Father or such a woman my Mother or such persons my relations or that such a Country is my native Country All men generally rest satisfied and credit humane testimony with concurring effects as they have good reason about such things and yet there may possibly be deceits here and a good account given both how and why they may be so But because they are so rare and unusual and also so improbable they do not at all disturb the general satisfaction mankind has about those things But when a whole age agree to assure us by their testimony of a matter of fact they saw and were eye-witnesses of there can be no reason assigned of a deceit or mistake in them further than what all men are liable to in the truest exercises of their senses and their reason in their then judging of it nor in their conveying of it to us because 't is not to be conceived but that if any falshood in any age had been made publick many at least those whose interest it was to do it would have openly discovered and contradicted it And to thi k a whole age men of all sorrs and parties some against their own interest and others to no purpose at all should agree to abuse posterity with an absolute untruth is a thing beyond the compass of all humane credit Fourthly He that will deny that a man by the exercise of his reason in comparing things together and judging of moral circumstances can arrive at such an assurance as may and ought to satisfie a rational man about things which he never saw he must deny one of the noblest and most usefull effects of the rational soul which is by rational inquiries and conclusions to ascertain it self of things that can no way be the object of sense No man ever came to know the world is round by sensible experience nor to foretell an ecclipse of the Sun before it came to pass Such things are singly the deductions of reason without any assistance of sense If no certain conclusion can be made from any humane testimony however circumstanced no Government nor Laws can be fixed beyond an age For if men give no credit to any thing but what they see every age must either undo or do over again whatever the precedent age did Nor can men ever come to oblige their successors because the validity of that obligation must needs depend upon the credit of a humane conveyance The Atheist therefore is most absurd in his negative about this matter the truth of which ought to be established not only upon the present point to prove that there is a God by the truth of the miracles which none but God could work but also for the great advantage we have by it in assuring us of the fact of supernatural Revelations Which be sides all the divine evidence they have peculiar to themselves have also such a credible testimony accompaing them as upon that account makes them descend beyond the present age wherein they were first delivered and with apparent reason to reach us now as well as those who were the eye-witnesses of them at first A fifth Argument to prove against an Atheist that God made the world is this That the present frame and posture of the world is such that the notion of a Deity and a power above the world is of absolute necessity to the upholding of it The Atheist in denying the Being of God denyes the well-being yea destroyes the being of the world it self Though he can consist without the world yet the world cannot subsist without him Were there no power above the world to influence it the sense of which did restrain and oblige men we should soon experiment what the world would come to For the making this truth more evident let us but imagine a whole Country of Atheists that believed nothing above nor beyond this world and believed themselves as they must needs to be the top of the world that owed no subjection to any thing and then take a view of those consequences which must necessarily attend such an Atheistical croud and by that we shall clearly discern of what absolute necessity the acknowledgement of God is to the support of the world First There could never come to be such a thing as a sense of good and evil amongst them That 's inconsistent with Atheism The distinction of good and evil is a principle within us relating to somewhat above us The notion of that once taken away the distinction of good and evil must needs expire and the supreme ruling principle of every man can be no other but the pleasing himself and doing whatsoever his own inclination dictates to him Suppose men naturally lawless and without any restraint within them and you can never imagine them to come under any Law but their own unruly appetite and so the whole of such a company must be inslaved to the will one of another and to each individual mans will so far as he has power to accomplish it 'T is the distinction between good and evil that keeps the world from being a heap of rubbish and confusion And no such distinction can ever be supposed to haven its rise from a man himself unless he had a superiour and were made with such a distinguishing principle And that for these reasons First Good and evil can never be inherent in men if there be no God because it has nothing it can referre to A distinction of good and evil in a man does necessarily relate to a perfect and supreme good as a Rule by which 't is to be tryed We cannot conceive how the notion of good and evil should ever have existed in the minds of men if there had not been an eternal and supreme rectitude Had there not been a Being infinitely and originally good the denomination of good could never have been in the world nor could we any other way ever have known what had been meant by that we call evil There must needs have been a supreme standard of these things and in this matter of good and evil 't is an infinite Rectum that is index sui obliqui Secondly Because the distinction of good and evil in men is a thing perfectly relating to reward and punishment which none can be the ultimate dispenser of to himself because no man can be imagined to do any thing against himself when he is a Law to himself nor to condemn any thing in himself as evil when he is supreme Nor on the other hand is it proper to say a man can reward himself because he can add nothing to himself All reward is an expectation beyond our selves When we say an action carries its own reward 't is because of the satisfaction it gives us in hope of a reward from above Thirdly If a man be so supreme as the Atheist will make him to have nothing at all above him there can never be possibly made by him any distinction in his actions
debase government it self to be trodden down and trampled under foot Things of this nature have insensibly begotten men into Atheism and disgusted them from all seriousness in Religion and made a man of any conscience seem the highest embleme of absurdity and at last men rather chuse to say There is no God as thinking it every way more decent than to retain a naked acknowledgement of one and yet to act such things as plainly contemn him and carry an open defiance to him Thirdly The multiplicity of oaths that were some late years past amongst us the taking and renouncing them backward and forward has been no useless friend to Atheism This has deflowred our integrity and taken away the virginity of conscience and made a dangerous invasion upon all honesty among men and all Religion toward God He that once comes to cast off his reverence and dread of God in an oath which is the highest and nearest appeal to him will cast it off in any thing and at last come to declare open war with conscience in every thing The Land mourns with Atheism because of these oaths We must record it as none of the least of our misfortunes in this age that men have been so unhappily provoked and tempted in this matter of oaths For either by opposing conscience or dallying with it in so high a concern as an oath they have at last taken leave of all Religion and have briefly resolved all the doubts and disputes about the several obligations arising from several oaths by thinking that there is no obligation from any The imposing contrary oaths is so far from securing any body that it deceives every body The last imposer usually attains the least of his end For men to avoid the dreadful sentence of conscience in such cases recur to plain Atheism and that sets them beyond the reach of an oath or any other obligation whatsoever And when we think we have tyed them up fastest they break through all those things and as much despise them as Sampson did his green Wit hs 'T is the wisdom of a State to preserve conscience as a sacred Jewel and especially in that highest exercise of it in an oath Such who cannot be bound fast to God by oaths lawfully administred will never be bound safe to their King nor sure one to another 'T is the Atheism that we groan under that occasions that common trade of perjury that is driven on amongst those upon whose integrity to an oath the all of our humane concerns depends That reverence men had heretofore of an oath this age scoffs at When men by false swearing and lying to God in the most solemn appeals to him are grown into open hostility with him they think Atheism the best way to determine the controversie By that they hope to extinguish the trouble of what is past and to secure themselves in the quiet possession of such courses for the future Fourthly The contempt that has been cast upon the Scriptures and all supernatural Revelation has opened a wide door to Atheism Men seldom keep true to the principles of natural Religion that cast away all supernatural Revelation Men have so kicked at what is supernatural and so much questioned and doubted those things and the manner of their conveyance to the world that at last they have combated their natural light and denied the truth of a Deity We must not imagine supernatural Religion to be such a thing that 't is not capable of opposition The Devil has not so desperate a game to play in the world he has some mists to bring men into where he may couzen and mislead them God has not made the world so as to satisfie the captious questions of every forward perverse dissenter that designs to himself dis-satisfaction He has left us no answer to those that ask why he did not make the world in a day nay why not by a word which he could have done as well as to have taken six daies time to do it in nor why he made so many creatures that seem to be of no use and others that seem to do nothing but hurt and a thousand other such questions God has reserved such kind of objections to the answer of his own Soveraignty If men must needs know why God does not continually speak to the world and viva voce determine every thing and put all things out of doubt if they must needs know why God does not come down as he did upon Mount Sinai to satisfie men of the truth of his Law and why Christ does not often come down from Heaven and work Miracles to confirm the truth of the Gospel God hath intrusted no man with an answer to such impudent and absurd questions Nor would such men who ask such questions be probably more satisfied with such things if they were done than now they are The Jews found a way to evade the miracles of Christ and to father them upon the power of the Devil and so to credit nothing he said He that now calls for Ocular and Mathematical demonstrations about the Scriptures and the proof of them or else he will believe nothing but look upon all supernatural Revelation as a fabulous story 't is as much as to say he will not believe those things unless he have such proofs of them as are impossible to be had and the nature of them will no way bear which is all one as to to say he is positively resolved before-hand not to believe them at all Although we were not at the first eye-witnesses of Gods delivery of the Scriptures to the world nor of those miracles by which they were confirm'd nor have an infallibility in each particular circumstance of their conveyance down to us that is we do not say that every Transcriber and every Printer of them was or is infallible but that 't is possible after the utmost of all humane care in a letter or a word there may happen to be mistakes of which no other use can be made but to quicken and continue our diligence about them yet for the whole body of the Scriptures we have all the reason to satisfie us about the truth of them that any thing that we have not actually seen is possibly capable of And setting aside it s own innate worth and the evidence it carries with it of its own divine authority we have all the collateral proof of moral testimony that any such thing can have And upon that single account without any other setting by all the effects of it have as good reason to believe the truth of the Scripture as to believe any other thing whatsoever that we our selves have not beheld How ridiculous would he appear to be that would believe nothing but what he has seen deny all Records of things past and the existence of any part of the world now but just what he has beheld He that has lived in the remotest part of England may be as sure there
London Printed for Nathaniell Ponder at ye. Peacock in Chancery lane DEnsis continuis iisque validissimis argumentis Atheismum exagitat iste Tractatus cui Titulus The Unreasonableness of Atheism made manifest Imprimatur 10. Maii. 1669. Humfr. London THE UNREASONABLENESSE OF ATHEISM made manifest In a Discourse written by the command of a Person of Honour By Sir Charles Wolseley Baronet Omnis homo eo ipso quod rationalis conditus est ex ipsa ratione illum qui se condidit Deum esse colligere debet S. Greg. in Mor. c. The second Edition revised and enlarged by the Author LONDON Printed for Nathaniel Ponder and are to be sold at his Shop at the Sign of the Peacock in Chancery-Lane 1669. My Lord THese Papers like Orphans meanly descended are glad to forget their original and innoble themselves with the Adoption of your Commands The title you have to them transfers a relative honour which is the whole of what they claim to inherit You have trusted the richest Jewel in the hands of a mean Artist by whom 't will be set with great disadvantage You have committed the noblest of subjects to a prison of low thoughts where 't is debased beneath it self like a rich soil under a barren Genius The reproach of the highest thoughts in their best exercise suffers here a confinement to the straits of a very narrow capacity However he that lists himself in the defence of truth though he fight ill is sure to be of the Conquerours side And he that duels an Atheist can never want a good second The weakest defence often makes a stand and gives occasion to greater forces to ralley Sometimes the happy sling of a stone may stab A Goliah in the forehead and rout his whole rere-guard Every man cannot lead an Army for Truth but all men should follow the Camp no man should ever meet an Atheist unarm'd but wear a constant weapon in his understanding to fight him Each man combates not the same way I have provided a Sling for such as cannot bear heavier Armour notions that lie even to mean capacities that he may be able to bolt his door against an Atheist that cannot build a Cittadell for his defence When Atheism so loudly batters us on all sides 't is time to cast our eyes every way The weakest places should be first secured and such who can least make a resistance should be most taken care for This is the Post I have undertaken designed me by my own disability to do better I have chose to help those that are least knowing to interpose my feeble aid where I see the weakest front and the worst preparation to endure a shock nor will you blame me if I am pleased with a Subject where I am sure to live by the warmth of reflection if I contend for the lowest employment am proud of any admission into such a service where the meanest Livery carries Grandeur and the lowest Officer must needs be a dignified person This choice as it best secures me against the justest of fears that so noble a cause should suffer by a weak defence in the hand of an impotent Champion so the suitableness of it to the most of my self gives me hopes of the same acceptance he found under the Law with the Sacrifice of a Turtle that wanted a better Offering My Lord This prepares you to know I disclaim the vanity of instructing you by this discourse 'T is composed for you to correct for ignorance to learn by You espoused the concerns of others when you commanded this from me Should I attempt to make your Lordship a better Divine I should shake hands with that foolish Oratour who being to make an Oration before Hannibal went about to instruct him in the art of War 'T is the many unlearned and unstable who steer not by the Compass of right reason but by the winds of every false notion and every deluding Sophism that challenge discourses of this kind and make them a debt due from us Those that have been the guard of every age have still encountred the predominant humour The world in every stage of it has besmeared it self with some peculiar deformity has corrupted into some new distemper or improved some old disease We seem at once greedily to have swallowed the dregs of the whole and to have epitomized the worlds Apostacy in the fatal Plague of Atheism We skirmish not like other ages to retail single truths but the whole of Religion lies at stake with us He that yields the field to an Atheist has at once betrayed all divine truth to the block and left the noblest property of his soul in the hand of his worst enemy All other distempers naturally fall in here they all issue themselves into this infection men think it the cheapest way of becoming vile The troubles men are at from the efforts of conscience and the convincing aspect of some open-faced truths have by this a ready conveyance and seem shortly dismissed out of the world They that are uneasie under all Religion if they can once perswade themselves there is no God think they have found a happy expedient to ease them of those cares This makes the knowledge of God in these daies to be grown so cheap a commodity and lie like a drug upon so many mens hands they will gladly barter it away for an empty notion of Atoms or any plausible trifle the worst ware serves them so it come in the room of Religion they 'l never dispute the terms if they can but come to a bargain they think they have got all and parted with nothing I am contending by this small endeavour some little to antidote the poison of this disease to forbid the fury of such a Phrenzie to speak to men in the native language of their own reason to meet with them in the cool of the day and treat with them when the heat of this distemper may be some what abated The man that turns from God and disowns him unhinges himself from the best of his own being is highly unjust to his Maker and forfeits his own interest towards himself It were not more unnatural should the leaves of a tree drop poison upon their own root nor less destructive should the earth refuse the warmth of the Sun The glory of man lies in his Supreme Head 't is his descent that innobles him 't is the Divine Image that greatens him and crowns him King of the Vâ—iverse Whoever disclaims such an original and makes it his choice to derive himself from the nothing of chance has forfeited the best of himself has done his utmost to depose himself from his own native dignity and becomes the natural prey of every mans contempt Nor can we deny the existence of God without some way assaulting our selves He must first design a rape upon his own reason that resolves to have nothing above him Our reasonable part disowns all friendship to an Atheist and
is such a place as London as he can be of any Mathematical proposition for there is as much certainty in the kind of the one as there is in the kind of the other and both capable of certainty in their kind and yet the one is not capable of the same way of probation with the other He that will go about to perswade me I may be couzened in such a moral belief and cannot arrive at a certainty I may with as good reason trouble him with objections and provoke him to doubt of what he himself sees and tell him either his eye-sight may fail or mis-inform him or else the object may be such as may be purposely disposed to couzen and delude his fight in the one a man hath nothing but the single testimony of his own eyes in the other the testimony of thousands transfered to him upon unquestionable credit The worst designers against Religion cannot deny the universal testimony of all ages to the body of the Scripture even out of the mouths of its greatest enemies it may be justified who laboring to confute it and overthrow the doctrine of it have left us an undeniable restimony to the truth of the fact of it Those who most opposed it in the ages when it looked first abroad had never the impudence to deny the Being of it nor the being of it with such circumstances as enough justifie the divine Authority of it And for the differences in the Copies and Translations of the Scripture it self which men have so magnified and multiplied to invalidate its authority and destroy the credit of the whole after the utmost diligence of the most learned in comparing all the Copies and all the Translations of those Copies that are extant or can be found and all the care that possibly could be taken therein and never was there so great exactness and care about any writing since the world began and the utmost improvement of the most malicious objections that way so eminent does the providence of God appear in preserving the Scriptures entire that the differences and variations do appear so small so inconsiderable and so far from undermining the whole that they have not so much as in the least shaken any one Divine Truth or disturbed us in our belief of any one point in religion but have poured out abundant shame upon those who built their designs to ruine the Scriptures upon that foundation and have rendred them equally wise and equally ingenuous with such who would deny the relation of a book to its Author and deny the whole of any Treatise because of some small inconsiderable Errata's in the impression Such things may gratifie peevish and forward persons who gape for objections but will never find acceptance with sober and unprejudic'd men Let such who take the greatest pleasure to make the Scriptures the object of their contempt consider but soberly with themselves if there be any thing supernatural if God has ever revealed himself further to the world than in that knowledge he gave us of himself in our first make which we have abundant reason to believe he has how could it be handed down to us upon more credible terms First The Scripture it self written in a way wholly becoming such an Author as God himself and no other and in such a way as does plainly spirare divinitasem with such majesty authority and impartiality as relate themselves to God and with such positive predictions in it of things to come and writing with that certainty about things many hundred years off remote and future as if it were a history of things past or present and the punctual accomplishments the whole world has been witness to of these predictions bears witness unto its self Thus Isaiah prophesied of Cyrus by name and foretold he should conquer the Babylonians and ruine their Monarchy a hundred and four years before Cyrus was born And other such like predictions innumerable there are contained in them which as they most evidently tell us there is a God and somewhat above the world so they unanswerably declare the Scriptures to be his word Secondly The whole Doctrine of the Scriptures the principles of it being such as are most suitabre and agreeing to our natural light and that image of God and the distinguishing taste of good from evil we received from God in our first constitution is of the same consideration Nothing can be devised more useful and profitable for all publick Societies and all private converse than the principles the Scriptures offer to us Nor did any thing ever so much heighten all natural Religion and bring men to so neer a converse with God and so great a conformity upon that account to him or induce any thing so much for the common and general good of all mankind No man can well deny but that he that lives a life conformed to the Scriptures shall live most to God best to himself and most usefully to all mankind and to the height of those excellent principles which all the and serious men since the world began have justified and applauded Thirdly The whole matter of fact about the Scripture and the Miracles wrought to establish them descends to us with a general concurring testimony from the ages wherein they were transacted And we have as much to assure us and satisfie us in that as such a thing is capable of as much indeed as can be had about a thing past and not seen by our selves and so much as we ought fully to acquiesce in No matter of fact about the Scripture can otherwise be proved to us that live in distant ages And matter of fact must necessarily belong to it and have its proof that way unless the Bible had every age a new edition and were often re-delivered and re-printed from Heaven Fourthly A divine Power there is attending the Scripture to gain it an interest and reception in the world which is peculiar to it self and nothing else can boast of To those who by themselves know there is such a divine Power attending the Scriptures 't is to them an infallible argument of the truth of them and to others that stand by an argument of high probability because they hear many who are sober and serious attesting it whose credit they have no reason to reject And they themselves in such mens practice see the visible effects of it and a great part of the world converted by it Those that will slight over all these things and resolve to despise and reject them that will object against the first and tell you that the style of the Scripture is nothing but an effect of their cunning and design who intended to cheat the world by it and so personated God as much as they could that those predictions of things to come were only put in to gain crediâ— to it at the first and have fince by chance come to pass or else that men foresaw them by the natural course of
the Stars That say to the second they cannot find that excellency in the Doctrine of the Scriptures we speak of but rather find it interrupts and crosses them in all those things they take most delight and pleasure in That reject wholly the third and throw away all be1ief of things past and resolve to credit nothing but what they see That mock at the fourth the divine Power attending the Scripture and deny the Being of any such thing think it a vain imagination and tell you that many fabulous stories and false Religions have equally gained upon the world and found many that have religiously bowed down themselves to them and submitted to deluding impositions from them Those I say that will thus object and feed upon this kind of trash that find a way to convert into humour and disease all such notions of things as are the satisfying food of sober and reasonable men and resolve to believe nothing they do not like that will deny the truth of all divine and rational impressions upon mankind because some of them are deluded and mistaken and will admit no men to have attained a right knowledge in divine things suitable to the truest exercise of their rational faculties because part of the world either by weakness or corruption are under the dominion of vanity and lies Such men are most punished when they are left to themselves nor is it less vain to endeavour their satisfaction than to make a demonstration about colours to one that we know cannot or else is resolved that he will not look upon them or to convine him of the harmony of any sound that resolves before-hand to make no use of his ears or at least to call every thing discord that does not suit with some ill sound his ears are already possessed with Supernatural Religion is a thing proposed to men with reason abundantly sufficient to satisfie a man reasonably willing to be satisfied and to leave him without excuse if he be not satisfied And besides all other proofs of it the same humane evidence by which we rest satisfied in all other things that we do not see descends to all ages but not with answers to every froward dissenters objections that will dispute without end against the truth of it because he dislikes the matter of it and be so absurdly disingenuous to deny that to be a good proof to him of the truth of the Scriptures by which he himself rests satisfied in the truth of a thousand other things He that will give no credit to any divine revelation unless God will satisfie his curiosity in the manner of its conveyance to the world sayes in effect though God have given me other good reason and such as he thought sufficient for me to believe him and upon which he has made it my duty to believe him and such reason as I my self think sufficient for the belief of all other things of the like nature and such as I think abundant proof to make good any thing I have a mind to yet I will not believe him unless I please And though my reason tell me that some Being superiour to all Beings made the world Yet unless I had seen him do it I will not believe it Such men are monstrous Fanaticks men that live upon fancy that fancy to themselves how God should govern the world and how he should reveal himself to it and because he does not do it according to their fancy and descend to gratifie their fond imaginations they make it a Law to themselves that they will neither receive nor admit any of his Laws nor pay any acknowledgement to his Being What delight have men taken of late to upbraid the Scriptures with all kind of uncertainty in the delivery of them and all kind of contradictions and absurdities in the matter of them Mens wits and parts have encreased their value with very many as they could best enlarge upon on these heads and despise others as weak and to be pitied who make any stand for divine Truth By this men tempt themselves and others into a mean value of Religion and at last into the highest irreligion 'T is I confess a noble enquiry to search into the grounds of Religion that so we may be rationally ascertained of its truth and not take our greatest concern upon trust But to deal in those things with no other intention but to tie knots to invent vexing questions and peevish objections and because the Scriptures cross mens boundless appetites to load them with all imaginable disgrace and contempt that so God may be more easily dismissed out of the world if we deal with the Scriptures I say upon no better or other account 't is no wonder if the success be accordingly and that men steering such a course not only turn their backs upon all supernatural Religion but at last arrive at the utmost confines of all prophaneness and contempt of Religion it self in down-right Atheism Fifthly 'T is no unusual thing to see many that if they may not enjoy the worship they are affected to and think the best will go to none at all And from such a habit once gotten 't is easie to foresee what a precipice of Atheism men are at the brink of All men are not so well catechized in Religion nor so well affected to it as to try all experiments before they forsake it There is in the generality of men something in the parties and persons they adhere to and in the mode of Worship they joyn in which pleaseth them and has some part in their affections as well as Religion it self purely and abstractly considered And although such collateral things are in themselves not the best and highest motives to divine Worship yet they are such as considerably prevail with not the least part of mankind And they are such as God in his providence over-rules to preserve men in their open owning a Deity and a visible subjection to him in some outward worship and to prevent a total apostacy to Atheism We may not unreasonably suppose that the restraint which in some times past was upon the use of the Liturgy and the present worship of the Church of England to which the generality of the Nation were earnestly inclined did much occasion that Atheism which hath too visibly infected many amongst us For not being able to enjoy the way of worship they most liked and wholly disgusting the way that was then used in publick 't is to be feared that in a short time many came by that means to throw off all thoughts of God and by a disuse of paying any homage or service to him came at last totally to deny him and positively to dispute against him The great concern of a Christian State is to justifie the common cause of God in the world and to dam out the flood of general Atheism Such who can have no tye from above and disown all superiour obligations are never to be ruled but by
reasons must needs know by that act that he is he needs no other demonstration of his own Being to himself and with great ease may he inform himself of the actual existence of all other things But the souls enquiry will still reach further the proper food of craving reason is a reasonable knowledge of things such as the subject is capable of Reason travels to reduce things First To the truth of their existence Secondly To the reason of their existence And Thirdly To the right manner and method of their existence in their relation to and dependance upon each other The whole truth of no existence can be known so as reason may justly challenge a knowledge of it without knowing the cause of it or else knowing there was no cause of it because the great and supreme distinction of Beings lies in the absoluteness and dependency of them To know any visible existence to be without cause is to know it to be that which no man can rationally know any visible Being to be which is to know it to be eternal And if it have some first cause without some reasonable account of that to our selves we can never tell from what nor from whence to date it nor how to answer many other questions reason will ask about it Things are never in their proper station till they are made a right object for knowledge and reduced to a due correspondence to reason Then they bear their proportion to the great and universal harmony 'T is reason puts the world into regular motion sorts each thing places causes before effects finds out causes by effects and necessary conclusions from their own natural premises and still pursues things to the highest and supremest cause of all Search the world without this Candle and it will appear nothing but a heap of confusion God seems to have placed this sublime faculty in man for two ends First That a man might rule himself and the rest of the world in such a manner and method as might carry some proportion to the eternal reason above of which mans rational soul is an image And Secondly That by the use of it he might ascend to the knowledge of his Maker and have every thing he saw as well as himself made a step to help him upward The ground of all our homage to God lies in the knowledge we have of a Supreme Being before us and above us Without that 't is impossible ever to introduce Religion into the world Two things seem to be but a reasonable collection from the natural composition of mankind and the pure issues of a reasoning soul abstractly taken from all helps of revelation First That 't is not possible for that noble and impartial faculty of mans reason to be true to it self in its own actings and to arrive at its own necessary satisfaction about it self and all other Beings without a strict inquiry into the primary reason and first cause of the Being of it self and all other things And Secondly That the single exercise of natural reason in such an inquiry will safely conduct a man to the conclusion of some first cause and some one Supreme Being the cause of all Beings which we call God To prove there Positions undoubted truths shall be the first endeavour of the following discourse If we can happily bring mankind to God by this high-way of their reason and light a man to his Creator by this Lamp that continually burns in his own soul we shall then prove Atheism a very lye and the Atheist a most unnatural lyer towards his God and towards himself I shall proceed First affirmatively and positively and then negatively in giving a full answer to all the Atheist has to object Consider in the first place 't is not a thing within any compass of supposition that mankind in the use of their reason should fail to fix upon that as their first and great enquiry how things came to be in the posture they are now found and what original they owe themselves to That faculty that reasons about causes and effects must needs ascend by that method to the highest cause of all things No satisfying knowledge which the soul still labours after can be had of any thing unless we can trace it to its original without that it proves but a vexation to reason and reproaches it with ignorance in that grand fundamental in the knowledge of things which must give the truest inlet to all the subsequent comprehension we can have of them That reason in its operation must needs move this way will appear by these several considerations First There is no more obvious enquiry for whatever we see than to know whether it have a beginning or were without a begining If it had beginning when it did begin and how it came first to exist in the world and from whence it had the donation of it self No mans reason can acquiesce without some answer to this Secondly Finding out the original of things determines the property of them and so fills the mind with a satisfaction in that great concern reason has about every thing to know whose it is Whatever was the first cause of a thing and the original maker of it must needs have the property of it 'T is impossible there should be a claim made with so much justice to any thing as by the first maker of it 'T is not possible to disseize him of his right to a thing that gave it its existence and caused it first to be He that first produced a Being had that Being first entirely existing in himself and in his own power Whatever is made can have no property in it self The right must needs be in the maker Here reason sits down satisfied and fully acquiesces in that particular Thirdly The knowing the original of any thing gives us the true boundaries and limits of it Nothing can rise higher than its original No effect can out-reach the cause Nay there must be ever a necessary inferiority in whatever is caused to the first causer of it This is a necessary direction to all the searches of reason about the nature of any thing to know the first cause of such a Being and the true original it derives it self from Fourthly The knowledge of things in their prima causa quiets our reason because it gives us the utmost and ultimate knowledge that is to be had about them To know a thing in it self and to know it in its first cause and original is to know all that reason can expect to know about any visible Being This brings things to hold their due proportion to the rational soul and rectifies us in our knowledge in placing causeâ— and effects in their due Stations Secondly If the being of reason be such as that it must necessarily make out it selâ— into such enquiries and that the first cause of things is the most proper object for a rational soul that trades in causes and effects we will
but that therâ— is something above them that over-rule them as he pleases 'T were utterly impoâ—sible without that ever to be 'T is evidenâ— likewise by this that the world hath not been for ever for these contraries of which the matter of the world consists could not have been eternal contrariety cannot be in eternity And therefore those Philosophers heretofore were justly condemned of folly and ignorance who when they could not solve the doubt How evil should first come into the world if there was but one God and that one God infinitely good fled to the refuge of this assertion That there was an eternal good Being and an eternal ill Being that equally from eternity were the Authors of both principles Now that this is absurd and that things contrary each to other cannot be eternal seems plain by these three Reasons First In direct Contrariety there must be imperfection and deficiency For where two things are both perfect they cannot be in contrariety unless perfection can oppose it self 'T is imperfection makes opposition Every thing that is eternal I have proved before must needs be perfect And things perfect cannot lie in contrariety one to another because in perfection there is the height of harmony Secondly Opposition intends destruction 'T is the end of contraries where contraries are each naturally strives to be predominant by destroying the other Now things eternal can never cease to be nor to be otherwise than they ever were Therefore such contrariety can never be where there is perfection because things perfect cannot innately tend to impossibilities for that were the highest imperfection And here is an utter impossibility in the end For eternal things can never alter nor destroy each other 'T were to imagine eternal things eternally tending to destroy eternity than which nothing can be more impossible Thirdly Whatever we suppose self-originated and eternal must needs swallow up all Being and Perfection in it self and so all other Beings must necessarily be derived from it and so it can be but one This visible experimented truth That all things in the world though never so opposite in themselves do all regularly and necessary issue themselves into one common end and that the world is a great piece of order and harmony directly opposeth the grand Hypothesis of Epicurus who ascribes the world to meer chance and will have no other beginning of it but a casual motion of certain small particles which we call Atoms The whole of his principles is to make us believe that there is an infinite ultra-mundan space an infinite inanity where there are an infinite company of Atoms and these Atoms infinitely possessed with an internal vigour called gravity which occasioned their eternal motion and so by their perpetual motion and various agitation in that infinite space they came to meet and encounter each other and by weer chance and hap of such encounters came into the conjunction we see and by that meer chance made up this whole world and moved and danced themselves into all visible Beings The ridiculousness of which precarious notion and wholly begged supposition I shall evidence by these considerations following First These Atoms in this fancied vacuity were either temporally there or eternally there If temporally then they were caused and must be placed there by somewhat before them and above them and then we must come to Divinity If eternally then they must of necessity have been without alteration there still and so eternally there For whatsoever is eternal must necessarily be unchangeable for whatever Being was eternal can neither cease to be as it was nor can ever produce any other thing by varying its own form and ceasing it self to be as it ever was For suppose that Atoms lose not their own existence by any Being they constitute yet I am sure in that variety of Beings the world is filled with if they consist of these Atoms they are not in the same posture they were in when they were moving and dancing up and down in that infinite space so that by this notion here is an infinite of two pieces visibly besides how many more it may consist of after For these Atoms are said to be infinitely moving one while in the infinite space and another while they are interrupted by meeting one another in that infinite motion and then they are turned into bodies and all parts of the world and when those compositions are dissolved who can presage what will come of them then So that things are made to be infinite and yet changeable which is impossible for what was infinitely so must ever continue to be so Nor can any thing be infinite in change because what infinitely was was the highest perfection of being and so can never alter nor change it self Change is a perfect relative to imperfection Whatever is infinite has the highest perfection and to imagine then a change in what is infinite were to imagine a change from the highest perfection which is unimaginable and impossible Secondly If the dancing motion of these Atoms in this fancied space did by chance first dance the world into this form and caper'd the Sun and the Moon and the Stars into their stations above us and placed every thing in the posture it is in about us and below us what is the reason these Atoms never danced themselves into any thing since If they had an eternal motion in themselves they must needs move still Where is there any visible production by such a concourse of Atoms 'T is a horse begets a horse and one thing begets another where is any thing made so by Atoms as the world is said to be first made by them If Atoms still be the parts of all compositions 't is plain they do not compound them in the same way they did at first A man that is begotten by another man and brought forth by a woman has surely another kind of make than he had that was made by a chance-hit of some Atoms one against another as they were whirling about in the infinite space And for that infinity of worlds that is produced as Epicurus will needs have you believe by the infinity of Atoms in the infinite space 't is no other than an eminent piece of Lunacy and a Chimaera very well agreeing to the rest of the Atomical doctrine For he cannot not bring the least reason to prove it unless you let him first beg the question and grant him an infinity of Atoms that so he may argue from an infinity of matter to an infinity of worlds Thirdly The casual conjunction of these Atoms could not by that chance make the world because 't is made with a principle of reason and they could not have induced such a principle by any chance unless some way or other they had had it inherent in themselves before for nothing can transferre that to another which it hath not it self And if they had been possest with that principle of reason if Epicurus his
perfect which the whole world will not afford us nor can we fix our notion of it upon any thing visible The capacity a man has some way to conceive of such a thing as a supreme and perfect Being doth evidently declare there is such a Being that gave that capacity He that goes about either to doubt it or deny it must in some measure admit it or else he doubts and denies he knows not what For when any man disputes against a thing 't is granted he has a capacity to conceive of such a thing or else he could not oppose it Had there not been a supreme Being which we call God there could never have been any innate notions of it in the minds of men in fears hopes and concerns about him as such No man ever had an original innate impression of a lye a pure nothing upon his intellect That were to say our faculties were originally false and so we are nothing but a great deceit to our selves Nay to this day no man ever thought of a meer nothing Thoughts and existence are relatives Non entis nulla cogitatio The wildest fantasms that ever possessed the minds of men were yet still conversant about somewhat that was real and had existence and were but disordered and misplaced by the fancy Let a man imagine Oxen feeding in the bottom of the Sea and Whales grazing upon dry ground or Mountains dancing in the Air or any thing of that kind the ground of all these imaginations is real things and such as do exist They are only dislocated by the fancy and disposed by the mind contrary to the course of nature and so in that disposition and conjunction are meer fantasms and entia rationis But this we call an Idea of God is quite another thing 'T is not a fictitious representation the mind makes to it self from a collection of visible objects and corporeal fantasms but 't is a notion of a Being abstractedly considered from whatever came in by the senses which can be no other but an Idea placed originally in the soul by an infinite and perfect Being that first made it A man finds in his own soul he can conceive there is such a Being but yet cannot describe him by any thing he ever saw By which 't is plain the notion of such a Being came not in by the senses Whatever is the object of sense hath infirmity annexed to it because 't is still divisible and therefore a notion of absolute and infinite perfection could not arise from thence Nor is it possible to believe that ever mankind should bow down themselves in that subjection they are in to the notion of a Deity if the notion of it were nothing but a vain fancied collection of things disorderly together in the mind that had come in by the senses For they must needs know by the use of their reason that such things had no existence in such conjunction but were a perfect vanity Nor is there in the notion of God any unnatural disorderly conjunction of things together but all those attributes we ascribe to God do naturally and necessarily make up the notion of him and cannot be separated from it Several steps our pure naturals take towards a supreme Being to satisfie and confirm us in the unreasonableness of an Atheist First Our reason considers the whole world is without a first cause of any thing and yet the constitution of it is such that without some first cause we can give no reasonable account of any thing We can never reasonably be satisfied how men should come to beget one another in the way we see without some first man that was not begotten in that way Which first man must necessarily conduct us to some first and supreme cause Secondly Reason considers it self the supremest parf of the world and knows by its own exercise it could not be begotten by it self For that were to contradict its self and deny its own evidence And so comes to adore somewhat above it self and more excellent than it self of which it has a natural inbred Idea Thirdly Reason layes down this as a fundamental maxim to it self that whatever we are able to think or imagine of absolute goodness perfection infiniteness or excellency of any kind it must necessarily exist in this first cause who gave us this ability to think and conceive of such things and made us with such an Idea So that to the utmost of what a man can do to think well of God and highly to adore him his reason leads him to and he can go no further Fourthly 'T is highly reasonable to conclude that he that was the first Donor of our beings must needs have an absolute property in us and so we lye under an obligation to all the homage we are able to perform Because the donation of a being to us is the supremest obligation that could be put upon us And whatsoever this supreme Being that gave us our own being shall at any time reveal to us to be his pleasure about us we stand for ever obliged to obey and submit to Fifthly Our reason tells us that whatsoever we can conceive of the wisest Builder must be much more in Gods framing the world He would not make the world without some proposed end which could be no other but what best pleased himself That faculty that informs us of a supreme Power that made the world will also ascertain us that he can uphold it will govern it and at last have an account of it according to that end he first proposed to himself in making it Sixthly We find in our own souls a distinguishing taste of good and evil and a judgement we necessarily and naturally pass upon our selves in reference to the one and the other being much satisfied in the one and filled with terrours and fears by the other And our reason tell us all this must needs be in order to a supreme judgement above us and was placed in us by a supreme Being that first made us Were there nothing above our selves we could have no higher end than to please our selves When men find in their own souls troubles arising from those actions that please them most and which are no way cognizable nor punishable perhaps in this world that plainly relates it self to somewhat above and beyond themselves The truth is our own souls determine within our selves the great end of all our actions to be pleasing or displeasing to God Seventhly and lastly In full answer to the Atheists objection my reason will tell me that Gods being not seen by me should no way hinder but further my belief of his Being and Existence First Because I find enough in mine own make and constitution to inform me of him naturally an inbred fear of him an admiration of him a tendency still toward him of which I am as sure as that I am sure I think which is the surest evidence I can have that I am and an
nor did ever any man press after that which he had not first an Idea of in his own breast The world could never stamp any character upon its off-spring but it self nor propagate a genius above its own nor can it further those noble Salleys the soul makes beyond it The tendency we are made with to a supreme and perfect Being plainly tells us such a Being does exist Whenever we deny those transparent effects of a Deity in our selves and would cancel that innate Idea God has lest of himself within us and make a nullity of those hopes and fears we find relating to somewhat above us we may with equal reason oppose the truth of our own affections and passions and cease to be sure of whatever our souls inform us And while we contend against the real existence of a supreme Being we deny the truth of our own faculties For whatever can ascertain us there is no God may go far to assure us that we are in our own Beings nothing but a great cheat to our selves My Lord I have now taken my leave of the Atheist What the success of our encounter has been rests with you to determine I know there is an Excise and Custom to be payed to the Criticks of this age before any thing can freely pass of which I am no way careful I mean hereafter to be as little concerned about the Atheist as he can be about Religion and to create no more trouble to my self where I have arrived at a perfect satisfaction If nothing will serve his turn but a negative upon that which himself and every thing besides is an affirmation of let him feed upon his own distemper and feast himself with his own disease 'T is not to be denyed but that a rational conquest is there least to be hoped for where the understanding is but a second to the will and the rectitude of the judgement truckles to the violence of inclination No Map can be drawn wherein we can have a clearer prospect that a man is sunk beneath himself and struggles under a defection from a primitive Oeconomy than that his will sometimes gives the Law and playes the Tyrant over the rest of his faculties 'T was at this back door of the will that Atheism first entered 'T was the desire men had there should be no God that first cheated the understanding or at least bribed it to dispute against him No mans reason would ever have attempted to derive the world from any thing but God had not the will been in open hostility with him and declared war against that interest that stood up for God in the soul However the Atheist may indulge himself in his own absurdities yet having weighed him in the balance of right reason and finding his principles light empty full of falshoods and contradictions and in the complex of them a meer nothing I have taken him as one legally condemned and do think my self reasonably justified to hang him up in Effigie And therefore as the most pertinent Appendix to this discourse I have presented your Lordship with an Atheists Catechism wherein you shall see him epitomized and an endeavour to represent an image of him as much to the life as so small a figure will afford My Lord I have by this performed but a part of my duty to you my first intention did much exceed what I have been yet able to accomplish Two further attempts were designed to accompany these Papers First A rational proof that the Scriptures are undoubtedly and truly the word of God and that we have reason abundantly sufficient to acquiesce in them as such Where I would have imployed that little strength I have to have rescued them from some violent hands that are lately laid upon them and justified their divine Authority against the perverse discourse of absurd and illogical men And Secondly have adventured in a Scripture-glass to have represented to you the excellency of that admirable contrivement Of saving men by JESVS CHRIST to which right reason as well as the Scripture is an entire witness Wherein we shall find all things concurring that might become the designs of infinite wisdom in magnifying in self and reach the whole of mens concerns in the utmost of their exaltation and happiness How far opportunity will ever encourage the execution of the first intentions whether I shall be able to advance another step beyond this ground I have been now endeavouring to make good is a question lies unresolved in the womb of Futurity What has already adventured your Lordships view this small Essay towards the publick service of Religion I am sure you will at the same time pardon and accept As you are too just to blame a mean crop when you consider it comes from an hungry soil so you are too wise to waste expectation where you must needs be denyed a return or to cast away the least hope of any thing valuable from one that has attained no further amongst mankind than that inconsiderable Roman who had nothing to boast of but a jus trium liberorum 'T is enough to my self I have obeyed your Lordship who by the choice of this subject did at once both command and oblige me It will be ever a pleasure to me any way to avow those manifold obligations I have to you nor will I ever cease to do it Resolving never to forfeit my own truth to my self nor to become a sufferer under that uneaste reproach of ingratitude An Atheists CATECHISM Quest DO you believe there is a God A. No I believe there is none Q. What is the true ground of your belief A. Because I have no mind there should be one Q. What other reason do you give for it A. Because I never saw him Q. If there be a God must he not be infinite and so invisible A. Yes if there be one he must Q. Why then do you demand to see him A. Because I know I cannot see him and so may have a sure ground to deny him Q. If there be no God how came this world to be A. It made it self by meer chance Q. After what manner was it first pieced together A. By a casual hit of Atoms one against another Q. How came those Atoms so to hit one against another A. As they were eternally dancing about in an infinite space Q. Whence came the reason of mankind and all that order and regularity we find in the world A. From the meer accidental conjunction of those Atoms Q. What is that men call Religion A. A politick cheat put upon the world Q. Who were the first contrivers of this cheat A. Some cunning men that designed to keep the world in subjection and awe Q. What was the first ground of it A. Men were frighted with Tales that were told them about invisible nothings Q. When did this fright first seize men A. 'T is very long ago and for ought we can find 't is as old as the world it self Q. Has this fright upon men been general A. Yes The whole world in all ages of it have been possessed with a fear of nothing Q. What is the great end that every man is to live to A. To please himself Q. How prove you that A. Because there is nothing above him and so he is his own Law Q. Are men to make any distinction in their actions A. No further nor upon no other account but as they please or displease themselves Q. Is there any such thing as good and evil A. No 't is a distinction the world hath been conzened with Q. When was that distinction first brought into the world A. 'T is of the same date with those fables about a Deity and relates wholly to them Q. Is there any thing for a man to hope for or stand in fear of beyond this world A. No nothing at all Q. What becomes of a man when he dyes A. He returns into his first Atoms Q. What becomes of those Atoms A They still help to carry on the great round of the world FINIS