Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	believe_v	true_a	word_n	6,623	5	4.5200	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47114	An examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory of the earth together with some remarks on Mr. Whiston's New theory of the earth / by Jo. Keill ...	Keill, John, 1671-1721.	1698 (1698)	Wing K132; ESTC R15430	75,308	201

that now in this Learned and Inquisitive Age they have at last found out the true and solid Philosophy They do now perceive the intimate essence of all things and have discovered Nature in all her works and can tell you the true cause of every effect from the sole principles of matter and motion If you will believe them they can inform you exactly how God made the World for they do now comprehend the greatest mysteries in nature and understand and Oeconomy of living Bodies Nay they understand also very exactly the Theory of the Soul how it thinks and by what methods it operates on the Body and the Body on it These indeed are great discoveries and might well demand our esteem and admiration if they were real But that we may see how well they deserve such a Character I will here set down some of their sentiments both as to the Intellectual and Natural System Spinosa pretends to demonstrate that there is but one individual Substance in the Universe and that all particular beings are different modifications of the same substance Another Philosopher viz. Dr. More will have Souls besides the three dimensions which belong to Bodies to have a fourth which he calls the Souls essential spissitude by which it can contract or dilate it self when it pleases Mr. Hobbs thinks Incorporeal Substances a flat contradiction and that therefore it is altogether impossible there should be any such But a new Philosopher has much out-done any I have yet mentioned in a Book lately Printed concerning Reason there he assures us that there is but one universal Soul in the World which is omnipresent and acts upon all particular organized Bodies and makes them produce actions more or less perfect in proportion to the good disposition of their Organs so that in Beasts that Soul is the principle of the sensitive and vital functions in Men it does not only perform these but also all other rational actions just as if you would suppose a hand of a vast extension and a prodigious number of fingers playing upon all the Organ pipes in the world and making every one sound a particular note according to the disposition and frame of the pipe so this Universal Soul acting upon all Bodies makes every one produce various actions according to the different disposition and frame of their Organs This opinion he as confidently asserts to be true as other men believe that it is false tho it is impossible he should any other way be sure of it but by Revelation and I believe he will find but few that will take it upon his word Mons. Malbranch the famous inquirer after Truth having made a long and deep search how the Soul comes to have its Ideas has found out at last that we perceive not the things themselves but only their Ideas which the Soul sees in God For says he the Soul is united to God in a much stricter and more essential manner than she is united to the Body and this union is by his presence so that it may be said that God is the place of Spirits as space is the place of Bodies He tells us also that since God has the Ideas of all beings in himself the Soul must needs see what there is in God which represents created beings for Bodies are not visible of themselves they not being able to act upon our mind nor represent themselves to it therefore they being unintelligible in their own Natures there is no possibility of seeing them except in that being which contains them after an intelligible manner Bodies therefore and their properties are seen in God so that a man who reads this Book does not really see the Book it self but only the Idea of it which is in God Is not a man now much the wiser for this unintelligible jargon I would fain know what the Author meant by his seeing every thing in God by its Idea for I must confess that the oftner I read his long Illustration on this point I understand it the less and I know as little how I have my Ideas as I did before If he had told me that the Soul saw its Ideas under the Concave of the Moons Orb where they say Plato placed them I could have had some sort of confused notion of that manner of seeing but this manner of seeing Ideas is far beyond my imagination I am sure that I can neither see the Idea of it in God or any where else The truth is I have not so couragiously resisted my senses as that Philosopher advises as to be able to penetrate such a solid piece of nonsense The same Philosopher affirmes that Bodies of their own nature are neither heard seen smelt nor tasted and when for example we tast any thing the Body tasted cannot produce any savour in us but God Almighty takes that occasion to stir up that sensation in us to which the body does not really concur Nay according to him it is impossible for any man to move his own Arm but when he is willing to move it God takes it and moves it up and down as the man whose Arm it is wills If a Rebellious Son or Subject murther his Father or his Prince by stabbing him the Man himself does not thrust the Poiniard into his Fathers or Princes Breast but God Almighty does it without any other concurrence of the Man but his will These indeed are strange and unaccountable fancies But he proceeds still further and affirmes that no second causes act so that no Body tho moved with never so great a velocity against another can be able to drive that other before it or move it in the least but God takes that occasion to put it in motion At this rate one need not fear his headpiece tho a Bomb were falling upon it with all the force that Powder can give it for it could not so much as break his Skull or singe his hair if God did not take that occasion to do it The most natural agents with him are not so much as instruments but only occasions of what is produced by them so that a man might freely pass thorow the fire or jump down a precipice without any harm if God Almighty did not take that occasion to burn him or dash out his brains To prove that our moderns are as wild extravagant and presumptuous as any of the Ancients either Poets or Philosophers I may instance in Dr Conner whose imagination has taken a flight beyond the spheres of sense and reason Other Philosophers were only ambitious to explicate nature and the common effects of it but no less a subject can satisfy him than the Omnipotent Author of nature and his extraordinary and miraculous acts which he pretends to explain for he thinks he understands them as well as he does the common Phaenomena of Nature This I believe will be granted him without much difficulty for there is very good reason to believe that the works of Nature