your Friends condemn If I thought it fitter to convince you by Authority than by Reason I would let you see them but you ought to convince your self by such Proofs as may be acceptable to the Person whom you design to convert The most honest men are not infallible even all those who seem so are not such But however it be it is better to be sensible to light than to the most pious and most sanctified Air because God always enlightens and oftentimes the Way and Air imposes and seduces Arist This is true Theodorus but I fear that your Sentiment is not conformable to that of the holy Fathers Theod. But what occasion have you to fear it Have you ever read any thing contrary to it in the Fathers I see you have been told so gravely and you have believed it in the simplicity of your heart Hath not St. Austin who best understood the corruption of Nature explained the propagation of Original Sin by the example of hereditary Diseases By that of gouty Parents who beget Children subject to the Gout And of the sick Trees which yield a corrupted Seed that produces nothing but bad Trees For he knew that Original Sin can only communicate itself by the body because its principle is in the body and that in some sense it dwells in the body as St. Paul saith As for the other Fathers that lived before St. Austin they never undertook to make a particular discussion of the manner in which the transmission of that Sin could be explained Their Age was neither so incredulous nor malicious as ours and it was not then necessary to give probable explications of our mysteries to make those who called themselves Christians believe them No Aristarchus I could never find that the Fathers were against what I have told you now But I wonder to see that you who formerly used to treat the Churches Authority with so much indifference are now so full of Veneration for the Fathers as to be afraid without cause of dissenting from them by admitting some explications wherein we are not always obliged to follow them provided we keep with them to the Faith and Doctrin of the Church You are too credulous and your apprehensions are not just you do not meditate enough you are like those Children who walk by night without a light that are afraid of all things because they see nothing Whilst you did lead a careless sort of life the air of the Libertines used to persuade you and now you suffer your self to be convinced by the air of piety and gravity of certain persons who have not always as much light and charity as opinion and false zeal You are less in danger of being mistaken but yet you are not in the way of truth You ought to believe what must be believed but you ought to see what may and consequently what must be seen I hope that if you make serious Reflections on the things I have told you without troubling your self with what your Friends think of it your Uncertainties will be cleared and you will no more suffer your self to be scared by a sort of Men who assume an unjust power over the mind of others instead of bringing them to Reason by light and evidence I leave you with Erastus to confer together upon those things I have said to you meditate with him and endeavour either to convince your self or to offer to me that is in a clear and evident manner the Reasons that hinder you from doing it DIALOGUE V. Of the Reparation of Nature by Jesus Christ Arist WE have made many Reflections Erastus and I upon Original Sin and the Contagion that spreads itself in Spirits And have even found that Original Sin is transmitted into Children in some manner as the Sentiments and Passions of passionate men communicate themselves to those that are in their presence For as the union that is between men for the benefit of Society is the cause why a man by the air of his Face stamps on the brain of such as are touched by it the same impressions which the Passion that moves him forms within him See the 7th Chapter of the 2d Book of the Inquiry after Truth so the union of the Mother with her Child being very strict and the Childs wants very great the Child's imagination must needs be sullied by all the impressions and emotions of mind that incline the Mother to sensible things Theod. Thus Aristarchus those that live in the hurry of the world that are held by too many things that never consult their reason but suffer themselves to be convinced moved and run down by every one that hath some strength of imagination and whose air being lively is consequently insectious those civil men of the Town born for Company who are always so ready to receive their Friends Sentiments in a word Aristarchus those Persons that are such as you have been till now for you are the civilest and most complaisant Gentleman I ever knew those Persons I say that are like you have a double portion of Original Sin that which they received from their Mother when they were in her womb and that which they have suckt in by the commerce of the world You are happy Aristarchus in being able to withstand the impression of those two Sins How indebted are you not to inward truth for calling you back so loudly as to be heard by you in spight of the confused noise of your senses and passions You retire sometimes within your self as if your Reason was not corrupted and the concupiscence of original Sin had not been strengthned nor encreased by a concupiscence of thirty years standing You are so much altered to day from what you were yesterday that I believe you will no longer find any considerable difficulty in our following Conferences For all that hindered you from apprehending my sentiments proceeded from the obscurity and disorder wherein the converse of the world had thrown you so that being delivered from that disorder and resolved to retire incessantly within your self you will hearken to the decisions of that truth that presides to all spirits Arist Yes Theodorus I renounce all the impressions that used to prejudice me I plainly see that all manner of union to sensible things estrangeth and removeth us from truth that the union which I had in my Mother's womb made me a Sinner that the union which I have had with my Relations hath only given me a knowledge of the world useful indeed to unite me with it and make my self considerable in it but altogether unprofitable to the inquiry after truth In short that the union which I have had with my Friends and other Men hath filled me with a very great number of most dangerous prejudices which you know better than I. I have hitherto lived by Opinion I desire now to live by Reason I will believe nothing but what Faith and Charity oblige me to believe in all other things I
of his taste to discern the things that were useful to the preservation of the body and then to eat on without taste and pleasure because the pleasure be felt in the use of sensible things never overruled his desires it only modestly warn'd of what he was to do for the good of his body Adam therefore could think on what he would and one may say that even when he slept his Spirit was awake For after all it cannot be believed that in the state of Original Righteousness there should be such a great disorder in the most admirable work of God that the spirit should be as slave to the body This is the institution of Nature Now you shall hear its Corruption The first man by degrees stranging himself from from the presence of God by suffering the capacity of his Spirit to be fill'd with sensible pleasures or the sentiments of his own excellency or with some other Ideas which by reason of the narrowness of his Spirit did blot out the remembrance of his Duty and Dependance fell at last into a disobedience to Gods command and then lost the power he had over his body For it is not just that a Sinner should reign over any thing and that God should suspend the Laws of the Communication of motions in favour of a wicked and rebellious man * I do not speak here of the Concupiscence which consists in the difficulty we find to put our selves in the presence of God and in the unvoluntary inclination we have to think always upon our selves For the motions of sensible Objects communicating themselves as far as the brain and also leaving there some deep Impressions it is necessary according to the first will of the Author of Nature that there should result in the Soul some sentiments and motions which carry her even in spight of her self to sensible things Arist All this is very well but why doth God continue to be willing that the impressions of the brain and the agitations of the animal spirits should be followed by sentiments and sensible motions since that hinders us now from loving him and applying our selves to the Truth for which we are made Theod. But why Aristarchus will you have the will of God to depend from that of the first man You have seen that the institution of Nature is admirably well ordered and would you have this Institution alter'd on the account of the mutability of Adam's will Do you not know that the inconstancy of the will is a mark of a narrow Understanding and that God is too just to repent All what God has will'd he wills it still and because his will is efficacious he doth it God had rather for some time be subservient to the injustice of men and even in one sense to reward them by the pleasure they feel in their Debaucheries than to alter the order of things which he hath most wisely establisht And men are so unworthy of God after the rebellion of their first Father that 't is just in one sense that God remove them from him continually and in a manner reward them when they go from him but it is a transitory reward a deceitful reward the price of sin that fattens the Victim for the Sacrifice and prepares sinners for the day of the Lord for that day when the Judge and Saviour of the world will hurry the impious in the fire everlasting to satisfie the divine justice as he will raise with him the elect to an Eternal Glory to exalt the Goodness and Mercy of his Father Therefore Aristarchus the Will of God which forms and rules so wisely all things was not to depend from that of the first man It was necessary that this will should subsist and that he whose wisdom has no bounds should re-establish in a manner worthy of himself the order of things which Free-will had overthrown He hath done it Aristarchus by his 〈◊〉 Will which makes the order of Grace by the 〈◊〉 design of his Son's Incarnation by that great work of Mercy which surpasses all his other works and 〈◊〉 him infinitely more honour than all that 〈◊〉 of Nature which is admir'd with so much 〈◊〉 and represents in so lively a manner the infinite wisdom of its Author Erast Give me leave Theodorus to offer to you the greatest difficulty I find in all the things you have told us now God is infinitely wise he hath foreseen from all Eternity whatever was to fall out in the order of things he was to establish he hath foreseen the sin of the first man before he was form'd why then did he make him Or why did he make him free or why did he not bind and fasten him to his duty by preingaging Pleasures In short why did he establish an order that was to be overthrown and a Nature that was to grow corrupt I grant that he hath repaired the corruption of Nature by the wisest method imaginable but would it not have been wiser to have made one uncapable of Corruption I beg of you to tell me if these things may not justly make us doubt whither an infinite intelligent being rules all Theod. But supposing I did not give you an answer Erastus what could you directly infer from my silence but that I do not know the designs of God I have evidently demonstrated to you by arguing only upon clear Ideas that there is a God and that none but him acts really in us Believe what you have seen and do not wilfully blind your self by opposing to the light of truth some objections which can rise but from the darkness of our minds When we see evidently a thing we must not cease to believe it as soon as some difficulty we cannot solve is offer'd to us Nevertheless Erastus though I do not flatter my self to know God's designs I 'le endeavour to satisfie you in few words for I will not engage my self to say to you whatever may be thought upon that subject God made man because it was his will and it was his will because man is better than nothing and that he is more capable of honouring him than nothing God made man free because the will of man is made to love good but man being able to love but what he sees if God had not made him free or if God did infallibly and necessarily carry him towards all that hath the appearance of a good or towards all that man being apt to err may consider as a good it might be said that God is the cause of sin and of the disorderly motions of the will God made man free and left him to himself without determining him by preingaging pleasure because God will be loved by reason since we are rational Creatures He will be lov'd with an Understanding Love with a Love worthy of him and worthy of us a meritorious Love and which he may remunerate for other reasons which I have already told you He foresaw that man would cease to
because he made us he will not have us such as we have made our selves far from this as such he cannot suffer us near him and always removes us from him Yet Aristarchus it is true that God is too just and loves himself too much not to desire to be beloved and to remove positively from him creatures whom he only made for himself for sensible pleasure or pain removes from God but indirectly and by our own fault First because being able to find out by reason that bodies are incapable of creating in us either pleasure or pain we ought neither to fear nor love them but God alone who hath power to cause these sensations in us When something wounds us we ought to fear God and when our senses are any ways pleased we ought to think on him and fear and love him in all things For it is a common notion that the true cause of pleasure and of pain ought to be loved and feared But our ignorance of the actual presence and continual operation of this true cause of our sensations makes us love and fear bodies imagining them to be capable to act in us Now this ignorance is not something positive caused in us by God it is nothing It is true that not to love or fear bodys it is absolutely necessary we should have a very clear and lively knowledge of the presence and continual operation of God upon us for the knowledge which Philosophy gives us of him doth not strongly enough dispose us to cleave incessantly to him But what can be concluded from God's not causing himself to be known enough without his grace to be Loved and feared in all things but that men have offended and displeased him God doth not therefore remove us positively from him when he causes some pleasure or pain in us by the means of bodys since we ought and may then think on him rather than on those bodys Now I come to the second reason Seeing we have a body it is necessary we should have notice of what passes in it It is necessary that at the appearance of objects we have sentiments moving us to cleave to or shun them It is also necessary that these sentiments be preingaging for some reasons that I have mentioned elsewhere So God doth not positively remove us from him when he causes in us our sentiments since on the contrary it is the shortest means to warn us of the things that are necessary for the preservation of life without turning us away from him But those preingaging Sentiments ought not to disturb us nor oppose our Reason and seeing they do it is evident as I have already said it 2d Dial. That Man doth not deserve God should interrupt the Law of the communication of motions for his sake but this doth not imply that God really pushes us back from him In short men see all things in God their immediate object is the intelligible world and the very substance of God but they not thinking on him at the appearance of sensible objects imagine that some outward being altogether like the Idea they have of it acts in them Thus God moves them only towards himself since he only moves them towards what they see and not towards those things which they imagine to be external and it is only indirectly and through a mistake that they love the creatures which are neither so lovely nor such as they imagin them to be Erast You are much in the right Theodorus when you believe that the first cause of our disorders is our not having God always present to our minds and not seeing or rather not feeling him in all things For did we plainly and sensibly see that none but God really acts in us when bodies are present to our sences methinks we would fear and love none but him since we love or fear nothing but what acts in us How then could Adam estrange himself from God for he could see God in all things and had all the knowledge that was necessary to remain united to him If you do not explain how he could fall into sin perhaps Aristarchus will believe that the first man was made such as we are and that concupiscence is not so much a punishment for sin as the first institution of Nature Theod. You need not fear it Erastus he knows now that we ought not to leave a demonstrated Truth because we cannot solve some difficult Points he now sticks to what he sees But I understand what you mean and answer you thus The first man did clearly see God in all things he evidently knew that bodies could not be his true good nor properly make him in the least happy or unhappy he was fully convinc'd of God's continual operation on him but his was no sensible conviction he knew this but did not feel it on the contrary he could feel that bodies acted on him tho he could not know that they did it It is true that being endowed with reason he ought to have followed his light and not his sentiment and that he could easily have done it seeing he could stop his sentiments when he pleased being free from concupiscence However deferring too much to his sences and suffering himself by degrees to hearken to them more willingly than to God himself by reason that the sences always move pleasingly and God did not move him to hear him by preingaging pleasures which must have lessened his Freedom you easily conceive how he came to remove himself so far from God as to lose sight of him to adjoyn in will to a creature by whose means he received some satisfaction and which he might then confusedly imagin to be capable of making him as happy as the Serpent assured Eve it would For tho Adam was not attackt nor seduced by the Serpent as Eve was And Adam was not deceived 1 Tim. 2.14 Yet what God said after Adam's fall Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil Gen. 3.22 Sufficiently shows that he had some hopes of becoming happy by the means of the forbidden Fruit. Now to determine us to do a thing there is no absolute necessity that we be fully persuaded that our Motive is just and reasonable The hopes of a great benefit tho never so small are capable of making us do much So we may suppose that Adam was so strongly applied to sensible Objects and consequently so far removed out of God's presence that the least hope the slightest doubt and the most confused sentiment of so great an advantage as that of being like God hath been capable of moving him to do a thing which he did not perhaps think very sinful at the time of his Fall All finite Spirits must be subject to Error and Sin principally if they resent preingaging pleasures which incline them to seek things that they ought not to love and to shun what they ought not to fear For no finite Spirit can actually resent pleasure without
will consult inward truth and believe only what it shall tell me I mistrust all Men and even you Theodorus you may speak as much as you please I will not believe you the sooner for it if truth doth not speak as well as you Your way of speaking is able to impose upon Men your Air is that of a Man persuaded of what he saith and that Air is persuasive you ought to be feared as well as others I honour and love you but I honour and love truth more than you and only love you so much the more as I find you more united to that truth I love than a world of others Theod. You are now in the best disposition of a true Philosopher and a true Friend for there is nothing but truth that enlightens true Philosophers and unites true Friends I desire you to observe and love in me nothing but truth I speak to you but I do not enlighten you I am not your light nor your good therefore do not believe me If my Air and way of expression make an impression on your imagination I would have you to know that it is not with a design to impose upon you I have no design in it I speak naturally and if I have some design it is only that of awakening your attention by something that may penetrate you Arist I believe it Theodorus and as you would be sorry to deceive me you will not take it ill if I am aware of you and do not believe you upon your word But go on I pray you I am inwardly convinced of the matters which you proved to me yesterday and even of your way of explaining the transmission of Original Sin Theod. I told you yesterday some things that are not absolutely necessary for what will follow There is no necessity of your being persuaded of the manner how Adam could happen to fall nor how his Sin could transmit it self into his Off-spring It is enough that you know that Men are born in Sin and Corruption that there is an enmity between God and them that their body is not under their subjection and that consequently their mind is in darkness and their heart in sin and disorder You cannot doubt of these things if you are persuaded of what I told you yesterday or make some reflections on the strugling that you feel within you of your self against your self of the law of your mind against that of your body of your self after the inward man against your self after the outward and sensible man You believe Aristarchus that the order of things is reversed it must therefore be re-establisht But how shall that be done Shall it be by the Heathens Philosophy They are ignorant of our Ills and cannot cure them Shall it be by the Religion of the Deists They will not admit of a Mediator Shall it be by the Law of Mahomet it encreaseth Concupiscence Shall it be then by the Law of Moses it is just and holy I own it but who shall keep it It shews us Sin it makes us sensible of the decease it makes us know the want of the Physician and the need of Grace that there must be a Mediator to reconcile Mankind to God but it doth not give us that Mediator it promises represents and gives us an image of him but it doth not possess him Moses himself hath need of an Intercessor to God and if he was a Mediator and Intercessor between God and his People it was only as a Type of the true Mediator between God and men His Mediation was only to obtain for them a long life upon earth and temporal enjoyments for he doth not promise them Heaven he doth not reunite them to God he doth not merit them Charity In fine he doth not send them the Holy Ghost that alone removes the fear of Slaves and alone gives right to the inheritance of Children None but Christ is capable to make peace between God and men for none but him can atone the justice of God by the excellency of his Sacrifice intercede to God by the dignity of his Priesthood obtain all things and send us the Holy Ghost by the quality of his Person None but him that came down from Heaven can take us thither with him and none but him that is united to God by an union of substance can reunite us to God by a supernatural union none but the true Son of God can intitle us to his Adoption God having made all things by his Son and for him it was just he should repair all things by him and establish him Head of his Church Judge over his People and Sovereign Lord of all the Creation Who but God-man could retribute to God an honour worthy of him have a fellow-suffering of our miseries and sanctify them in his Person Who but him could be predestinated before the beginning of time as a work worthy of God represented in all Ages as the end of the Law and wished for by all Nations as the only Person able to deliver them from their misery Man being become sensible and carnal it was necessary that the Word should be made Man that the intelligible Light should make himself sensible and that he who enlightens all Men in the deepest recess of their reason should instruct them likewise by their Senses by Miracles Parables and familiar Comparisons United as we are to all corporeal Beings and having a dependence upon whatsoever we are united to it was necessary that we should be taught Self-denial Privation and Repentance and strengthned by the cherishing delights of Grace as also comforted by the sweetness of Hope The Christian Religion doth whatever ought to be done and Christian Morality teaches whatsoever ought to be known But I must prove to you more at large and by a method that may convince your Friend that none but the Christian Religion can re-establish the Order that Sin hath reversed I begin with those things that concern Religion and then will come to Morality I pray you therefore to be attentive Aristarchus Do you believe that God is merciful Arist Can I not believe it Theod. And do you believe that he is just Arist Yes certainly Theod. * This Work being chiefly against such as have but little deference to the Authority of the Fathers I do not quote them to prove my Assertions tho' I give their Arguments when I judge them proper for my design When I quoted The Inquiry after Truth the Reason was that the Reader may see in that Book the things that I have not sufficiently explained in this However it is easy to perceive that I do not pretend to convince any one by the Authority of that Book I quote it as Geometricians do Euclid and Apollonius You must believe then that it is impossible that Sin can remain unpunished and that God must needs revenge himself on such as offend him and that it is necessary that he satisfy himself by atoning his Justice Arist
how he is the beginning and end of all things Those holy persons that read the Scripture with an intention to find Christ never fail to find him there for he is in every place of it But they have not the spirit of this world but that of God whereby they know the greatness of the Gift that God hath imparted to them The outward and sensible Man is not capable of the things which the Divine Spirit teacheth us for the eye hath not seen the ear hath not heard nor the heart of man ever understood what God hath prepared for those that love him I do not only speak of those false learned who deny the corruption of Nature the necessity of Grace and the Divinity of Christ yet assume the quality of Christians I also speak of those who live in the bosom of the Church but have little love for Religion It is impossible they should be very well learned in the knowledge of Christ seeing they do not love him and do not study the Scriptures professing the Christian Religion perhaps only because it is that of their Parents Arist You have told us a great many things both to day and yesterday since I have seen my Friend I imagin that he wants me as I do to know what he will think of these things I must leave you to go to him Theod. Do Aristarchus make him sensible of the general corruption of Nature and the enmity that is between God and man and endeavor to demonstrate plainly to him the necessity of Christ's satisfaction If you find that he receives your Sentiments as he ought and is willing to be instructed immediately fall on the praises of our Redeemer and stir him up to the love of his Saviour by the consideration of the chief obligations he hath to him Tell him That Christ is the Way the Truth and the Life That he is our intelligible light that enlightens us in the deepest recess of our Reason and our sensible light that instructs us by Miracles by Parables and Faith That he alone is the food of the Soul That his light is the sole producer of Charity and that none but him can give us the holy Spirit whereby we become the children of God Tell him that he hath been predestinated before all time to be our King and Chief our Pastor and Law-giver That God receives our Prayers through him only That we are made clean only by his blood and enter into the Holy of Holies only through his Sacrifice In short That Christ is all things to us that in him we are new creatures and new men that have not been condemned in Adam that without Christ we are nothing have right to nothing but are sold to Sin Slaves to the Devils and the eternal objects of God's wrath Use all your endeavors to make him think on Christ to unite him to and make him esteem and love Christ and conclude with these words of St Paul at the end of one of his Epistles If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathema Maran-atha 1 Cor. 16.22 DIALOGUE VI. The Truth of the Christian Religion proved by other Reasons Arist AH Theodorus how unsatisfy'd am I in my Friend Theod. Yes Aristarchus I can easily see it the Air of your Countenance does not rejoice those that examin it 't is not an Air of Triumph or of Victory that might please those who take part of it But how cou'd he resist you Arist As I was well persuaded of the truth of the Christian Religion by the proofs of original Sin and the necessity of a Mediator so I imagined I cou'd convince him by proposing the same proofs but I know not to what I should attribute the ill success of my words when I spoke to him instead of persuading him I provoked him and he rejected all that I proposed to him with a kind of scorn he would not so much as agree with me in common Notions but continually said that my Reasons were the Reasons of Philosophy Such Answers grieved me I strove to convince him and continued to repeat the same things hoping that at last he would reflect but all my Efforts were entirely lost 'T is something strange Theodorus that a Man can't convince others of the same thing that he himself is fully convinced of for it appears to me that all Men ought to see the same things Theod. If all Men were equally attentive to inward truth they would all equally see the same things but your Friend is not like you he is taken up with a multitude of things and his pride has now for many years kept him unconversant even with himself so that abstracted proofs and reasonings built upon Notions which have no dependance of the senses persuade him not because these proofs don't touch him and because he has many confused reasons which hinder his application to them When a Man has discovered a Geometrical Demonstration he can convince all Men of it to whom he clearly proposes it because that these things are sensible that they freely apply themselves to them that there 's no reason why they should not believe them that they are not prepossess'd by the authority of Men that deny them and that when they see these kinds of truth they see them after a sensible manner But 't is not the same with certain truths which are contrary to our inclinations there we think not seriously and we have many reasons not to believe them It 's necessary Aristarchus that I demonstrate to you the truth of the Christian Religion by more sensible proofs than those of our preceding Conferences it may be your Friend will more willingly hearken to them Do you take his place and object whatever you can imagin against what I shall offer I only suppose that God hath made our Souls to know and love him 'T is what your Friend assents to You have heard Aristarchus of one Moses the famous Legislator of the Jews to whom God gave the Ten Commandments upon Mount Sinai Do you believe what the Scripture says of him Arist But what if he was a Cheat an Impostor Theod. Very well Aristarchus you suppose your self under your Friend's character but you know that he must have an excessive bold spirit I would say the most ignorant and most transported of bold spirits who dares say that Moses was a Cheat you do much honour to your Friend Arist I know what I say Theod. Well then if you know him so well speak for him I will engage him in your person You have reason Aristarchus and ought not to oppose a Sentiment that is universally received by all reasonable persons unless you have good proofs that they are deceived Arist There is much prejudice Theod. Right but this common Reason does not justifie you nor will it justifie the most extravagant doubts that may be raised but I may tell you that there was never any Man that could be more unreasonably accused of Imposture
than Moses 'T is one essential quality of a Cheat to avoid the Light but the Miracles of Moses were wrought before all the people in the sight of Six hundred thousand fighting Men there was a great number of them and some were repeated every day for many years together But not to stay upon these unprofitable proofs let us reflect upon the manner how the Israelites were nourished in the Wilderness forty years every morning the Earth was covered with Manna except the Sabbath day when it was kept till the next day it was corrupted and full of Worms except the Sabbath day This Manna ceased to fall when the Israelites had once eaten of the fruits of the Land of Canaan and from that time they never saw it â—…ll Can one doubt of a Fact which was continued Forty years Or can one attribute to a natural Cause this Rain or Dew which fell but for Forty years which ceased to fall every Saturday and which could not be kept without corruption but upon Saturdays Is Saturdays Air or Sun different from that of other days Did the first Repast which the Israelites had in the Land of Canaan change the face of Heaven or the situation of the Stars which caused it to rain Manna Is' t not evident by these Circumstances that this Rain was not Natural Arist But what proofs have you that the Pentateuch Joshua and other Books from whence you borrow what is spoken of Manna are true If they were Fabulous Theod. If they were Fabulous Aristarchus the Jews were Men of a different nature from us they were Fools and stupid to a very improbable degree Think you Aristarchus that Men who have but a little of common Sense would without Reason or Examination receive Books as authentic and as a Rule of their Faith and Conduct I 'll explain my self Think you that a whole Nation would submit to a Law so very severe and painful by the force of Arms or some reason of Interest without being compelled thereto as 't were by Divine Authority Think you that upon a Fabulous History derived from our Ancestors we should be so stupid and insensible blindly to submit our selves to a Ceremony so shameful and incommodious as is that of Circumcision How can it be imagined that the Jews receiv'd the Law which they observe and the Books which they call Canonical without consideration These Books flatter them not they continually menace and reproach them with the stupidity infidelity and malice of their Ancestors The Jews were not obliged by force of Arms to receive these authentic Books wherefore do they receive them wherefore do they preserve them so carefully wherefore are there no Men so constant as they to the Religion of their Fathers 'T is without doubt either because the Jews are not Men as we are or rather because their Religion and Books have all the possible characters of truth But Aristarchus you believe that God hath made us to know and love him and to make use of the most reasonable Religion for there must be an outward worship for Men that make use of their senses and who live in society We must then of all Books that treat of Religion believe those that have the greatest appearance of truth but there are none comparable to the Scripture for the Reasons I have told you as also for innumerable other Reasons We ought then to look upon these Books as our Rule and there to search the Religion which we ought to sollow And if we deceive our selves in the choice of these Books our Error would only depend on this that there would be no mark to discern sacred Books from profane or rather from this that there would be neither sacred Books nor Religion which were pleasing to God Arist What you say Theodorus is highly reasonable but my Friend will rashly tell me that Mahomet was a Prophet and that the Alcoran is a Divine Book how would you have me to answer him Theod. Compare the Miracles of Moses with those of that Impostor and shew him what difference there is betwixt his making a tame Pigeon whisper in his Ear before all the people or making a famisht Bull bring him a Book through the multitude or attributing a * The Falling-sickness Disease shameful enough to the apparition and dazzling lustre of the Angel Gabriel and the Miracles which confirm the mission of Moses or the covering the Earth with Insects changing Water into Blood filling the Air with thick darkness agitating it by Thunder inflaming it by Lightning making it to rain celestial Food for forty years to be conducted by a Cloud in the day-time and Fire by night both of them in form of a Pillar I pass over many other Miracles that God performed by Moses in the sight of all Egypt and all the people of Israel The Alcoran relates no such Miracles in favour of Mahomet it does not so much as mention those which I have already spoken of which are such gross cheats * Chap. of the Cow of Women and other things of the version of Du Rier and 't is well known that many Men despised the false Prophet which is the Author of them because he did no Miracle But Aristarchus let us not insist altogether upon this the Alcoran destroys itself by itself as well as Iudaism as you shall see presently I 'll suppose that Mahomet was a Prophet and that his Book is as authentic as the Old Testament grant to me that there is at least an equal Authority to two Books so different and let us first see which is the Religion that the holy Scripture propounds to us Arist How Theodorus will you be a Jew Theod. Yes certainly Aristarchus if Judaism be the Law which the holy Scripture proposes to us as capable of making most perfect and happy as for me I look upon holy Scripture as a Divine Book but perhaps Judaism as to the Letter is not the end of the Law Take heed Aristarchus think you that Beasts have a Soul I mean a Substance which animates or informs their Body and which is more noble than it Arist To what purpose Theod. Only answer Arist Yes I believe that Beasts have a Soul and that their Soul is more noble than their Body Theod. I 'll prove that you are mistaken what is the end the good or happiness of Beasts think you that Beasts have any other natural Felicity than the enjoyment of their Bodies Arist No I believe the end of Beasts is to eat and drink Theod. Then God hath made the Soul of Beasts for the enjoyment of their Body but the Soul of Beasts is more noble than their Body Then God has not well ordered his work nor proposed to Beasts an end worthy of them if that which makes them more happy and perfect must be more noble than that which receives its happiness and perfection Thus you ought to observe that God has not given to Beasts a Soul distinct from their
by few things he could unite himself to God in a manner close enough to receive from him all the necessary lights This made him extremely learned Had he still disengag'd himself more from his Senses less immers'd himself in the World and yet more carefully apply'd himself to seek after Truth it is certain that he would have carried the Sciences of which he hath treated much further and his Metaphysics would not be such as he hath left them to us in his Writings Arist But Theodorus now that so many able Men have wrote of Philosophy Mathematics and other Learning methinks it is enough if we read their Works Those learned Persons whereof I was just now speaking to you know Des Cartes as well as Des Cartes could know himself My Friend whom I have a mind to convert understands him so throughly that nothing can be mention'd out of that Author but is known by him nay and the very place where it lies yet he never meditates reads a Book in three days and knows it all Therefore I judg that Retirement is not necessary for Learning Theod. Not for that Learning which resides in Memory and doth not enlighten the Mind Do you think that those Persons who so easily remember other Mens Opinions can see the truth of them Do you think that your Friend knows Des Cartes or rather do you think that he sees what Des Cartes saw If you do you are much mistaken I will grant to you that your Friend knows all the words which Des Cartes hath us'd better than Des Cartes himself did or that he can better relate Des Cartes's Opinion than Des Cartes himself could have done it In short I will believe if you will that he is fitter to make a Man a Cartesian to enlighten the minds of those that hear him and make them receive Des Cartes's Sentiments than Des Cartes himself was yet for all this I do not believe that he truly knows Des Cartes Des Cartes's Philosophy is in his memory and imagination and for that Reason he speaks pertinently of it but I do not believe that it is in his mind and for that Reason he neither sees nor approves those Sentiments that are the necessary Consequences of it It seems as a Paradox that a Man who doth not know a Truth should sometimes be more capable of persuading another of it than he who exactly knows it and discover'd it himself yet if you consider that we instruct others only by Words you will easily perceive that those that have any force of imagination and a happy memory often can remembring what they have read explain themselves more clearly than those who are accustom'd to meditation and who discover Truth by themselves Thus Aristarchus do not imagin that those who speak pertinently to you concerning some certain Truths see them perfectly for it is not always so many times this happens yet those Truths are only in their memory or else they see them by an imaginary sight for that sight furnishes expressions lively and that seem to signify much tho' they signify nothing distinct only to those whom they move to retire within themselves There is much difference between seeing and seeing between seeing after having read and seeing after having meditated And to find out those that see distinctly and perfectly possess a Truth from those who do not possess it there needs truly to propose to them some question that depends from it for then those that see clearly speak clearly but the others always speak in such a manner as discovers their want of light Examin your learned Men Aristarchus according to this method and you will find that the most learned are the most ignorant that they have the less penetration and the greatest rashness that they cannot so much as discern Truth from what seems to be such that they speak without conceiving what they say and that often in the very instant that you admire them what is most to be admired in them is nothing but an effect of that memory which like a Watch goes of itself and whose springs unbend themselves by the action of the imagination In short you will see after all that almost all their knowledg is destitute of light and evidence of that intellectual light and evidence that is darkned by the slightest sensation and dissipated by the smallest motion and that therefore Retirement a privation of sensible things the mortification of the senses and passions are absolutely necessary for the perfection of the understanding as also for the conversion of the heart But this doth not justify the Morals of the Gospel for Christ did not come to teach us the Mathematics Philosophy and such other Truths which by themselves are unuseful enough for our Salvation All knowledg of Truth rendring the mind in some manner more perfect it was necessary that Christ's directions should be proper to purchase it But the true perfection of the mind and the shortest way to learn generally all Sciences being an Union with God not the natural Union which is incessantly interrupted by the motions of Concupiscence but the Union which a clear sight and a continual love make indissolvable It was necessary that Christ's Precepts should put us in the way whereby we may attain to that Union You will see at our next Interview that the Christian Religion alone can lead us to it In the mean time I leave you with Erastus to meditate on the things which we have said now DIALOGUE VIII That Christian Morality is absolutely necessary for the Conversion of the Heart Theod. WEll Aristarchus are you convinc'd that Retirement from Business a Privation of Pleasures in a word that a mortification of the Senses and Passions is absolutely necessary for the discovery of secret abstracted and sound Truths whose knowledg puffs not up the Heart For I well know that the Commerce of the World engages the Mind in the Study of such Sciences as render a Man famous and that Concupiscence gives us a Passion for all Truths which are useful to make a Man considerable in the World Arist Yes Theodorus I am convinc'd Truth in itself appears so mean a thing to Men toss'd with Passion or join'd to some sensible Object that they can't but despise it and tho' there are many that seek after it 't is I confess out of design and hope to draw some advantage from it The brightness and glory which environs the Learned sparkles and dazles us our secret Pride awakes and stirs us up But the pure light of Truth is not lively enough to make us perceive it when we are preingaged with other things Erast I have known some Men who probably read in the Morning for a matter of Talk in the Afternoon for as soon as they had left the little Company that applauded them they have had such an horror for Books and every thing call'd Learning that they cou'd not abide to hear it spoke of You remember Mr. F. for
Christian Conferences DEMONSTRATING The TRUTH OF THE Christian Religion AND MORALITY By F. MALEBRANCHE To which is Added His MEDITATIONS ON HUMILITY and REPENTANCE LONDON Printed and are to be Sold by J. Whitlock near Stationers-Hall MDCXCV TO THE READER THE many pious Reflections which the Author of The Search after Truth makes in that admirable Book justly induc'd him to believe that they might be of use to demonstrate the Truth of Christian Religion by evident Reasons Those who follow Des Cartes will doubtless allow this to be true for nothing is set down there but what is plainly prov'd or what is an axiom universally granted Now as it is of great importance to convince all sorts of Persons of the Conformity of the Christian Religion with Reason This Author judged that the following Dialogues might be useful to that end Since these Philosophers ought not to be neglected But 't is also hop'd that many others not satisfied with the Proofs deduc'd from old Philosophy will be convinc'd by those that are given here provided these Dialogues be read with all the attention that is requisite to understand a work of this Nature This is all that is desired of them for a serious Application of the mind undoubtedly produces Light It may not be improper to answer a Thing which some Persons might think amiss in the management of this Work they might say that our young Erastus is too learned and answers Theodorus with two much strength and Judgment considering his unripe Years which are represented to be between Fifteen and Twenty But these Gentlemen may observe that our Author supposes Erastus to be altogether free from Prejudice and this ought to be supposed since Theodorus and Aristarchus chuse him Judge of their differences They may also consider that when Erastus speaks afterwards above his Years t is only some things which he had read in The Search after Truth And after all the Design of Christian Dialogues is not that of certain writings made only to indulge the Imagination but rather to instrust the Mind and 't is much better that Erastus should be admir'd for saying Things seldom spoken by those of his Years as they are now Educated than that he should give us occasion to laugh at his Childishness or at that Simplicity that so well expresses the Character of a young raw Student There are some few Passages in these Dialogues where the Author who is known to be a Roman Catholic has made his Interlocutors to speak like Men of that Persuasion But I did not think fit either to alter or omit any Thing this being a bare Translation which ought consequently to represent the Original as much as Possible Neither did did I think it necessary to confute those Passages For the Arguments used by the Roman Catholicks in behalf of their particalar Doctrines are so inconsiderable if compared with those which this Author has offer'd to prove the Truth of the Christian Religion that at this Day they do not deserve that Protestants should lose Time in confuting them As for the Translators Part if you can pardon some few Faults of Print and Gallicisms of which such Works are seldom wholly Free he dares assure you that he has taken all imaginable Care to give here his Author's Sence just in its full Extent and as close and clear as it was possible in such abstracted Notions The CONTENTS Dialogue I. THat their is a God and that none but he really act in us and can make us Happy or Miserable Page 1. Dialogue II. Objections and Answers p. 24. Dialogue III. Of the Order of Nature in the Creation of Man p. 44. Dialogue IV. Of the Disorder of Nature caused by Original Sin p. 61. Dialogue V. Of the Reparation of Nature by Jesus Christ p. 83. Dialogue VI. The Truth of the Christian Religion prov'd by other Reasons p. 104. Dialogue VII That Christian Morality is very useful to the Perfection of the Vnderstanding p. 123. Dialogue VIII That Christian Morality is absolutely necessary for the Conversion of the Heart p. 140. Dialogue IX The same Subject continued p. 159. Dialogue X. Reflections on the whole p. 178. Meditations concerning Humility and Repentance with Elevations of the Soul to God Of Man considered as a Creature Of Man considered as the Son of a sinful Father Of Man consider'd as a Sinner CHRISTIAN DIALOGVES DIALOGUE I. That there is a God and that none but him acts really in us and can make us happy or miserable Aristarchus I Must let you know my dear Theodorus how little satisfaction our late Conferences have yielded me I have discours'd with you of my Travels and several adventures of my last Campaigns you know them all do not ask me any more of them You told me a word yesterday which made such an impression on me that I am become insensible to all the things that have hitherto extreamly moved me I find their Emptiness and their Vanity and will have solid Enjoyments and certain Truths Theodorus Give thanks Aristarchus to your deliverer to him that breaks your bonds and changes your heart I have spoke a long time to your ears but at last he that put words into my mouth hath made you understand their meaning You have seen Truth and you love it you desire to see it more plainly that you may love it more fervently Think not Aristarchus that what enlightens you and creates in you the desire you feel now is a word spoke in the air which only affects the body or the sensible man uncapable of understanding How many times have I told you the same things without convincing you of them I spoke then to your ears but the light of truth did not shine in your mind or rather since that Light is always within us it did shine in your mind but it did not enlighten it Being out of your self you hearken'd to a man who only spake to the Body You were in Darkness and would not turn your self towards him who alone can disperse it Learn then my dear Aristarchus to retire within your self to be attentive to Inward Truth to ask and receive the answers of our common Master for without it I assure you all my words will be barren fruitless and like all those I have told you already which you hardly can remember Aristarchus I am willing to do my endeavour to follow you but I fear I shall not be able to do it for I have much ado to understand well the things you have told me now Theod. In the Passion that moves you now you will not fail to give attention to all the things I 'll tell you but you shall not always understand them your attention will hardly be pure enough and your intention sufficiently free from Interest to be always rewarded with the clear and distinct sight of Truth The attention of the mind is the natural Prayer we make to Inward Truth that it may discover it self to us but this Soveraign
Truth doth not always answer our expectation for we do not know how to make our addresses We often ask it questions without knowing what we ask as when we go about to resolve questions whose terms we do not understand We ask it questions and then leave it not waiting for its answers as when Impatience seizes us and our Imagination is displeas'd that we think on things that have no relation to the good of the body We ask it questions and strive to corrupt it as when our Passions move us and we will have its answers to agree with our opinions In short we ask it questions we hear its answers and do not understand them as when our prejudices prepossess our mind and it is fill'd with false Ideas and our Imagination is utterly spoil'd by an infinite number of dark and confus'd notions that continually represent all things to us with respect to our selves Then God speaks and the body also reason and imagination the mind and the senses there arises a confused noise and nothing can be heard Darkness mixes it self with Light and nothing can be seen For we cannot always discern what God tells us Immediately and through himself to unite us to truth from what he tells us through our body to unite us to sensible things The various Imployments of your Life have fill'd your mind with a great number of prejudices that have imprinted on it a certain Character much esteem'd in the world which is but as a Seal that fastens those prejudices on our minds You have read much the Books of certain Scepticks who are proud of doubting of all things and yet speak of them peremptorily and I fear that like them you will have me hereafter prove you common notions and receive as principles opinions altogether unknown to the greatest part of mankind It is also much to be fear'd that your travels have too much disperst your thoughts and given your mind too much of the Court-air to let you hear with attention some things altogether unknown amongst Travellers and Military men You do not believe at present that your Studies and Travels have corrupted your reason and prepossess'd you with many unreasonable opinions You have some cause not to believe it and I will not undertake to convince you of it yet But that hereafter we may reconcile our differences let us take for a third a young man whom the conversation of the World hath not yet spoilt that Nature alone may speak in him and we may find who of us two is prepossess'd Methinks Erastes who heard us t'other day would be very fit for this I observ'd by his countenance that he often consulted within himself to examine our sentiments with those of his Conscience and always approv'd of the most reasonable tho he us'd to stand as it were amaz'd and surpriz'd without judging of any thing when ever he heard you relate certain things which you have read in Books Arist You do him a great deal of honour at my cost but I can find no fault with it that young man is so lovely that besides the tye of blood I have all the reason in the world to be glad of the esteem you have of his Wit I freely consent But here he comes in very good time Erastes Gentlemen will you be pleas'd to do me the same favour you did me lately Will you give me leave to stay here Arist With all our hearts Erastus we were thinking to send for you I have just now told you my resolution Theodorus and you approve of it Let us Philosophize I pray you but let it be after a Christian and solid manner Instruct me of the Truths that are essential and most capable of rendering us happy How would you prove that there is a God for I believe that 't is by this we ought to begin Theod. The Existence of God may be prov'd a thousand ways for there is nothing but may serve to demonstrate it and I wonder how a person of your parts so well read in Antiquity and so accomplisht every way seems not to be convinc'd of it Arist I am convinc'd of it by Faith but I must confess I am not fully convinc'd of it by Reason Theod. If you speak as you think you are convinc'd of it neither by reason nor by Faith For do you not know that the assurance of Faith comes from the authority of a God that speaks and who can never deceive us If then you are not convinc'd by reason that there is a God how will you be convinc'd that he hath spoke Can you know that he hath spoke without knowing that he is And can you know that the things which he hath reveal'd us are true without knowing that he is Infallible and never deceives us Arist I do not examine things so narrowly and the reason why I believe it is because I will believe it and that I have been told so all my life But let us see your proofs Theod. Your Faith hath much of the man in it and your answers shew much Indifference I design'd to give you the most simple and natural proofs of the Existence of God but I find by the disposition of your mind they would not be the most convincing You must have sensible proofs Here are many things about us which of them shall I make use of to prove you that there is a God Shall it be this Fire that delights us this Light that illuminates us the nature of Words by whose means we discourse together for as I told you just now there is nothing but may serve to shew the existence of its Author provided we consider it with all possible attention God acts incessantly in and by all his works 'T is he that illuminates us by this outward light that delights us by the warmth of this fire and discourses with us when we think we converse together God neither produces nor preserves any creature but which may cause those to know him who make good use of their reason I will convince you of it presently In the mean time Erastus take heed that neither of us prepossess you Answer me Aristarchus What doth Fire do in you Arist It warms me Theod. Then Fire causes a pleasure in you Arist I own it Theod. What causes in us some pleasure makes us in some measure happy Arist It is true Theod. Then what makes us in some manner happy is in some manner our good and in some manner above us and deserves in some manner love and veneration What think you of it Erastus is Fire in some manner above you Can Fire act in you Can it cause in you a pleasure it hath not it feels not it knows not and cause it in you that is to say in a Spirit in a being infinitely above it Erast I do not think so Theod. See then Aristarchus what you have to answer Arist You conclude too fast And I see what you drive at I distinguish Fire
in my soul a knowledge of instinct nor any other I cannot tell if you are satisfied Arist But little truly Theod. Shall I tell you why you are not well satisfied 'T is because Erastus hath made a clear and evident answer to an Objection that was not so If you clearly understood what you object Erastus would answer you both clearly and quickly If hereafter you desire to receive from him more satisfaction than you have had hitherto consider well what you intend to ask him He cannot answer you speedily and clearly when he doth not understand you and you do not even understand your self He uses all his endeavours not to answer but when he hath consulted inward truth and had its answer but it never answers him when he doth not know what he asks Yet you would have him give you an answer and that speedy too If he made you any he would deceive you for it would be his answer and not Truths you should receive I will still put some questions to him that you may observe the method I think is proper to go about it and that his answers may instruct you of the Truth we seek I have obliged my self Erastus to prove the existence of God by the effects which fire seems to produce in us but to do it 't is of the greatest consequence to know that 't is not the soul that causes in her self her own sensations See if you have not still some other proof I do not say more solid but more able to convince Aristarchus Think on it Why do you sometimes suffer a pain Do you delight in it Erast I understand you Theodorus I am not to my self the cause of my happiness nor of my misery If I was the cause of the pleasure I feel seeing I love it I should always produce some in me And on the contrary if I was the cause of the pain I suffer seeing I hate it I would never produce it in my self I perceive that there is a superiour cause that acts on me and may make me happy or unhappy Since I cannot act on my self and that bodies produce not in me the sensations which I feel as we said just now Arist You have it not right Erastus you love your Body you either know or feel that there happens some good or ill to it you either rejoyce or are afflicted at it The one is your pleasure and the other your pain Erast What ever Aristarchus says to me puzzles me and throws me into darkness I beg of you Theodorus to disperse it Theod. I do not wonder at it Erastus Whatever he tells you is false or full of obscurity yet seems probable enough Will you never retire within your self Aristarchus How can you conceive I pray you that Erastus loves his body Whatever is within Erastus that is able to love is better than the body of Erastus Erastus knows it His Body cannot act on his Soul he knows it his Body cannot be his Good he knows that too it cannot be properly said then that he loves it But here lies the riddle Erastus loves pleasure more than his body and he resents pleasure when his body is well dispos'd 'T is that obliges him to mind his body and to defend it when any thing offends it Do you think the Drunkards love their body when they gorge it with Wine Do you think the Libertines love their body when they ruine their health Is it not rather because they love the present pleasure Do those who mortifie their body love it when they tear it or do you believe they hate it What is it then they love but the pleasures they hope one day to enjoy What do they hate on the contrary but the everlasting torments they fear to suffer Thus you may see that Erastus doth not cause in himself his pleasure because he finds or is sensible that the body he loves is well dispos'd For he doth not even know that his body is in a good state by any other thing than by the pleasure he hath by it It is true that when we feel by pleasure or by pain that our body is well or ill dispos'd we are affected with joy or grief but if you think on it seriously you will easily perceive that this grief and joy that are the effects of our knowledge differ mightily from those antecedent pains and pleasures of which we speak Therefore they must have some other cause than our selves Do you grant it Arist I am now convinced of it Theod. Now this cause must be superior and always present to us since it acts within us This cause can punish or reward us make us happy or unhappy since pleasure delights us and pain displeases and makes us uneasie If then this Cause were God we should know that God doth not only rule the motions of the heavens But that he hath a hand in our concerns rules whatsoever passes in us and that in order to our happiness we ought to fear him love him and follow his orders For since he makes continual applications to us he requires something from us and if we do not perform what he requires from us 't is not likely that he should reward us and make us happy Arist I own it But how would you prove that it is not some Angel or Demon that hath the Government of us and acts on us How would you prove that there is a Being infinitely powerful and who includes in his being all the perfections imaginable This seems to me very difficult Theod. It is difficult by the method I have taken but when we acknowledge a superior power that acts in us we have not much difficulty to consider him as Soveraign and to allow him all the perfections of which we have some idea Nevertheless I must endeavour to convince you fully Mind me also Enastus As soon as we are prick'd with a Thorn we feel pain This pain doth not proceed from the Thorn nor from the Soul you grant all this it proceeds then from a superior power This power ought to know the moment when the Thorn pricks our body that he may in the same moment produce the pain in our soul But how shall he know it Think on it He cannot know it from us for we know nothing of it yet Nor from the Thorn for the Thorn cannot act on the spirit of that power nor represent it self to him for the Thorn is neither visible nor intelligible by it self there being no relation between bodies and intelligent beings Whence then shall this superior power learn the moment when the Thorn pricks us If you tell me that he shall know it from some other intelligent being I will ask you the same questions of the second intelligent being and if you fly to a third you will get no more by it Yet in the very instant when we are pricked we feel pain The superior cause must then have learnt that the Thorn pricks us without the help
of other intelligent beings ad infinitum For as you see he would not have so soon an answer seeing 't is no easie matter to find an ultimate in an infinite There must be then an intelligent being that learns in himself and by its self in what moment the thorn pricks us And this intelligent being can be no other than God that is to say a being whose power is infinite and whose will alone is the cause of things For after all there is none but him whose will is efficacious that can see in himself and by himself the existence and the motion of Bodies For it being impossible he should be ignorant of his own will he only can discover within himself the number figure and scituation of bodies and generally whatever happens to them It follows then that all other intelligent beings are enlightned by the Creator And as you see or as you will clearly see if you think on it seriously you should not know that you have a body and that there are others about you if you had not learnt it of him who knows it by himself Do you understand these things Erastus Erast I do plainly Theodorus This is your argument What causes pain is neither the Soul that feels nor the Thorn that pricks but a superior power This power ought at least to know the moment when the thorn pricks he cannot know it from the thorn seeing bodies cannot give any light to spirits they being neither visible nor intelligible by themselves and no relation being to be found between a body and a spirit He can know it then but by himself that is to say by the knowledge of his own will which creates and moves the thorn and whose power is infinite since it is able to create There is then a God and if there was no God I should not be pricked I should feel nothing see nothing and know nothing Theod. Very well But what think you of these reasons Aristarchus Arist Think I think that both you and your echo Erastus talk in the clouds The ground of your proof is that that there is no relation between bodies and spirits From whence you conclude that an Angel cannot see a body immediately and by himself To which I answer that that spirits may know bodies it is sufficient that they penetrate them Theod. What do you mean by penetrating them Certainly Erastus doth not understand you But without asking you explications that perhaps would puzzle and displease you doth your soul penetrate your body your heart or your brain the principal part where she resides Arist I believe it doth Theod. Pray tell me then how your brain is composed or that principal part wherein your soul resides Arist I do not understand Anatomy Theod. How You don't understand Anatomy Must you search in Books or in the head of other men which you do not penetrate to know how the brain which your soul penetrates is compos'd What signifies it then to a spirit to penetrate a body Arist I must confess I have nothing to answer Yet methinks if a spirit penetrates a body he ought to know that body But perhaps there is something that hinders it which I do not understand Theod. If it were so Aristarchus this something would be the God whom we seek I will lose no time to prove it to you For I will not prove the existence of God by imaginary effects You may think on it at your leisure But I rather advise you to make a serious reflection on the things I have told you now and then I hope you will visibly find that there is a God I mean a Being whose Will is Power and Power Infinite since it is able to create You will find that this God doth not walk about the Heavens as the Libertines will have it but that his providence extends it self to all things and that he acts incessantly in us That it is he that gives us the pleasing and painful sentiments we have of sensible objects and that consequently he may make us happy or miserable In short you will know God in the most useful manner for morality You will even confess that God hath made nothing but may serve to demonstrate his existence though 't is more conducing to morality to demonstrate it by something that passes within us One of the reasons why you are not easily brought to be of my mind is that you have perhaps never seriously thought on the things of which we have been speaking For I do not perceive that my proofs are remote or hard to be understood I will be judg'd of it by Erastus And I believe we ought to agree on that point that hereafter you may be prepared on the subjects on which we shall treat Arist It belongs to you Theodorus to set rules for every thing For you know that my resolution is to seek none but such truths as are essential and may make us wiser and more happy I need say no more to you Theod. To this effect Aristarchus I will tell you the course I intend to keep in our Conferences Observe it well that you may think on it at leisure and prepare your self to make me all the Objections you can I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated that there is a God who acts incessantly in us and who may make us happy or unhappy by pleasure and by pain of which he alone is the true cause and therefore I will bring no other proofs of it and will content my self with resolving your difficulties But I will prove to you that the design of God in creating man hath been that man might know and love him that God hath preserved man but to that end In short that that design is so unalterable that sinners and the damned themselves execute it in one sense and that they shall sooner cease to be than they shall wholly cease to know and to love God When I have establisht as a principle that since God acts always for himself we cannot be happy if we resist his will nor unhappy if we obey it I will demonstrate how God will be known and be loved how we can resist his orders and what is yet more â—trange how we are capable to offend him I will show that our nature is corrupted that sin dwells in us that the spirit is a slave to the flesh In short I will explain the cause and the effects of the corruption of nature how our disorders strange us from God and make us his enemies as also our want of a Mediator and Redeemer I will explain the qualities our Redeemer and Mediator ought to have to reconcile us to God and to satifie his justice that Jesus Christ possesses them all and none but him What may cure the blindness of the mind and the malice of our heart That those remedies are to be found in the precepts of the Gospel and the grace of Jesus Christ In fine I will show that none but a God
made man can restore reconcile and save us That nothing but the blood of Christ can cleanse us that nothing but his grace can strengthen us that only his precepts can conduct us to that wisdom and to that felicity you wish for and that all we have to do in this life is to study the moral of the Gospel to hear Jesus Christ to love Jesus Christ to follow and to imitate Jesus Christ who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord 1 Cor. 1.30,31 DIALOGUE II. Objections and Answers Aristarchus WE long'd with impatience to see you again Theodorus for we wanted you almost as soon as we had left you Erastus and I could not agree about the things you told us yesterday for there come into my mind some difficulties which seem to me not to be overcome and so we have done nothing but disputed all the while but at last Erastus saith he doth not understand me and that he hath nothing else to answer me Theod. Nothing but truth can reconcile minds and if you disagree it is because one of you doth not consult it I am very much affraid that you have consulted your imagination more than your reason and that you have lancht into the deepest recess of your memory for some justificative evidence of your prejudices Tell me is it not true Aristarchus that you have but little meditated on the things I told you yesterday and that whereas you should have examined them by the light of truth you have compar'd them with those things of which the perusual of the Ancients hath left you a tincture Will you never be brought to and will you never understand that you have in your self a faithful master ready to give you an answer at all times if you ask it with decency and submission that is to say in the calm of your senses and passions You tell me that you wanted me but pray are you not ashamed to have recourse to a man to be enlightned and ought you not to know that if I am capable of giving you some instruction 't is not by diffusing light into your mind but making you retire within your self and turning you towards the light that enlightens me Why are we sometimes of the same mind but because we both retire within our selves and harken to him of whom all mankind receives the like answers And why have you so much disputed with Erastus but because you told him things which the truth he consults did not tell him nor had ever told you I beg of you then Aristarchus that we may have no more disputes but let truth be the supreme Judge amongst us and use all your endeavours to make me no objections but such as you understand clearly and may also be understood by Erastus Arist Perhaps all the difficulty in the objections I made Erastus proceeded from our ignorance of a great many things and it may be that not being much used to meditate I have proposed to him my ancient prejudices as so many new truths which presented themselves to me by the strength of meditation But really I have started to him some difficulties which seem to me grounded upon evident Principles and are received by all men Here they are You have told us that none but God can act in our soul and that all the bodies which are about us are uncapable of causing in us the sentiments we have of them But pray is not the Sun bright enough to be visible Do you think I can suffer my self to be imposed upon by Philosophical Reasons to believe that 't is not the Sun that gives me light after all the experiments I have of it And supposing you could perswade me that Fire doth not cause the heat or pain I feel when 't is near me Do you think you may conclude that the Sun doth notdiffuse light and say in general as you do now that all the bodies that surround us are uncapable of producing in us the sentiments we have of them Theod. Forbear to consult your senses Aristarchus if you desire to hear the answers of Truth It dwells in the deepest recess of Reason Peruse at your leisure the first Book of The inquiry after Truth if you have a mind to be fully instructed of the errors of our senses with respect to sensible qualities for I do not intend to make it my business to explain to you all the difficulties of Philosophy which may puzzle you The only thing that 's necessary at present is that you know there is a God and he alone can cause in you the pleasure and pain you feel by the intervention of Bodies You believed it yesterday or I am mistaken Do you believe it now Arist I doubt of it for this Reason that if God did cause in me the pleasure I feel in the use of sensible things It seems he would dispose me to love them and to cleave to them as to my good For pleasure is the character of good 't is an instinct of nature which disposes us to love what produces or seems to produce it Yet faith teaches me that God will not have me to love bodies Can God draw me by pleasure to cleave to sensible things and forbid me at the same time to love them This is my difficulty judge of it now Theod. It is a solid one and 't is absolutely necessary to solve it for from its solution most of the true principles of morality may be deduced This is my system * It is taken out of the fifth Chapter of the first Book of the Inquiry after Truth I have taken several things from that Book and desire the Reader to take notice of it once for all Being made up of spirit and body we have two sorts of good to seek spiritual and corporal We have likewise two ways to know if a thing is good or bad viz. the use of the mind alone and the use of the mind jointly with the body We can know the good of the mind by an evident and clear knowledge of the mind alone and we can also discover the good of the body by a confus'd sentiment By the mind I know justice is to be beloved and by the taste I assure my self such a fruit is good The beauty of justice cannot fall under our senses for 't is unnecessary to the perfection of the body and the goodness of the fruit doth not fall under our understanding for a fruit cannot be useful to the perfection of the mind The good of the body not deserving the application of the mind which God made but for himself and God not being willing that we should be taken up with it it is necessary that the mind do know it without examination and by the short and incontestable proof of sentiment Bread is fit to nourish us and Stones are not The proof of it
ignorance and weakness of humane mind And this persuades me that most of those whom the world call men of great sense such as are some that were here some days ago have not so much strength of understanding as Aristarchus imagins Theod. You are not mistaken Erastus those men of mighty sense are commonly diminutive Wits who have more pride than knowledge their understanding being but small they neither imbrace nor retain easily the proofs of even the most common truths and yet their pride makes them decide some questions which 't is absolutely impossible to solve Take heed that you never be frighted as they are by the little difficulties which they raise to themselves against the existence of God and the immortality of the Soul and that you never suffer your self to be stunn'd by the outward method of their rash decisions Hearken to Reason and follow its light but never yield to the sensible attempt which the imagination of others makes upon your mind Do you understand me well Erastus Erast Very well You would not have me think or live by opinion but think and live by reason and shun carefully the contagion of minds which communicates it self by the ways and manners of those who speak to us I endeavour it as much as I can and am not afraid that any of our pretended men of mighty sense will shake me by whatever they can say against the proofs of the existence of God which you have explain'd to us Theod. And you Aristarchus are you fully convinc'd that there is a cause superiour to you infinitely wise and powerful have you any more reasonable doubts to propose to me I am sensible that you are not yet freed from the Pannick fear which your Heroes have inspir'd in you and that you are always mov'd by some Ideas and confus'd sentiments that will disturb your imagination a long time to justifie the reasonings of your pretended men of sense But is your reason enlighten'd Is the light that spreads it self in it according as you give attention to my words a pure light that persuades by evidence Hath it not some dazzling and glittering lustre which convinces you by impression For as I am thoroughly persuaded of what I tell you I am affraid lest the air and manner of my speaking to you do some violence on your mind and instead of consulting inward truth you come out of your self to hearken to me and so you may happen to be persuaded when I speak to you and to doubt as soon as I shall have done speaking Arist You have told me several things that have seem'd solid to me but I do not allow them to be such because I have not thought enough on them I will do it and Theod. Very well Aristarchus but observe that there is no necessity that all the things I have told you be inconâ—…table that my demonstration of the existence of God may subsist I have too slightly explain'd them to pretend that you may not find some difficulty in them And I was not to inlarge any more upon them for only speaking them in answer to your objections I was not oblig'd to establish their certitude but only to show their possibility It may be I will convince you of them hereafter Nevertheless if you are well persuaded of their possibility you ought to believe that your objection doth not destroy the proofs I have brought for the existence of a being infinitely wise and powerful and who acts incessantly in us Arist When I think on all the things you told us yesterday I cannot doubt of the existence of God But when I consider that some ingenious men doubt of it and that Mr. and several other learned and very witty persons have assur'd me they have need of faith to believe it I still abour under some apprehension lest your proofs be not certain I will consult Mr. to know his mind on it Theod. You will consult the God of Accaron instead of consulting the God of Israel are you not satisfied with the clear and visible proofs which inward truth gives you Why will you again consult this unhappy friend He hath already darkned your reason he will do it again his air is infectious his imagination prevalent and imposing and if you do not take great care Arist I will stand upon my guard and methinks I shall convert him Theod. You convert him Aristarchus I wish it But do you think that God speaks to him as he doth to you Or rather do you think he retires like you within himself to hear him He hath stopp'd his Ears so long that he is become Deaf You will speak to his Ears but you will not speak to his mind Do you not know that he is held by too many things and that his passions whose motions he blindly follows have made him slave to whatever is about him Doth not his Court air his desire of being esteemed a wit his insolent and slighting way of discoursing about Religious matters sufficiently show you that he incessantly receives the secret inspirations of the Spirit of Pride While you will be speaking to him he will laugh at your simplicity he will dazzle you by a language of imagination and you will see your self shamefully thrown at his feet and truth unworthily us'd by that small society of his admirers who applaud him in whatever he saith If you are resolv'd to attempt his Conversion I advise you to take him by himself to speak to him without being daunted to put questions to him continually as having need of his light and to make him retire within himself by insensible degrees that he may hearken to truth without being interrupted by his passions When we design to convince men we must always see their Self-love and instruct them by such a method as may make them imagine that they school us We must take the air of Disciples and ask them questions with art and an ingenious plainness that taking a pleasure to instruct us they may retire within themselves to receive the answers that we ask them but when we have receiv'd from them the answers they have strove to find out for us we must lay them before them every moment for having only sought those answers for us they think no more on them as soon as they have eas'd themselves of them Truth is a very unnecessary lumber to most men it is only cumbersome to them But when 't is of their own finding out and that by this title it belongs to them self-love suffers it willingly and they find in it I know not what charm that wins them in spight of the inconveniency they receive by it So when you shall have received a good answer to some one of the several questions you had ask'd your friend you may make use of it to convince him he will not disown it except you vex him and it may be that his self-love happily betraying his sleeping passions he will rejoyce at the sight of a
truth he could not bear a little while before Arist I give you thanks for this advice Theodorus and will certainly make good use of it the Impatience which is excited within me by the hopes of being serviceable to my friend obliges me to break off our Conversation I must satisfie my self Theod. I commend your zeal and the sincerity of your friendship be of good heart Aristarchus I wish you may return satisfy'd and you Erastus be careful to have in your mind the things that we have said and to discourse about them with Aristarchus as soon as he comes back DIALOGUE III. Of the Order of Nature in the Creation of Man Theod. WEll Aristarchus you have converted your man Erastus told me just now all that past between you and him I even know that he desires to be your Disciple and to have an account of our following conferences Be pleas'd then for his sake to apply your self so that you may demonstrate all things to him with some exactness Arist You take the right way to ingage me for I am extreamly sensible to friendship and methinks my desire to know truth is doubled by the design I have to impart it to my friend Let us go on then I beseech you I am perswaded that there is a God that is to say a Being infinitely perfect whose wisdom and power have no bounds and whose providence extends it self not only to us but even to the atoms of matter I remember your proofs and am convinc'd of them Theod. I can demonstrate nothing of true Religion nor of true Morality till I know what God designs in the creation and preservation of our being Arist You must seek some other principle Theodorus My friend is a Cartesian his Philosophy doth not admit final causes and tho he is now convinc'd that there is a God he will not fail to tell me that we ought not to presume so much of our selves as to believe that God hath been pleas'd to make us privy to his counsels Theod. Your friend will never say this to you if he be a good Cartesian The knowledge of final Causes is of little or no use in Natural Philosophy as Descartes pretends But it is absolutely necessry in Religion Can you obey God if you do not know his will and can you hope to please him and that he will make you happy except you be obedient to him â—… may be you imagine that we can know nothing of Gods design on men by Reason but you are mistaken Do not think too much on your friend Pray think on what I am going to tell you You are perswaded that God is wise and ascribe to him all the perfections whereof you have some Idea God therefore loves most what is most lovely and so must love himself more than all things and be to himself the end of all his actions And by consequence the end of the Creation and preservation of our being It follows then that the faculty by which we know that is to say our Mind and that whereby we love which is our will 〈◊〉 made and preâ—…ved to know and to love God supposing as you do not doubt it they have been made to know and to love Do you find any darkness in what I have told you Pray think on it 't is the ground of all we shall â—ay hereafter Arist All this seems to me as evident as the most certain principles of Natural Philosophy Theod. It hath even more certainty the communication of motion is certain as experience teaches us nevertheless this communication might not be and it will in all likelihood cease after the resurrection that our bodies may be incorruptible but it shall never cease to be the will of God that we know and love him Since then this seems to be plain to you how can it happen that there be men that neither know nor love God since God preserves them but to know and love him Do you think it possible to resist God and that God hath any love for Spirits who have no knowledge of him nor any love for him Do you think God preserves them and do you not know that if God should cease to love them they should be no more Arist I begin to doubt of your principle for you draw some very sad consequences from it Theod. 'T is very strange Aristarchus you should doubt of things of which you have an evidence Will you always forget that light ought to be preferred to darkness and that clear truths are not to be forsaken because we find some difficulty in clearing some dark objections Learn to distinguish truth from what seems to be so and observe that what I objected to you just now is true in one sense and false in another For there is no man but knows and loves God in one sense as you will see it hereafter Therefore stick firmly to this truth that God hath made and preserves spirits but to know and love him And this truth being granted since it is evident endeavour to discover how it may be conceiv'd that all spirits know and love God for that is of the greatest consequence I will put some questions to Erastus that I may insensibly lead you to that truth Do you think Erastus that Spirits can see Bodies Or rather do you think that this material and sensible world can be the immediate object of the mind Do you think that bodies can act in the mind make themselves visible to the mind or enlighten it Erast I do not think it Theod. What then do you see immediately when you see the material and visible world Erast I see If I may say so the Intelligible World Theod. How when you look upon the Stars do you not see the Stars Erast When I look upon the Stars I see the Stars when I look upon the Stars of the material world I see the Stars of the intelligible world and judge that those material Stars are like those of the intelligible world I see For the Sun that I see is sometimes bigger and sometimes less and is never bigger than an intelligible Circle of two or three foot diameter but the material Sun is always the same and according to the sentiment of some Astronomers about thirty thousand times bigger than the Earth 't is not then this Sun I see when I am looking upon it Theod. But Erastus where is this intelligible world which you see Do you think to include it within your self Do you think your soul comprehends in an intelligible manner all the beings that God can make and you can see Can your Soul whose bounds are too narrow whose perfections are finite and who certainly doth not include all things see all things by reflecting on herself Erast I do not think it but I dare not tell you my opinion I imagine that there is none but God that includes the intelligible world and that we see in God whatever we see Theod. But why are you afraid to
know his will that causes it is the principle of the mutability corruption and generation of all different bodies Thus God sees in himself the corruption of all things though he is incorruptible for whilst he sees in his wisdom the incorruptible Ideas he sees in his will all corruptible things since nothing happens but is done by him Now I will tell you how we see all those things in God All ideas and immutable truths we see in him As for transitory truths we do not know them in the will of God as God himself doth for his will is unknown to us But we know them by the sentiment God causes in us at their presence Thus when I see the Sun I see the Idea of a circle in God and have in my self the sentiment of light which denotes to me that this Idea represents something that is created and actually extent But I have this sentiment from none but God who certainly can cause it in me since he is Almighty and sees in the Idea he hath of my Soul that I am capable of sentiment Thus in all our sensible knowledge of corruptible things there is pure Idea and sentiment the Idea is in God the Sentiment in us but God alone is the true Cause of both The Idea represents the Essence of the thing and the sentiment only makes us believe that it exists since it disposes us to believe that the thing causes it in us because it is then present to our mind and not the will of God which alone causes that sentiment in us Arist I own that God can enlighten us and show us in himself all the Ideas we have of things But why should you have your recourse to this last refuge At least explode the sentiments of Philosophers upon that subject that I may the better convince my friend for without doubt I shall find him prepossessed with some opinion or other differing from yours Theod. It hath been done already by the Author of the Inquiry after Truth * Lib. 3. But if your friend finds fault with me for having a recourse to God and the first cause to explain some certain things you may tell him that there are two kinds of natural effects The Particular and the General it is ridiculous to have recourse to the general cause to explain particular effects but 't is as much amiss to seek some particular cause to explain the general For example if I am asked why Linnen becomes dry when 't is exposed to fire I will not answer like a Philosopher if I say that God will have it so for 't is sufficiently known that whatever happens is by his will 'T is not the general cause is demanded but the particular cause of a particular effect I ought then to say that the small particles of the fire or the agitated wood striking against the linnen impart their motion to the particles of water that are in it and loosen them from the linnen and I shall have given the particular cause of the particular effect But if one ask'd me why the particles of the wood agitate those of the water or why bodies communicate their motion to those they meet I should not be a Philosopher did I seek some particular cause of that general effect I ought to have recourse to the general cause that is to the Will of God and not to some particular faculties or qualities Now 't is acknowledged that the effect is general and that consequently we must have recourse to the general cause when thesame effect hath no necessary connexion with what seems to be its cause as it happens in the communication of motion for the mind sees no necessity why a body that presses upon another should push it forwards rather then recoil it self If then your friend pretends to explain to you the nature and original of Ideas by the scientific terms of innate or visible species of external or internal senses of the common apprehensions of the active or passible intellect you may let him know that when a body changes its situation or figure there is no necessity that there be a new thought in a spirit And that therefore we must go to the general cause which alone can reconcile things that have no necessary relation with one another I will lose no time in solving all the difficulties you or your friend may find concerning what I have told you now You will perhaps find them solv'd in the third book of the Inquiry after Truth Let us come to the will of man I will explain it to you God only making and preserving us for himself incessantly moves us towards him that is to say towards good in general or towards what we conceive to include all good He even moves us towards particular good without removing us from himself because he includes that good in the infinity of his being For as spirits see none but him in the sense that I have explained he may incline us towards whatever we see though he hath made us for himself alone But we ought to observe that he inclines us invincibly and necessarily towards good in general because as the love of good in general can never be bad it was not to be free But as the love of particular good though good in it self may be bad it was to be in our power to consent to or withstand its motion Arist But how can the love of particular good be bad Theodorus We only love what we see we see nothing but God therefore we love nothing but God when it seems we love the Creatures how then can our love be bad Theod. We love nothing but God Aristarchus for God preserves us only to love him But our love is bad when it is not regulated Or rather our love is always good absolutely and in it self but it is not relatively good Our love is always good in it self for we can never love what seems bad to us We can love but what we believe to be good and lovely since 't is God that makes us love and that we love none but him because we love nothing but what we see in him But our love is bad relatively because we love too much those things that are least lovely in short because instead of loving God in himself we love him with relation to his Works for loving only what we see we love God but only as he represents a vile creature and not according to what he is in himself God allows us to love what is in him that represents a creature for that is good but he will not have us to fix there the motion of our love He would have us to love whatever he includes He would be belov'd according to the Idea of Being in general of Being infinitely perfect and soveraignly lovely which Idea hath no relation but to himself and represents nothing that is out of him Nothing but the Idea of the infinite good ought to stop the motion of
our love and we are so free in the love of finite good that we even feel the secret reproaches of our reason when we fix our selves on it Because he that made us for himself speaks to us that we may turn to him and give no bounds to the motion of love which he incessantly produces in us All the motion that the soul hath towards good comes from God and God only acting for himself all the motion of the soul hath no other end nor bound than God in the Institution of Nature God presenting to spirits no other Idea but himself since he hath made spirits for himself All the motion of our wills is towards him since wills move themselves towards those things only which the spirit perceives But men thinking that they see creatures in themselves the consent they give to the motion that God imprints in them ends in the creatures and it may be said with a great deal of truth that the free will of men or their consent to the motion they receive from God tends to the creatures though the natural motion of their love can tend only to God By this you see Aristarchus that God preserves spirits for himself only that the faculties they enjoy to know and love know and love none but him that sinners do not overturn the laws of nature that they are inviolable and that this general principle of Religion and Morality viz. That God hath made us for himself is undeniable Arist But if the order of nature is that we know and love God and if we cannot resist that order since the motion of our love for the creatures tends of necessity towards the Creator how can it be said that we really offend God Theod. It may be said for many reasons God incessantly moves spirits towards good either general or particular for all good is to be beloved He invincibly moves them towards general good but 't is otherwise with the impression he gives them towards particular good God doth not limit towards that good the act which he produces in them For if we observe it duely we sufficiently perceive that in the very time when we fix on some finite good we have some motion to go further if we will So we offend God by stopping his act and not letting him act in us according to the full extent of his act The reason why God moves us towards good is because it moves us towards him and he moves us towards himself because he loves himself 'T is then the love of God to himself that produces our love in us Therefore our love ought to be like to that which God bears to himself But it is not like it when it concenters in a particular good it is then unworthy of the cause that hath produced it and it may be said to be displeasing to him Order is certainly the essential and necessary Will of God according to which and by which he wills whatever he wills for God loves order he wills nothing but order his will always follows order But a creature who loves more those things that are less lovely thwarts order withdraws himself from it and even overthrows it as much as he is capable of it He resists then to the will of God and so deserves to come into the order of his justice since he leaves that of his goodness which is the first and most natural God alone can act in the soul and cause in her some pleasure And by his decree or general will that makes the order of nature 't was his desire that pleasure should attend certain motions in the body So those that produce in their body these motions without reason even against the secret reproaches of their reason oblige God in consequence of his general will to renumerate them by pleasing sentiments even in the very time when they ought to be punished They therefore use violence against his justice and offend him But they only use this violence by the love they have for particular good So this love offends God For all those who love their pleasure without minding the true cause that produces it offend that cause since God never causes pleasure with an intent that we should fix on it but rather that we may love the cause that produces the pleasure and that we may unite with the thing that determines that cause to produce it You see therefore Aristarchus that God is offended when we fix the motion of love he causes in us on particular good But though you might not see it you cannot doubt but it is so for when we confine our love to some particular good we feel an inward check in the secret of our reason and a just check is a mark of infidelity against him that causes it those checks or reproaches can proceed but from a general cause since they are generally to be found in all mankind and must therefore be just since they are caused by a just God and this just God is offended when we confine our love to particular good This single Argument is sufficient for 't is unnecessary to seek metaphysical proofs of a thing whereof we are convined by inward sentiments that is by a light which strikes through the blindest and by a punishment that stings the most hardened sinners Arist I believe all this and I pray you to go on Theod. If you believe all this Aristarchus you may see your friend ask him at first if he desires to be happy Show him that none but God can act and cause in him that pleasure he loves so much and that renders him the more happy the greater it is Let him know that God is just that he will be obey'd that it cannot be conceived he should make truely happy those who do not follow his orders nor unhappy those that follow them that so we ought to use all our endeavours to know the Will of God and ought to obey it with all the fidelity imaginable You are sensible that men must be either stupid or out of their senses not to see those things and that those that see them and are not affected with them must either be mad or desperate but do not tell him so take heed above all things you do not awaken his passions and principally his pride for he would conceive nothing of what you might tell him make him understand as much as you can that God acts only for himself That he hath made our spirit only for himself That he hath given some motion to our heart only to incline it towards him That therefore we ought not to make an ill use of the motion of love which God causes in us by loving any thing besides him or without relation to him Make him understand that God is his true good not only by being alone capable to make him happy but also because none but God can make him more perfect not only as he is the cause of pleasure but also as he is
follow him and stop at some particular good do you think that he fixes you on it by the pleasure you find in it Erast What are you affraid of Aristarchus Is it not plain that God alone can act in us hath not Theodorus demonstrated it to you why do you hesitate will you already leave Principles plainly demonstrated for an objection you cannot solve will you prefer darkness to light Yes 't is God Theod. Softly Erastus I esteem the firmness of your mind but I like the disposition wherein I find Aristarchus better in this case he fears to fail in point of respect towards God and that there may be something hard and violent in the consequence I would draw Erast I have thought on your System Theodore and can explain all this without saying any thing hard or displeasing What you just now did object to Aristarchus plainly evinces original sin the disorder of nature the enmity that is between God and man the necessity of a Mediator Lawgiver and Restorer in short it seems to me that I have a glimpse of the Christian Religion in that Principle Arist You go very fast Erastus I pray you Theodore demonstrate that the proof of original sin is to be found as Erastus pretends in those things you told me just now Theod. How Aristarchus do you not see it Do you not remember the system which I explained to you two days ago But 't is no matter I ask you Is it not a disorder that a spirit who is made for none but God should suffer when he loves God Arist But you say that it is God that makes him suffer Theod. I own it But is it not a disorder that God who hath made spirits for none but himself and gives them no motion but towards himself should repel them from him push them back and use them ill when they come near him and cause in them sentiments of pleasure when they turn from him and fix on some particular good Arist This is not only a disorder but a contradiction This cannot be God doth not contradict nor oppose himself Theod. But Aristarchus Is it not certain that God makes and preserves us for none but himself Is it not also most certain that God alone acts in the Soul and gives her sensations of pleasure or pain when she cleaves to bodies or when she deprives her self of them Is it not God that moves us to love him and also to love bodies if the pleasure we feel at their appearance may be reckoned a sufficient reason for a rensonable spirit to love then Arist It is true But how Theod. I have already explained it to you But yet can this disorder this fight of God against himself give me leave to use these expressions for a while this want of uniformity we imagin to be in Gods Actions proceed from God God made man for himself and even preserves him for himself only but when a man quits the body to unite himself to God by the force of meditation when a man walks in the ways of vertue to come near God he feels pain and this pain proceeds from none but God Doth not this show that God is angry with us and that we have displeased him If God will have us to run after him and to follow and seek him is it possible he can reject and push us back and make us resent pain when we really follow him unless at the same time there be some Enmity between us and him Why doth he repel us when we follow him but because we are unworthy to come near him And how are we unworthy to come near him since he is the end of our Creation unless it be because we are no more such as God had made us and he doth not care for us as we are now and we want a Restorer and a Mediator Arist I doubt you have not well demonstrated yet the Enmity which you believe to be between God and men You say that God repels us when we would come near him because he makes us have a sense of pain in the practice of vertue and the inquiry after truth But I have two things to object to you First that if it seems that God repess and molests us by Sentiments of pain on the other side he comforts us in the deepest recess of our reason for we feel an inward joy in the practice of vertue which makes us know sufficiently that God is our good and if God did not desire we should love him he would not reward us with this inward comfort nor create in us those bitter checks and reproaches that make us uneasie in the injoyment of sensible good Secondly God doth not repel and thrust us from him when we run after him he only gives us notice by sentiments of pain to seek somewhere else than in him the good of the body And as meditation is not conducible to our health we ought to feel some pain in its practice that we may leave it off for all sensible pleasures or pains are only warnings to the body and you ought not to think that God will have us love or hate any thing for the sake of the pleasures or pains we receive in the use of them God will have us to seek or avoid them for the preservation of the Body as you said two days ago but he will not have us love or fear them Theod. Whatever you have said now is true Aristarchus but it doth not overthrow what I had establisht before I own that God comforts us by an inward joy when we love him and that he torments us by knawing checks when we love the good of the body After all what doth this prove nothing else but that God will have us to love him and that he hath made us for himself It is a certain mark that the enmity between God and men is not full and general but it is not a sure sign of a perfect friendship Sinners have offended God there is enmity between them and God you do not doubt it and yet God recalls them to him by checks and reproaches Yet this doth not shew that he loves them perfectly but only that the enmity is not entire and absolute for it cannot be such without causing their destruction And do not imagine that these checks alone such as the Heathens felt them could make them come back reconcile and rejoin themselves to their principle This call was only to justifie God's conduct and condemn that of Sinners For in all likelihood it is to be found even amongst the Damned who will be eternally recalled and eternally repelled and condemned those checks being a condemnation of their malice None return but such as are called back in Jesus Christ for nothing but his grace can make this Call efficacious without the grace of Christ sensible attractions have a greater power than this inward call God pushes us back more than he draws us to him and if he will have us
Mahomet are unworthy of Mankind for even the Heathen Philosophers themselves went thus far Christ would have us despise these Goods altho' the Law promises them and he declares those to be happy who are deprived of them and who are miserable and cursed according to the Law Thus I am satisfy'd that the promises of the Law were only figures for those amongst the Jews who had Charity could not desire the accomplishment of these promises as their true good but perhaps the Law in it self was good Theod. You perceive not that there must be a relation betwixt the good which the Law promises and the Law itself and that if the Law justifies really and by itself the recompences of the Law must be good in themselves and make a truly just Man happy But Men can't be just themselves and only desire these Rewards The just then could not trust in the Sacrifices and Ceremonies of the Law they were to expect the Messiah that could promise them such a happiness as they might lawfully wish it There were two sorts of Jews under the Law Jews after the Spirit and Jews after the Letter Those who had the Spirit of the Law were Christians for Christ is the end of the Law and those were circumcised with the circumcision of the heart and had put off the old man explaining the whole Law its Ceremonies and Promises by their relation to the Messiah and that eternal happiness which they expected from him They were not scandaliz'd when Isaiah spoke on the behalf of God to the Jews according to the flesh Isa 1.10,11 Hear the word of the Lord ye Princes of Sodom hearken to the Law of our God ye People of Gomorrah What have I to do with this multitude of Sacrifices chat ye offer to me saith the Lord All this is an abomination to me I love not the sacrifice of your Rams nor the fat of your Flocks nor the blood of Beeves Lambs and He-Goats They sung with joy in the same Spirit with Christians Psal 50. For thou desirest not Sacrifice else would I give it thou delightest not in burnt-offerings Lord do good in thy good pleasure unto Sion build thou the walls of Jerusalem then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness with burnt-offerings and whole burnt-offerings then shall they offer bullocks upon thine Altar In fine they sighed incessantly towards Heaven to draw down the true Messiah who was to deliver them from their sins But the Jews according to the flesh gloried in the shameful signature of the circumcision of their bodies they were uncircumcised in heart they had a vail which hid the end of the Law from them They placed their confidence in their Sacrifices and Ceremonies in the Ark and in the Temple of the Lord in Moses Abraham and their other Patriarchs They were full of Zeal and Fury against the true Israelites and continually persecuted the Prophets which had the Spirit of the Law and which reproved their Vices The Jews after the Spirit were true Christians they were always ready to acknowledg and receive Jesus Christ whenever he should come for the Moral of the New Testament is wholly conformable to the disposition of their heart since they acknowledg that the goods of the senses were unworthy of their love And as they explain'd not holy Scripture according to the Letter but according to the mystical Sense and with relation to the Messiah whom they expected so the proofs which the Apostles took out of the Old Testament to justifie the quality of Christ were entirely conformable to their Spirit Thus Christ and his Apostles were heard by those amongst the Jews who were moved by Charity but the carnal Jews who had their heart vail'd could not nay even would not comprehend the proofs which the Apostles gave of the Truth they preacht Arist But must it not be confessed that the proofs which the Apostles drew from the Old Testament to confirm the New were very weak Theod. They were no proofs or at best extravagant ones to the carnal Jews and those who know not distinctly that the Old Testament is only for the use of the New that Abraham Joseph Joshua David Solomon are only in the Scripture because of CHRIST and that whatever hapned to the Jews were but figures of things to come Yes Aristarchus if the literal Sense of the Scripture is the chief end then St Paul and the Apostles prove nothing nay they are mad Men and fanatical But he must be the most stupid and rash of all Men who can imagin that St Paul had not common Sense that he would render himself so very ridiculous to wrest passages of Scripture to convince the Jews how unprofitable their Sacrifices and Ceremonies were For after all if we can't believe that the Letter of the Law rather administers death than life after what I have already said I see not but that we must believe at least that there were some Men amongst the Jews who search'd into the Law for another Sense besides the literal since St Paul does not make use of the literal Sense to convince them of the Messiah's coming Do not you know that even the Jewish Commentators who are the declared Enemies of CHRIST refer most of the passages to the Messiah which the Apostles do to CHRIST altho' these passages might often be understood of David Solomon or others for as the truth is we must consider these persons as figures of CHRIST The Letter of the Scripture does by Divine Providence contain so many things which appear unworthy of God and even contrary to Reason that those who are not entirely stupid find themselves obliged to abandon it I have proved this to you by the Rewards which Moses proposed to the Jews which as you your self have freely granted are not only unworthy of such who love God above all things but in general of all other Beings which are more noble than Bodies Thus we can't reasonably doubt but that the Jews who from the times of the Apostles expected the Messiah and who believed him near at hand were very much disposed to receive him in that capacity which the Apostles had described to them provided the love of sensible things hindred them not from following him God always disposes things after such a manner that those who love him do always find him he leaves such footsteps after him that those who feel the inward motions of Charity do highly acknowledg him And if false Prophets back their Lyes with Miracles 't is because God tempts Men to discern those who love him for those who love him are not deceived CHRIST is so concealed in the Scriptures that those who love him not do not find him there He is not only come to enlighten the blind but also to blind the wise He is come to reprove the glory of the world for this is an abomination before God In fine he is come to preach the Gospel to the poor the simple and ignorant
I do not know how I came to persuade my self that I should be guilty of want of respect towards the words of the Gospel should I speak any more to him about the Truths of Religion so that I stood before him without saying any thing But if my mind did not express itself by the sound of my voice my heart spoke sufficiently by the air of my face and my Friend might well imagin that I was not come to see him so early merely to bid him good morrow On the other side he being in the main a Man of a civil and mild disposition I cannot doubt but that he repented himself of the Answers he had made me and had pondered on those things which I had told him with a strength and plainness sufficient as I thought to convince him if he had any ways reflected Withal seeing me so early come to see him after the many expressions he had used which ought to have made me decline his Society for a long time being of the temper that I have mentioned he could not help being moved by my zeal and sorry for his want of attention In short whether he was shaken by my former Reasons or touched by some sentiments of Friendship and Gratitude he began after he had been some moments silent with an acknowledgment of his fault and of his sorrow After this he prayed me to repeat once more the proofs that I had offered to him of the Christian Religion assuring me that he had thought on them seriously and that he had found much solidity and light in them how imperfectly soever he remembred them I at first was somewhat unwilling to comply with his desire still remembring the words of Christ but seeing him persist in his demand with heat and eagerness I believed that he was disposed to hear me Accordingly I gave him the satisfaction he desired and he hath received without difficulty the same things that he had rejected with scorn Theod. You see even by this Aristarchus that it was convenient that Christ should cause himself to be expected during many Centuries and hide himself in the Scriptures for those who do not care to find him We easily receive what we desire and find with pleasure what we seek with passion Your Friend could not see two days ago that Truth which you proposed to him because he did not seek it but he hath discovered it because he desired it and hath found it with pleasure if he hath sought it with eagerness If Men do not know God 't is because they do not care to know him and if they do not see the truth of the Christian Religion 't is because the love of sensible things prepossesses them and makes them hate a Religion that destroys it All our Passions justifie themselves and speak incessantly for their conservation and those that hearken to the dictates of their Passions find themselves so strongly moved with compassion towards them that for their sakes they despise the Laws which condemn those Criminals to death For indeed nothing is more despicable than the Christian Religion if we believe our Passions The Gospel hath nothing that appears pleasing it preaches nothing to us but self-denial and Christ doth by the example of his life and death condemn the conduct of those who fix their minds on sensible things Those therefore who esteem nothing besides the objects of their Senses who blindly follow the motions of their Passions voluptuous Men or to use the words of Christ Swine are uncapable of understanding the truth of Religion and enjoying true happiness The Kingdom of God is a Pearl for which they will not sell all what they possess they do not know the value of it Therefore Christ will not have us to propose future happiness to those Wretches nor explain sacred Mysteries to them they being uncapable and unworthy of them We are only to threaten them in the Name of God and make them afraid by the Idea of Eternity or even by the fear of temporal Ills. But when they grow penitent deprive themselves of worldly pleasures and cease to be Swine it is necessary we should explain to them the Mysteries of Religion and the Secrets of the Gospel for being then become Sheep they hear and can discern the voice of the true Pastor of their Souls For this Reason and several others which you will perhaps understand by the Sequel of our Discourses I did not much approve of the design you had to relate all things to your Friend I was asraid for you and had no hopes of him But God who disposes of our hearts hath rewarded your Charity and Zeal and you ought to return your thanks to him for 't We have hitherto discoursed of the Proofs that concern the Truth of Religion and I believe that what I have said is sufficient to persuade reasonable persons that there is no other Religion in the world besides the Christian able to re-establish the Order which Sin hath reversed that none besides God-man could satisfie God's Justice reconcile us and give us an access to him and in a word pay to God a worship worthy of him It is time to shew you that Christian Morality is perfectly conformable to Reason and that in the state to which Sin hath reduced us nothing more useful to re-establish the order of things can be prescribed than the precepts and counsels of Christ concerning Prayer and the privation of sensible things for I suppose no others I entreat you to observe carefully whatever we shall speak of hereafter for you ought rather to instruct your Friend in those things which respect the government of our manners than in such speculative truths as are above the capacity of a carnal and sensible Man I will put some Questions to Erastus for I have not said any thing to him this good while Do you remember Erastus what we have said concerning the End and Order which God proposed to himself when he created Man and are you convinced of it Erast I remember it and am convinced of it I believe that God acts for none but himself that when he makes a Spirit it is that this Spirit may know him and that when he makes a Will it is that this Will may love him This Order seems to me so necessary that I do not believe that God preserves any Spirit but what in some manner knows and loves him I believe that the Union which Spirits have with God by their knowledg and love cannot altogether be dissolved without annihilating them For what kind of being were that Spirit that should know and love nothing But all Spirit that knows and loves knows and loves only by the means of the Union which he hath with God since he is not to himself his light and that the motion which he hath towards good in general and which makes him capable of loving private good doth not proceed from himself nor from any thing below him Theod. That 's true
Erastus all Spirits are essentially united to God nor can they be entirely separated from him without ceasing to be But what ought to be their Union with God that they may be as happy and perfect as it is possible for them to be Erast It is plain that this Union ought to be the narrowest that can be for none but God is the sovereign good of Spirits Theod. Thus Erastus we become more perfect the greater and the stronger the Union which we have with God is The damned have but just so much Union with God as is necessary to keep them in being But the blessed are united to God in so perfect a manner that they do not only receive from him a being but also its perfection Let us see therefore Erastus wherein consists this kind of Union with God whereby we receive all the perfection whereof we are capable in this life Erast I have learn'd in the Conferences which I have had with you and by the perusal of the Book of the Inquiry after Truth Chap. 8. of the last Book that God alone is the true cause and true mover as well of Bodies as of Spirits and that natural causes are only occasional causes which determin the true cause to act in consequence of his eternal Will I am persuaded that I can be united to the Bodies that are about me and to that which I animate and move only because I am united to God Dialog 1. for all Bodies cannot by themselves act in my Soul nor make themselves visible to her as she likewise hath not by herself the strength to move any Body since she doth not even know what must be done to stir an Arm. Thus Theodorus if I speak to you and understand you if my Spirit unites itself to yours or my Body to your Body God alone is the true cause of it he is the Bond of all the Unions which I am able to have with all his Works I can be immediately united to none but him since none but he can immediately act in me and I only act through his means But Theodorus I may be united to God and fix my self to him and in that have no relation to any other but him and I may also be united to God with relation to some other thing but God For when I think on abstracted Idea's of things I am united to God by my thought since I see those things only through the means of the Union that I have with God * Dial. 3. But this Union doth not bind me to Creatures On the other side when I feel sensible good it is only by the Union that I have with God and because he acts in me * Dial. 2. For all Bodies are insensible by themselves but this second Union which I have with God fastens me to sensible things for God unites among themselves all his Works and he alone can be the Bond of all Unions I therefore believe that our Union with God upholds our Being and that we should not exist without it But I am persuaded that the Union which fastens us to none but God and hath relation to none but him is that which gives the utmost perfection of which we are capable Theod. Do you not remember Erastus that the Author of the Book of the Inquiry after Truth demonstrates That our Senses never represent things to us as they are in themselves but only according to their relation to our selves and that therefore all sensible knowledg is useful for the preservation and conveniency of our lise but altogether unprofitable for the perfection of the Mind and the knowledg of Truth Erast I do remember it Theodorus and shall never forget it for it was that which persuaded me that of all our Knowledg and Notions none but those that are purely intellectual make us more perfect and indeed we can be said to see in God things as they are only through those forts of Notions When we have a sentiment of things we do not see them in themselves we have no knowledg of them and even in reality they are not the sensible Objects that we do feel but our very selves for our Sensations belong to us and not to those Objects to which we generally use to attribute them How then could our Senses lead us to the knowledg of Truth since we do not know Truth but when we see things such as they are Theod. If you remember also what that Book saith of the Errors of our Imagination and Passions you ought to grant that not only the Imagination and Senses hinder us from discovering Truth but also that our Passions carry and remove us from the true Good In a word that all the thoughts and motions of the Soul that excite themselves in us by reason of some changes that happen in our Body disunite us from God to unite us to Bodies For after all it is necessary that the Soul who ought to mind the preservation of her Body be warn'd to think on it when some new Accident happens to it Erast I grant all these things Theod. Let us suppose then that there never happens any change in the Brain but that the Soul receives some thought which takes it off from the light of truth and the love of true good and disunites her from God to unite her to Bodies If it is certain that the perfection of the mind consists in the knowledg of truth and in the love of true good in one word in an Union with God which hath relation to none but him I ask you In the state which we are in wherein we cannot hinder the communication of motion nor the bodies that are about us from penetrating and agitating ours what are we to do to tend continually towards our perfection do not consult the Gospel now consult only your reason Erast It is plain that we ought by flight to avoid being acted by those Bodies that are about us that we ought to mortify our Senses and keep shut as much as we can all the passages at which sensible Objects come in and disturb our Reason When we cannot stay the motion of those Bodies that are capable of offending us we never fail to step aside to avoid being struck by them Thus when we are not able to stop the action of sensible Objects we ought to avoid them by flight in the same manner as we use to preserve our selves from contagious distempers by change of Air. Let an Insect but prick us we immediately lose sight of the most solid truths let a Fly but buz in our Ears and our mind will be presently fill'd with darkness What shall we do then to hold this truth which still gets away and preserve this light which vanishes from us Must we kill all the Insects and drive away all the Flyes this can never be We must then remove somewhere else for after all it is impossible that the Sensations that divide your thinking Faculty should
not hinder us from discovering Truth Theod. You begin perhaps Aristarchus to discover by what we have said and by this last Answer of Erastus that what Christ hath preached about the mortification of our Senses is the best method that can be to reunite us to God by the knowledg of Truth Arist It is true But I am afraid that you attribute to the Doctrin of the Gospel some perfection that Christ never designed to give it For in all likelihood Christ never intended to give us any Precepts to direct our minds in the inquiry of certain Truths which are not absolutely necessary to us in the World Theod. I own Aristarchus that Christ's principal design was not to instruct us in certain speculative Truths which do not by themselves conduce to the knowledg and love of sovereign Truth But the Precepts of the Gospel are so useful that they extend to all the things that may in some manner add to the perfection of the mind for they are directly opposed to the cause of our disorders and remedy our diseases in their beginning And thus they tend to give us all the perfection whereof we are capable since to deprive our selves of sensible things is not only a necessary thing to help the conversion of our hearts but also for the perfecting our understandings as you will see it better hereafter Do you think Erastus that nothing besides actual Sentiments can hinder the mind from applying itself to Truth and that a Man who hath for some years enjoyed the pleasures of the World is able when he leaves them to unite himself to intellectual things with as much force and light as those who have during all their Lives been careful to purifie their Imaginations Erast No certainly none can enjoy worldly pleasure with impunity When the Imagination hath been touch'd by some sensible thing the impression of it remains and the enjoyment of worldly pleasures makes it easily Slaves to them There remains in our Brain some impressions that always represent to the mind the pleasures that it hath enjoy'd and that often hinder it from applying itself to such things as have no sensible attraction Therefore when the Imagination is sully'd the Mind is fill'd with darkness because Concupiscence which of itself takes off the Mind from the sight of Truth is strengthned and encreas'd by this new Concupiscence that is acquir'd by the use of sensible things Theod. What must we do then Erastus to become capable of attaining that perfection of understanding which consists in the knowledg of Truth Erast It appears plainly that we must with all imaginable care avoid whatever is able to make any deep impression in our Brain we must give me leave to use your expression strictly take care to purify our Imaginations Arist But then Theodorus we ought not to do Penance for painful Sensations as much divide our thinking Faculty as those that are pleasing Theod. A Man ought not to mortify himself with an intent to find the Solution of a Problem such an Action doth not enlighten the Mind None can actually seel Pain and see Truth actually at the same time But Sufferings how unuseful soever for the knowledg of certain Truths are very useful to take us off from sensible things * Pontificius loquitur to satisfy God's Justice being join'd to those of our Saviour to merit us the sight of that sovereign Truth which dissipates all our darkness and even to teach us some certain moral Truths on which we do not think when we feel nothing But Aristarchus do you not see that the impressions of Sufferings that remain in the Memory do not darken it like the impressions of Pleasures Do you not see that they never provoke Lust never disturb the Mind never divide its Attention and that things being thus they do not hinder it from discovering Truth We easily cease to think on Pain as soon as we cease to suffer it and have no cause to fear it because Pain hath nothing that is pleasing in itself But the same doth not happen when ever we have tasted of any Pleasures their vestiges or impressions remain strongly printed in our Brains and do each moment excite some troublesom desires that disturb the peace of the mind and those desires renewing those impressions Concupiscence which is the Spring of all our Ills and consequently of the want of application of the mind to Truth as well as the corruption of the heart incessantly receives new strength Arist You are in the right But yet we see that many learned Men have spent their whole Lives in Debauchery abandoning themselves continually to all sorts of Pleasures Theod. Not so many as you may think Aristarchus for the number of the false learned is very great A Man must see Truth clearly and distinctly to be truly learned It is not enough to have read much for the Mind knows nothing if it sees nothing Pleasure unless it be excessive doth not hinder a Man from reading none but violent Pleasures darken the memory and imagination but the least thing in the World can darken the sight of the Mind The Learned of whom you were speaking make more use of their memory and of their imagination than they do of their understanding and I every day perceive that those whom you esteem most for their Learning are a sort of Men whose understanding is so small so dark so dissipated that they are not capable of having the least apprehension of many Truths which Erastus very easily comprehends There is much difference between that Learning which depends upon the largeness of the Memory and the force of the Imagination and that Learning which consists in a sight purely intellectual wherein the Imagination hath no share unless it be indirectly All pure Idea's vanish and dissipate themselves at the appearance of sensible Idea's We do not hear the voice of Truth when our Senses and our Imagination speak to us for we had much rather confusedly know the relations that things have with us than clearly to know what relations they have between themselves We are in so great a dependance under Bodies and so little united to God that the least thing separates us from him But sensible knowledg and the sight of the imagination being strengthned by the vestiges or impressions of the Brain may withstand contrary Sentiments the Idea's of that knowledg have if I may use that expression a Body and cannot be so easily dissipated Thus Retirement and a privation from all Pleasure is not absolutely necessary to gain all the knowledg wherein we make a greater use of the Senses and Imagination than of Reason If Mr. Des Cartes came to be so learned in Geometry Physics and other parts of Philosophy it is because he pass'd 25 years in a Retirement it is because he hath perfectly discover'd the errors of our Senses that he hath with care avoided their impression and oftner meditated than read In a word it is because being held
of life We must love God because Reason informs us that every thing is center'd in him that deserves our love God will be lov'd with a clear love with a love which flows from pure light and not with a confus'd Sentiment such as Pleasure is God is so lovely that those who see him as he is would love him in the midst of the most cruel Torments and we do not love him as he deserves when we love him because 't is he only who can create agreeable Sentiments in us A Friend reproves us because he should do it we offend our selves when we punish our selves for our Irregularities do we therefore cease to love our selves or our Friend No doubtless we endeavor perhaps to shun the Reproof which our Friend thinks himself oblig'd to give us but if we see that he only does what he ought to do we are unreasonable if we cease to have an intrinsic respect and love for him If then a person could conceive that God ows that to his Justice which he inflicts upon him to make him sensible of the highest pains he always would suffer patiently without ceasing to love God He should not love these pains in themselves but he should love the Author of them who if he did not inflict them would be less lovely because he would be less just and less perfect A Criminal who hath brib'd his Judge loves and esteems him much less than if he had punisht him provided that this Criminal who is not just enough to hate the Crime in himself would be reasonable enough to hate it in another Accordingly the blessed might suffer the pains of the damned without hating God for altho' the pleasure they enjoy keeps them united to God inseparably yet they love not God for the sake of the pleasure which they receive from him they would even love him in their Torments For after all pleasure is not so much instituted to make us love the Author of it as to unite us to him since as reasonable Creatures Reason alone ought to stir up our love Pleasure should carry us to the cause of it and true Good should be capable of producing it because true Good should recompence all those who truly love But pleasure which is the recompence and attraction of the love of the Iust is not their end for the Just would then love themselves instead of their good God deserves love in himself and the pleasure which is found in the use of Bodies instead of inviting is to love him as we ought to do and even the sweetness which is tasted in love sets us at a distance from him if resting upon this sweetness we love him not for himself for then we love our selves instead of him Erast. I observe that there 's nothing more dangerous than to make use of sensible pleasures and I am am now convinc'd that they increase Concupiscence by the impressions which they make in the Brains and carry the mind not to God who is their Author but to Bodies which seem to produce them and that tho' absolutely speaking they may induce us to think of God who is their Author yet they excite in us nothing but an interested love a love which is more like Self-love than true Charity Arist. But Theodorus the Law of Nature does not only oblige us to love God but also Men and if we have not some Correspondence with them by means of the Body what other Reason will induce us to love them 'T is Interest which forms Societies 'T is Pleasure which unites different Sexes and there are whole Nations that can't maintain Peace and Commerce but by the means of Wine To drink together is sufficient to put away Enmity amongst some Men. A glass of Wine must be drunk to drive on a Bargain Thus you see it is profitable for Men to enjoy Pleasure together to preserve that Union and Charity amongst them which is commanded them Theod. I believe you have a mind to make your self merry Aristarchus What! do you believe that there 's any thing besides Truth and Justice which can strictly unite us together do you believe that a Peace concluded in drink betwixt Drunkards would be so solid as that which reasonable Men make in the sight of Justice and by a Motive of Charity Certainly all the Bonds which are made by Interest are unserviceable towards the fulfilling of the Precept of loving our Neighbor The Appearances are sav'd and Men are treated with Civility but cordial Love is wanting when Interest lies at the stake We must love other Men for God for as it is he that should terminate all the motions of our heart he can only reunite all minds in himself But the Commerce which we may have with Men by means of the Body are only proper to create a division amongst us for sensible Goods are not like those of the mind one can't possess them without sharing them It 's enough for a Man to desire an enjoyment of his Friend's Estate to make him unhappy and become his Enemy It 's the Love of temporal advantage which begets Wars and breeds Division in Families Persons would enjoy these Goods but can't without depriving those of them that possess them Thus 't is evident that a contempt of sensible Goods and a privation of Pleasures are as useful for the preservation of Peace amongst them as to continue a strict Union with God Arist. 'T is true Theodorus that to avoid a quarrel with any Body there 's no better means than to yield our Possessions to those that desire them of us but the Command of Jesus Christ in this matter is very inconvenient and I do not see that even the most perfect follow it Theod. I confess it Aristarchus there are many occasions on which we should not too rigidly pursue this Command but we must always be disposed to it if there be necessity 'T is not the difficulty that we find in this Command and in the rest which ought to hinder us from practising them on the contrary they are so much the more useful as they tend more to satisfy the * Pontificius loquitur Justice of God and to merit the Favor of our perfect re-union with him We are all Sinners and deserve to suffer and these instructions of Privation being painful they have this advantage that they cleanse us from our Sins in making us partakers in the Sufferings of CHRIST In our misery we have all of us need of the assistance of Heaven but CHRIST teaches us to merit them when our Sufferings being join'd to his our Sufferings are meritorious with his Thus the Inconveniency you find in the Precepts of CHRIST bring their Recommendation along with them If the trouble which attends the privation of sensible Objects were not necessary to satisfy God nor merit his Assistance of which we have the greatest need I confess there would be a fault in the Evangelic Councils nevertheless there would be none better for
may be worthy the Friendship I have for him I am going to endeavour his Conversion I have a world of things to say to him Theod. As he is capable of knowing and loving God he cannot but be worthy your Friendship for now nothing but that can recommend us to the love of one another since we don't perfectly know each other We begin even in this Life to love God and our Neighbour but because we are not to have a clear sight of God nor of our Neighbour till we are in Heaven our Charity cannot be perfect till we are there Go Sir see your Friend But you Erastus pray what do you think on Erast Aristarchus thinks on his Friend and I think on my self I don't know Theodorus whether I shall be here to morrow or no. Methinks I ought to make a good use of the Truths you have taught me I leave you for I am now too much disorder'd you doubtless perceive it well enough I recommend all things to your Prayers The Tenth and Last DIALOGUE Arist I Have a great deal of News to tell you Theodorus my Friend at last is converted but we have lost Erastus Theod. Pray what 's become of him Arist I just now discover'd it His Mother and I wondring that he was not at home at Dinner-time I went up into his Chamber to look for him and found this Letter seal'd up on his Table For Aristarchus I Am convinc'd Aristarchus by Reason and by Faith by a clear Light and an infallible Authority by the intelligible words of inward Truth and by the sensible words of incarnate Truth in short by all that can convince a Rational and Christian Soul that the most safe and usual way to come to God is to seclude our selves from the World and deprive our selves of all sensual things But I ought to take the greater care for the more the business is of consequence the more 't is necessary difficult and dangerous I ought therefore Aristarchus to retire to some place where I may be shelter'd against the persecution of those who would have me apply my self to some studies that are necessary to qualifie a Gentleman for some Employments to which I do not find my self to have a particular Call 'T is true indeed I do not find my self to have a particular and extraordinary call for the design I have But there needs no particular Call when Reason alone and the general vocation of Christians is sufficient Without doubt those who engage in the affairs of this World ought to have a particular Call to that way of living for Reason and our general vocation teach us to do otherwise But as the World goes now methinks a Man needs but to have common Sense and to believe the Gospel to do what I have done However as I would not engage in a particular Course of Life without a particular Call I 'll be still ready to return to you when 't is necessary But I declare I would think my self guilty of a less fault should I without a particular Call presume to conform my self to the way of living of the Religious Persons with whom I intend to live than if without a Call I enter'd into the Bonds of Matrimony or took an Employment that would tye me to too many things All my Relations persecute me every one according to his humour and ambition They have ends which I neither have nor would have Besides I would gladly break off the Society which I have with some infectious Wits who perhaps will abhor me at my coming back In short I believe I ought seriously to mind what is most essential Anthimus and Philemon are very fit to finish what Theodorus hath begun So I am now going to them you know they have wish'd for my coming a long while I beg that you will not impute my withdrawing my self without any previous leave or notice to a want of Friendship for you or of Dutifulness to my Mother Far from this I did it because the Natural Affection which I ought to have for her and you is too violent I dreaded the Consequences of it in the performance of a Design which I was resolved to fulfil for fear of being wanting in that which I owe to God but at last I perswaded my self that as my Mother and you have a very great esteem for the Persons to whom I am now going you will both of you forgive the omission of a peice of Formality which I could not keep merely out of too deep a sense of Love for you I did not dare write to my Mother at first but I beseech you dearest Cozen perswade her to admit of the Assurances of my Duty and Submission I know that next to God I owe all things to her As for Theodorus I pray you to tell him that I 'll continually meditate on the Principles which he discover'd to me and that I love Truth extremely By this he 'll easily know that I 'll seldom be without thinking of him Arist What think you of all this Theodorus Theod. If you would know Sir what I think of Erastus I must needs tell you that I never knew a more just and penetrating Mind a purer and clearer Imagination a sweeter and more honourable Temper a more upright and generous Heart and in short that I never saw a more accomplisht young Man than Erastus As for his Conduct if you blame any thing in it do but Answer what his Letter says in his Justification Finding himself here holden by Tyes that inslave him he breaks them publickly not being able to get free otherwise He is afraid of not being able to preserve the Purity of his Imagination the Freedom of his Mind and the Love of True Good among Persons who use to take all Things upon Trust without examining the Truth and who by their imposing Ways and infectious Behaviour are continually like to make some 〈◊〉 Impressions on his Mind You see that even some of his Relations persecute and seduce him They endeavour to bring him in to the World for their own Credit and they would have him to become considerable there that his Advancement may promote theirs and his Glory reflect some upon them But Erastus is convinc'd by the Strength of Reason that Wealth Pomp and Greatness disorder the Minds of those that enjoy them he is also convinced of it by the Authority of Christ Would you not have him be guided by his Light and Faith Would you have him grasp a Phantasm that vanishes court a Stage-Greatness and feed himself up with Illusions and Chimaera's Either let them prove to him that he follows a false Light and that Christ is a Seducer or else let him alone Arist Do not think Theodorus that I have the least Thing to object against his Conduct I will rather follow him than disturb him in his Design He is in the Right I am fully convinced of it not only by what we said in our former Conferences but
also by what he said to me Yesterday when I was come back from my Friend's Would you have me give you some account of it Theod. You will oblige me we are always very fond of knowing the last Words of those that leave us Arist Erastus never exprest himself with more Eloquence and Happiness of Thought He told me among other Things that Man is not only united to his own Body but also to all those that surround him that our Passions diffuse our Soul into all sensible Objects as our Senses diffuse it through every part of the Body and that those who launch into the wide World continually running after Riches Pleasures and Honours dissipate and lose themselves by being disperst as it were out of themselves While they fancy that they enlarge their own Being they weaken themselves and become Slaves to those whom they would command And while they encrease their Power on the Bodies that surround them they lose that which they have on the Truth that penetrates them Let me consider said he how Man comes to be sensible Out of his Brain certain Nerves are emitted whose infinite number of Branches are disperst over all the Parts of his Body These Nerves or Fibres which correspond to the Seat of the Soul agitate her as soon as they are stirred they disperse her through all the Parts into which they insinuate themselves and whatsoever happens in the Body breaks her Quiet and disturbs her Now let me examine the Condition which that Man is in who is led by his Passions and fasten'd to every Thing Out of his Heart some Bonds may in one sense be said to be emitted and thence their strings are disperst through all sensible Objects These Strings are no sooner stirr'd by the Motion of those Objects but his Heart is also mov'd If these Objects are remov'd at some distance his Heart must follow or be torn In short his Soul disperses her self by the Means of these Tyes through whatever surrounds him just as she diffuses her self by the Means of Nerves over every Part of the Body When a Man inconsiderately gives himself up to the Commerce of the World the Tyes of his Heart fasten him to a Thousand Objects which only serve to make him wretched and if he be mad enough to have a real Love for those Objects or to be pusst up with his new Greatness he is said he to me like those who would be proud of a Dropsie or of Wens or Bunches that swell their Body to a bigger Bulk than ordinary Do you think continued he that the Souls of Gigantic Men are greater than those of other Men They have indeed a larger Body and can put a greater Mass of Matter into Motion but if you examine them well you 'll find that their Motions are more irregular The very Horses and Elephants are stronger than they and more bulky and if these Men measur'd the Greatness of their Soul by that of their Body they would make themselves universally ridiculous Yet it were a juster Thing to measure the Greatness of the Soul by that of the Body than by that of Riches and Honours For after all our Body is more our own than our Wealth and we are more united to it than we are to our Clothes our House or our Lands How foolish and vain then are not Men when they pretend to grow greater by being disperst out of themselves Truely cry'd he Imaginary Greatness makes Men become very miserable Creatures Every thing offends them every thing disturbs them every thing holds them fast And can Men in a perpetual Hurry and as it were wounded in every Part be able to Think Can they be able to cleave to Truth for which alone they are made with which alone they can be nourish'd and through which alone they can grow more wise and more happy They are commonly mad stupid thoughtless Creatures void of Light and Understanding Do you think added he that the Voluptuous and those who continually strive to extend their Slavery by enlarging the Bounds of their Commands do so much as know that they are not made for Bodies nor for a Time and that they are not on Earth barely to live there Alas they know nothing of this they do not perceive that Bodies are inferiour to them uncapable of acting on them and altogether unworthy of their Love As they have not yet felt the Sting of Death they cannot strictly be said to know they shall dye Their Tongues indeed say they must and they believe it but they do not know it They think they shall be no more but they do not know they shall dye What vast difference is there not between seeing and seeing 'T is but a very little while since I know that I am not made for Corporeal Beings that the Figure of this World passeth away that the true Good of Spirits is a Spiritual Good and even since I know what it is to dye Nay as my Understanding is but small I have too been obliged to think with my utmost application to comprehend these Truths Before this I thought of Death what my Eyes discover'd to me of it and scarce any thing more And if I had not been in a greater Capacity of applying my self to thinking than those who are in the Hurry of Business or a hunting after Pleasure I must confess I had not known what I believe is unknown to great Numbers of Men. The application of the Mind produces Light and discovers Truth The sight of Truth gives perfection to the Mind and regulates the Heart Such an application is then necessary But can a Man when he is pull'd and drawn on all sides struck and wounded every where thrust back when he would get forwards dragg'd forwards when he would go back and continually disturb'd and misus'd can such a Man I say think with application Can a Man who fears every thing yet desires hopes for and runs after every thing think on what he does not see Truth is distant and not sensible nor is it a Good which we find our selves press'd to love We must seek it if we would find it But we may still put off the Search for it never wholly leaves us On the contrary Bodies cause themselves to be felt every Moment press us to love them and continually oblige us to cleave to them for they are transitory and leave us as soon as they have tempted us So because Opportunity when lost is not easily recover'd Men are quickly determin'd to enjoy them but as for Truth they put off from time to time the applying of themselves to it because it never leaves them nor causes it self to be felt and for that reason it does not press them to love it How happy are those added he who wait for Eternity in Deserts and who finding themselves too weak to preserve the Freedom of their Mind and the purity of their Imagination against the Efforts and Malignity of sensible Objects have bravely