horse or Lion or Wolf much less any one Man as a Terrigena And therefore Experience the best means to settle such an Hypothesis doth not only not warrant it but is evidently contrary to it and denies it 2. As to the second the Mosaical History gives us an account of an Universal Deluge about 4000 years since which lay long upon the whole Earth and the Grecian History gives us an account of two very great Floods namely the Ogygian and the Deucalian Floods and every Year gives us an account of the Inundation of Nilus in Egypt a most fruitful Continent and near the Sun whereby the Soil is made admirably fruitful and there is scarce any Age but some great portions of Land are laid dry by the recess of some parts of the Ocean which had lain covered for many thousands of years before with the sea And as the universal Deluge was as great a preparation of the whole Earth so these particular Inundations and Recesses of the Sea left particular Spots of Land as well prepared for such productions as can well be imagined and yet in no Age have we any Instance of any such production abating the Story of the Egyptian Mice which concrete after the recess of Nilus which yet of most hands are agreed to be Insects and sponte nascentia ex putredine Indeed Beregardus tells us ubi supra out of Camerarius that about Cayro after the reflux of Nilus there are often seen divers Limbs or Parts of Mens Bodies whether this be true or no or if true whether they are not only relicks of some Bodies swept away by the Inundations of Nilus out of their Graves or Sepultures and torn asunder by the furious Cataracts of Nilus is not clearly evident But be they what they will or whether the Lusus naturae yet they make nothing to this matter unless Camerarius or some other had seen those divulsa membra come together and configured into an humane Shape and animated with a humane Life which neither he nor any other have yet affirmed or pretended 3. As to the Third I say 1. If by Nature they intend the great and glorious God that most wise intelligent powerful Being they do indeed in effect affirm what I have designed to prove but do not make good their Supposition of such a Natural Cause as they declare in their Hypothesis wherein they mean only that natural connexion and series of Causes whereby Natural Effects are naturally produced And if they intend by Nature that unintelligent series or order of Natural Causes or the blind and determinate Cause of Natural Productions How comes that Nature to know when and where this necessity of Spontaneous Productions doth happen or in what proportion measure limits or place it is necessary to be done Such a provisional care requires a knowing and perfectly intelligent Being that operates ex cognitione intentione voluntate which is not to be affirmed of Agents purely natural who do therefore act according to a Law of necessity and determination non ex consilio cognitione 2. It is plain that Insects and Vegetables spontaneously produced are produced every Year and their production is as natural as the access of the Sun and the constitution
Vocal Command given out to the Matter but the secret Command and Determination of the Divine Will governed the Matter into an immediate conformable Production according to the Idea residing in the Divine Understanding He spake and it was done be commanded and it stood fast This best became the Majesty and Sovereignty of the Lord of all things CAP. III. Concerning the Production and Formation of Man HAving taken the former brief Survey of the History of the Creation and Formation of the rest of the Universe I shall now proceed to what I principally intended in the discussion of that History namely the Formation of Mankind Gen. 1.26 And God said Let us make Man in our own image after our likeness and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth so God made man in his own image in the image of God created he him male and female created he them and God blessed them and said unto them Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fishes Touching the Creation of Man I shall observe these things 1. The Efficient of this first Production of Mankind was Almighty God by the counsel and determination of his own Will The Creation of Man is ushered in with a Prologue unlike the Creation of other things viz. by a kind of deliberation not as if the Divine Wisdom stood in need of counsel advice or concurrence of others or of a mora deliberativa with himself for known unto him were all his Works from the beginning and by one simple instantaneous and indivisible Act he foresees what is fit to be done and judgeth and determineth the same but it is added as a Mark of Attention and an Elogy of Prelation of this Work of the Creation of Mankind above the rest of the visible Creatures Some of the Ancients have thought this Deliberation was real and to have been made with the superior World of Heavenly Intelligences Nec si fas sit ita loqui Deus quicquam fecerit donec illud expenderit in familia superiori and it should seem that the Opinion of Plato in his Timaeus That Almighty God did advise with the Dii ex Diis or the Intelligences or Angelick Natures and used their assistance in the Creation of the Bodies of Men though he himself formed their Souls seems to be derived from the inspection of the Mosaical History or Tradition of it whereof he gave us his Sense or Exposition that this faciamus hominem was by the concurrence or subordinate cooperation of Angels Others with far greater evidence do think it was the Deliberation and Conclusion of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity And some again interpret it to be only a Majestick Expression touching Almighty God more regali in the Plural Number but touching these Conjectures I shall say no more but only this That the first Origination and Production of Man was by the immediate Efficiency of Almighty God not as if God Almighty used any Manual or Physical Plasmation of a Man as the Statuary makes his Statue or as the Poets feign Prometheus moulded up his molle lutum into the Humane Shape and animated him by diffusion of Fire into him fetcht from Heaven but by the Word or Determination or Fiat of his Omnipotent Will Man was formed and made 2. The constituent Components out of which he was made were of two kinds 1. His Corporeal and Animal Nature was the same with the Matter of other Terrestrial Animals namely the Elementary Matter whereof Earth was the predominant 2. His Spiritual Constituent as I may call it though in union with the Sensible Power it be his constituent Form was a Spiritual Substance created and infused by Almighty God Gen. 2.7 And God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul This Text gives us briefly 1. The Matter of his Corporeal and Animal Constitution the Dust of the Ground or as elsewhere Red Clay 2. The Nature or Kind of this other constituent part the Breath of Life a Vital Spiritual Intellectual Substance or Nature 3. The Union thereof to the Body and Animal Nature breathed into him 4. The result from that Union Man became a living Soul the whole Composition taking denomination from his nobler essential Constituent And this short History gives us the best account that can be of the true Nature of Man namely that he consists of two essential constituent Parts 1. His corporeal and animal nature which though it were not only gradually but specifically different from and advanced above the Brutal Nature both in the Elegance and Usefulness and Majesty of his corporeal Fabrick and in the excellency and perfection of his animal Faculties as in due time shall be shewn Yet in his essential part he seemed to have a nature in some way common with them both being material and both their Faculties of the Animal Nature directed and subservient to a Life of Sense and therefore corruptible and mortal in it self 2. His Intellectual Nature which is spiritual immortal created immediately by Almighty God that as in his Animal Natureâ— he was the highest of living corporeal and visible Creatures so in his Soul or Intellectual Nature he seems to be constituted in the lowest rank or range of Intellectual and Immaterial Beings by this means he seemed to be Nexus utriusque orbis I have before observed in the Order of Natural Beings with which we are acquainted that there seems to be an admirable gradation in things and the lower rank of Natural Existences have some rough draughts and strokes and shadows of those perfections which are in the superior Minerals are a degree below Vegetables yet they seem to have some shadow of the Vegetable Life in their growth increase and specifick configurations The lowest degree of Life seems to be the Vegetables yet in many of them and their Faculties they seem to have some kind of rough strokes or draughts of the Sensitive Nature and the highest advances of the Vegetable Nature seem to come up to the confines and borders of the lowest Form of Sensible Beings and to participate of somewhat of Sense which appears not only in the natural production of Insects out of the finest parts and effluxes of most Vegetable Natures but also that some such things there are that seem in their very nature of Plants to have a kind of lower connexion of the Animal Nature in them as appears in the Sensitive Plant or Planta modesta and those Canes in the Kingdom of Angola that are filled with a Worm growing from and continuous with it called Trombe Again in the Animal Province there are divers sensible Insects both aquatil volatil and terrestrial that seem to be in the very next Rank of Nature to Vegetables and
Will of God was sufficient to bring Being out of Nothing so the like determination of the same Will was sufficient to form Man out of the Dust of the ground without taking in a subordination or instrumentality of Angels Again if we should suppose the cooperation of Angels in the Formation of the Body of Man it must be in the strength virtue and efficiency of the first Cause which as it gave the Angels their Being so it must give them the efficacy power and virtue to be instrumental in this Formation which as we have no warrant so we have no probable reason to admit since the first Cause was all sufficient for this Effect without their assistance 4. The admirable Structure of the Body of Man the accommodation of it to Faculties the furnishing of it with Faculties accommodate to it even as its Animal Nature though we take not in the reasonable intellectual Soul imports in it a Wisdom Power and Efficacy above the Power of any created Nature to effect If it should be in the power of an Angel by applying actives to passives to produce an Insect nay a perfect Animal yet the Constitution and Frame of so much of that in Man that concerns his Animal Nature were too high a Copy for an Angelick Nature to write unless thereunto deputed and commissionated by the Infinite God which Commission we no where find and I am very sure a bare Naturalist will not suppose 5. Again there is that necessity of a suitableness and accommodation of the Parts of the Body to the Faculties of the Soul and è converso that any the least disproportion or disaccommodation of one to the other would spoil the whole Work and make them utterly unserviceable and unapplicable one to the other It was therefore of absolute necessity that the same skill and dexterity that was requisite to the first Formation of the Soul must be used and employed in the Formation of the Body and if an Angel were unequal to the making up and ordering of the Soul he could never be sufficient to make a fit organical Body exactly suitable to it Upon the whole matter I therefore conclude That not only the Soul but the very Animal Nature in Man and not only that but the Formation and Destination of his Bodily Frame was not only the Work of an Intelligent Being but of the Infinite and Omnipotent Intelligent Being who in the same moment formed his Body and organized it with immediate Organs and Instruments of Life and Sense and created his Intellectual Nature and united it to him whereby Man became a living Soul And this as the necessary Evidence of Reason doth first drive us to acknowledge a Being or first Formation of the Humane Nature ex non genitis and secondly to acknowledge that this first Formation of the Nature of Man was not by Chance Casualty or a meer Syntax of Natural Causes but by an Intelligent Efficient so we are upon the very same and a greater Evidence of Reason driven to acknowledge that Intelligent Efficient to be the Great and Wise and Glorious God no other Cause imaginable being par tali negotio And indeed if once we can bring Men but to this one Concession That the original Efficient of the Humane Nature was an Intelligent Being any Man pretending to Reason will with much less difficulty admit that Efficient to be the Almighty God than any other invisible intelligent Efficient which we usually call Angels or Intelligences And the Reasons are these 1. Because though we that are acquainted with the Divine Truths do as really believe that there are Angels as well as Men yet the Natural Evidences of the Existence of Almighty God are far more evident and convincing even upon a Rational and Natural account than that there are Angels for the former being a Truth of the highest moment and importance to be believed by all hath a proportionable weight and clearness of evidence even to Natural Light more and greater than any other Truth And hence among the Jews the Sect of the Sadduces believed the Existence of God yet denied or doubted the Existence of Angels or separated Intelligences 2. Because the very Supposition of an Angelical Nature doth necessarily suppose the Existence of a Supreme Being from whom they derive their Existences 3. Because the great occasion of Infidelity in relation to Existence of Almighty God is that sensual Men are not willing to believe any thing whereby they have not a sufficient Evidence as they think to their Sense The Notion of a Spiritual and Immaterial Being is a thing that they cannot digest because they cannot see or by any Sense perceive it nor easily form to themselves a Notion of it He therefore that can so far master the stubborness of Sense as to believe such a Spriritual Intelligent Being as an Angel hath conquered that difficulty that most incumbers his belief of a God and we that can but suppose or admit the former cannot long doubt of the latter He therefore that can once bring his thoughts to carry the first Origination of Mankind to the efficiency of an Angel must needs in a little time see a greater evidence not only to believe a Supreme Deity but to attribute the Origination of Mankind and of the goodly Frame of the Universe to the Supreme Being as necessarily best fitted with Power Wisdom and Goodness to accomplish so great a Work and that without the help or intervention of Angels or created Intelligences who must needs derive their Being Power and Activity from him There remains two or three Objections against the force of the Consequence of the Existence of Almighty God and his Efficiencies in the production of Mankind in their first Individuals which I shall propound and answer 1. Object What need there be laid so great a stress upon the Primitive Formation of Man as that it could not be done but by the Power and Wisdom of an Almighty Intelligent Being since every day's experience lets us see that by the mixture and coition of Man and Woman Et ex semine ab utroque deciso in utèro muliebri per spatium decem mensium ad plurimum producitur hujusmodi natura humana quem tot elogiis magnificamus that which we every day see to be an effect of finite Creatures in the daily production of Individuals of Humane Nature Why must we needs call in no less than the Wisdom and Power of God himself to be the immediate Efficient of the first Formation of the Individuals of that nature which we see every day produced by the common efficacy of Nature and efficiency of the Parents Vel ad minus seminis utriusque sexus in utero foemineo conclusi In Answer hereunto I shall not at this time or in this place enter into the dispute how far the Divine Efficiency concurrs immediately in the ordinary Generation of Mankind nor how far the entire Humane Nature as well his Rational Soul as his
to these Faculties suitable Objects answering those Vital Faculties to Sensitive Nature his Beneficence hath communicated those Faculties of Sense as well as Life and then communicates to them a farther efflux of his Beneficence by communicating to them the Objects grateful and useful both for Life and Sense thus his Beneficence is communicated to them per modum boni sensibilis but to Man his Beneficence is communicated not only per modum boni vitalis sensibilis which yet he enjoys as other Creatures but per modum boni intellectualis voliti First by giving him those nobler Faculties of Intellection and Will and then by communicating to those Faculties Objects suitable to those Powers or Faculties namely Intellectual Truths to his Understanding and Moral Rational and Divine Good to his Will and among all those vera bona that are communicated to these Faculties by the Divine Beneficence God himself his Goodness Truth Will Perfection are the chiefest verum and the chiefest bonum So that no Creature below Man is capable formally to know to love to enjoy God as the chiefest Truth and chiefest Good And this also seems to be another End of the Creation of Man that being made a Creature endued with Understanding and Will he might be receptive of the Effluxus of the Divine Beneficence in a nobler way than the other visible Creatures of this lower World 3. As under the first Consideration Man is more eminently an objective manifestation of the Divine Glory than other visible Creatures and as under the second Consideration Man is more receptive of the Divine Beneficence than other visible Creatures So upon farther examination we shall find that Man was made in a capacity to be a more active Instrument to serve and glorifie his Maker than other visible Creatures which was another End of his Creation specifically different from the End of other visible created Natures which will appear by the farther consideration of those two great distinguishing Faculties his Understanding and Will I shall not go about to make a large Description of those Faculties or the Operation but only observe so much touching them as may reasonably evidence the preference that Man hath therein above the inferior Animals and the Inferences that arise thereupon touching the End of Almighty God in the making Man And first for the Intellective Faculty As in Animals the Faculties of Sense internal and external especially the Visive Faculty placeth Animals in a rank of Being far above the insensible Creatures and accommodates them exquisitly to a Life of Sense so the Intellective Faculty placed in Man puts him into a rank of Beings far above the most perfect Animals and accommodates the Humane Nature to an Intellectual Life And the preheminence of this Faculty above the Faculty of Sense will appear if we consider the Operations thereof I shall instance but in two namely intellective Perception and intellective Ratiocination or Discourse 1. For the intellective Perception the Understanding perceives many things which are not perceptible by Sense or sensitive Phantasie or Imagination for Instance it hath the perception of Substance or Being abstracted from all sensible qualities it hath the perception of the truth or falsity of a Proposition it perceives the Conclusion and the Evidence thereof in the Premises and many more intellectual Objects which never did nor can fall under the perception of Sense or Imagination And although we cannot clearly understand all the Operations of the Brutal Phantasie because we are distinct from them and they have not the instrument of Speech intelligible by us to express their perceptions yet we may know that this is true by our selves for we may perceive that we do perceive these Objects not to be perceptible by our Faculties of Sense but by some other Faculties distinct from that of Sense or sensitive Imagination Again in those Objects that are objective to Sense the intellective perception discovers somewhat that is apparently unperceived by the Sense or sensitive Imagination for Instance the Heavenly Bodies the Sun Moon and Stars are equally objected to the view as well of Animals as Men but yet by the help of intellective perception Man perceives that in those Objects which neither the Brutes no nor Man himself by the bare perception of Sense or sensitive Phantasie doth not cannot perceive The perception of Sense gives us the Sun no bigger than a Bushel and the Stars than a Candle cannot discover an inequality of their distance from us judgeth the body of the Moon to have as many changes in figure and quality as it hath various Phases or Appearances the Sun really to set the Limb of the Heavenly Horizon to be contiguous to the Earth but the intellective perception finds the quantity of the Sun and Stars bigger than the Earth and by the Parallaxes and Eclipses finds the Stars more distant from us than the Sun and that than the Moon perceives distinctly their several Motions Orders Positions and makes distinctions and computations of Time and Duration by them and over-rules and confutes the perception of Sense and Imagination by another kind of perception above the perception of Sense 2. Touching Ratiocination or Discursive Operation the precedure thereof is above the reach of the sensitive Phantasie though this seems to carry some weak and imperfect Image thereof For Instance sometimes not only the media discursûs and the processus discursivus are out of the reach of Sense but the very subjectum discursûs is imperceptible to Sense such are that processus discursivus of the Understanding touching complexed Notions or Universals touching the abstracted Notions of Being Substance Entity and transcendents in Metaphysicks such are also the discursives of moral good and evil just unjust which are no more perceptible to Sense than Colour is to the Ear and yet touching these Subjects the Intellect forms Discourses deduceth Illations and Conclusions Again in matters Mathematical and Physicall though in the concrete and in their subjects they are objective to Sense yet the media and processus discursivus whereby the Understanding makes Conclusions and Inferences and Illations touching them are of a range and kind quite above the range of Sense or sensitive Imagination thus upon certain data or postulata in Geometry the Intellect forms Conclusions which though Mechanically and Experimentally true yet are elicited by a Processus discursivus quite above the activity of sensitive Phantasie And though matters Physical Bodies and Tangible qualities and their several powers manner of production and divers other things relating to them are sensible Objects yet the Intellect useth a Processus discursivus whereby it investigates Truths and draws Conclusions that are quite above the scantlet of Sense or Phantasie ascending up from the Effect to the next Cause and thence to the next and thence gradually to the First Cause of all things So that though oftentimes the foot or root of the Discursus intellectivus be bottomed in some sensible Object perchance