allow as much strictness in reference to the service of God as to the Duties which they render to men That is they should readily conform themselves to such ceremonies as are consentaneous to right reason or at least not manifestly dissonant and repugnant to it but where they violate the Laws of Nature so rudely it is not free for any one whatsoever to condescend to them But the matter is something further considerable For it also seems not to be more natural to men to conspire together uniformly in matter of Religion then it is natural to them to think that it is the part of God to found and give the model of such a Society All Nations have referred the invention of things to the Deity which although they concern not God at all yet seem hard and admirable so as to esteem the first authors of them not onely inspired by God but worthy to be Gods themselves The Art of waging War those of Physick and Poetry and even of Embroidery had their inventors and patrons amongst the Gods And as for things necessary to Life the tilling of the Earth for the advantage of Corn and the means of pruning the superfluities of vines to procure wine from them were not found by men without the same help It is true that if onely the meaner and ignorant sort of people had been imbued with this belief it might have been said that their ignorance occasion'd the admiration which they had of all excellent inventions because perceiving that they surpass'd the power of their own wits and measuring others by themselves they might have imagin'd that men could not have invented them of themselves And hence it also came to pass that the Epicureans have within a small degree placed their Master amongst the Gods because being for the most part but little instructed in commendable Sciences when they beheld him far above them they conceited that he had somewhat of Divinity in him although without regard to the truth or falsity of his sentiments he seems to have been but meanly qualified with gifts of the mind or acquisitions of knowledge But whereas we observe the wise and learned to have likewise held that opinion that the first Inventors were illuminated by some ray of Divinity it must be confessed that it is a natural propensity in all men and I know not what kind of constraint by the evidence of truth Socrates being condemned to dy professeth that it was God that raised him up to teach Philosophy and to reform the manners of his fellow Citizens by his precepts and pronounces resolutely that though they should open the Prison doors to him with injunction never to Philosophise more he would not go forth but would rather obey God then men And Pythagoras when he had found out an excellent demonstration in Geometry went and sacrific'd a hundred Oxen for what reason saving that he acknowledg'd that God had favour'd him with his assistance therein And truely they had reason on their side I would not so much derogate from the dignity of the humane Mind as to take from it all power of inventing excellent things and of profound disquisition But there appeared such a Providence of God in what I have alledged that he that bears not a great measure of obstinacy in his breast will suffer himself to be perswaded that God presided therein Sometimes one Nation bears away the glory of Sciences and Arts sometimes another and divers Ages give birth to divers Inventions Egypt of old for skill in Arts Greece after had the fame Rome glory'd in their height a while Now Paris bears the Name Archimedes performed such wonders in the Mechanicks as none in the world ever effected since And of late days the singular Inventions of Typography and that terrifying one of Artillery declare that God did not exhaust all his treasures in the Ages of old but reserves some or other particularity to every Generation It is true when things are once found out there 's no body almost but observes a great obviousness and facility in their discovery which yet is not so much even in such things as are now 〈◊〉 days accounted the most easie but that thâ— would never have come into any man's thougâ— without the influence of Heaven or if they had yet the atchievment and execution of the design would have seem'd impossible without assistance from thence Who observes not such an orderly concatenation in the Propositions of Euclide one with another that they correspond together and propagate in a continual series with infallible truth and that consequently the power of humane wit may seem capable to have found out such a contexture of it self since the onely thing considerable is to perceive what follows indubitably from certain principles by the means of ratiocination And nevertheless I cannot perswade my self upon estimate of the great difficulty there was in the first discovery of those things and of the admirable vivacity of imagination and vigor of judgement requisite to the concinnation of their first compages that that Person could possibly have drawn so many subtle and solid consequences from the first Principles laid down by him and erect so firm a structure of a noble Science upon the same without some especial favor of the Deity who was pleas'd to provide by such means for the advantage of humane affairs and for the adorning of our Minds with the Understanding of Sciences What a marvellous thing was it to find out the Polar inclination of the Loadstone and to make that discovery the foundation of the great Art of Navigation by help of which these latter Ages have discover'd so many unknown Lands and brought so many eminent advantages to our times above those of â—ld But moreover Homer who perhaps was the most clear sighted among the Pagans notwithstanding his decryed blindness not onely ascribes to God the invention of abstruse matters but referrs even our ordinary cogitations to him in these verses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Talis nempe mens est terram-incolentium hominum Qualem in dies indit pater hominumque Deumque And his Poem is throughout beset with advertisments directed to men from the Gods as so many pourtraicts of the Divine Providence sutably as the obscurity of the times and the ignorance of the true God could permit him And hereunto likewise all intelligent men agree especially the Poets who seem to have been the Divines of the Pagans and the Priests of their Mysteries Now whereas they believ'd that humane Arts and Sciences could not be invented without God what would they have said of the Sciences of knowing and serving God himself But although there may have been some dissonance of opinion among the Ancients concerning this Production or Birth of things yet the foundation of these two kinds of Societies Civil and Religious ha's been consider'd by them as a thing altogether divine Whence it is that there never was any celebrated Legislator but
of God If there be not why then are arguments drawn from thence against the Epicureans to prove providence to them and to refute their opinions concerning the nature of God If there be why cannot a man make use of them to guide him at least in some measure to the knowledge of those secrets God forbid that we should so much forget our selves as to forget how clearly God ha's revealed himself in the World The manifestation which he hath made therein of his Perfections is one thing and the faculty which we naturally have to understand them an other Reason indeed but that which is right and in its integrity not such as we now possess might have thence collected the means of serving God in a due manner But as it is deprav'd blind and maim'd in its powers and apprehensions it is utterly incapable of discerning the truth therein or forming certain rules of piety from thence There is light enough in the Sun to make it be seen but it is by those who have eyes to these who never had any or have lost them it is as dark as the Earth on which they tread In like manner an infinite number of bright and excellent truths are held forth in the World and its Government to him that ha's the eye of his Understanding sufficiently clear and serene But the Eye of the Understanding which we call Reason in the conditition we injoy it at present is so distemper'd clouded and perturb'd that it beholds the truths which are there notwithstanding all their clearness but very obscurely and though they are most certain and stedfast in themselves yet when it contemplates them it perceives them onely as if they were inconstant and wavering Nor are men in this Age more free from these natural impediments then they were two thousand years ago and consequently can be no better assured of their knowledge For to say that 't is a Science which may aswell have been improved as others they which liv'd since having taken from the Opinions of the Ancients what was pure and rejected the unsound and bad is a thing of no moment to our discourse because it is untrue Perhaps Aristotle built his Philosophy up with the opinions of Elder Philosophers by refining them from that which he found faulty and serving himself with the truths before discover'd by them aswell to employ the same as materials to his structure as to find out others which were yet abstruse aad unknown And indeed it hath been observed that Hippocrates furnish'd him with the grounds of his Physiology so that he had no more to do but to build upon them and some have moreover believ'd that in divers places of his Writings and particularly in his Epistles he supplyed him with many singular advantages to the composing of his Ethicks And although he refutes Plato in several of his Opinions yet it is certain that he took many excellent instructions both from the discourses which he heard him make in his Academy and from the reading of his Works But I pray observe how this came to pass Aristotle was indued with an understanding capable to discern distinctly enough in matters of Philosophy the truths which his predecessors had brought to light and distinguish the same from falsities he was able to cull out and to place some apart from others and so to compose out of his own inventions and those of others a Body of Science better contriv'd then any had been before and whose parts were more correspondent amongst themselves But here the Question is concerning truths which the mind of man in its present estate is not capable to perceive clearly so that if he were put to make his choice of those different Opinions it would betide him that instead of hapning right he would rather choose the worst and thus it hath fallen out to all them which took imperfect humane reason for their guide therein If this reason be not satisfactory to my Adversaries let them pay themselves with experience Why did not Cicero garble all those different Opinions of Philosophers touching the Nature of the Gods to frame a good one if possible and leave posterity a rational doctrine in so important a matter But in stead of doing so the consciousness of his weakness makes him content himself with reciting them and after all his stories he knows as little of it as he did at first as if they had been nothing but clouds and darkness cast before his eyes Or why do not they show us the writings of some Philosopher either ancient or modern who being no otherwise assisted then by the meer light Reason ha's had more sound and sober opinions concerning it then his predecessors On the other side it will be found that some Philosophers who heretofore impugned Christian Religion and the Books of the Old and New Testament and who ought to have purifi'd that doctrine from the old absurdities it abounds with to the end their adversaries might have less advantage against it have been guilty of as many impertinences as they of preceding times and afforded as much cause to be insulted over in regard of the stupidity and ridiculousness of their conceits The unhappiness is that being naturally blind in these things we nevertheless conceive we see clearly and are so possess'd with a good opinion of our selves that we will not admit any one to teach us or if we have been taught by some bodyelse we are so ungrateful that we will not acknowledge it but reproach and execrate those persons from whom we have received all the purest of our knowledge For 't is the same case with these people and the Epicureans who having been enlightned by Christian Religion in many truths in the ignorance or incertitude of which they had otherwise eternally stagger'd or fluctuated they arrogate the glory of having of themselves drawn them out of the bottom of Democritus's Well or establish'd the belief of the same amongst men by the strength of their reason For why are they not say they as capable to invent them as they are to apprehend and receive them since they are revealed A wonderful Question truly and worthy of such subtle persons As if there were not a capacity in children of a dozen years old to apprehend the most difficult Geometrical Demonstrations when they are taught the same by some skillful Master who notwithstanding could never of themselves have invented the least Theorem in that Science Or as if we did not see them every day learn the Arabick Tongue readily by help of a knowing Instructor although they were as well able to pull the Stars out of Heaven as we say as to have disentangled the confusion of that Language and reduc'd it into Grammatical Rules It is indeed by the same faculty of Understanding that discover'd truths are comprehended and those found out which are unknown but there is required a far greater strength and vivacity of Intellect to make new discoveries then to comprehend
magnanimity and denounce eternal perdition in â—ase they be deficient of courage herein I will not at present determine on which side the right is May the Father of Mercy please to reconcile their minds and close up this great wound of his Church But in the mean time it is beyond all doubt that according to their contrary doctrines they ought to condemn one the other and hold that whoso embraces the faith of the One cannot secure his salvation in the external profession of the Other For example for I wil will not engage far in this matter The Reformed charge the Roman Church with three accusations Of heresie in its doctrine in many particulars of Idolatry in its religious service and of Tyranny in relation to government in sundry instances So as to call the head of it Anti-Christ and apply to him as the person intended by Prophecies whatsoever is found concerning Anti-christ in the Epistles of Saint Paul and the Revelation If these accusations be grounded on truth how can they comply with that Church unless they will violate this Commandment A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject Knowing that he that is such is subverted and sinneth being condemned of himself c. And how can they but hold the teachers of it for accursed according to this other commandment Little Children Keepe your selves from Idolatry And I cannot imagine that Saint Paul would permit external communion in the same Religion which those whom in regard of their Religion he excludes from hope of the Kingdom of Heaven Be not deceived saith he Idolaters shall not inherit the Kingdome of God And if he forbids to eat with them that is to converse familiarly with them in the way of civil and ordinary life much more would he prohibit to entertain society with them in the same Religion But those words are most highly remarkable If any man worship the beast and his image and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy Angels and in the presence of the Lambe For if the Beast mention'd there be Anti-Christ as 't is manifest and the Bishop of Rome be this Anti-christ as the Reformed pretend and that to receive the mark of the Beast in ones forehead or hand be as is evident to adhere to it in external profession what does he but pronounce sentence of condemnation against himself who believes the Pope to be Anti-christ and nevertheless esteems the outward profession of adhering to him indifferent For 't is all one as if he should affirm it lawful for a good and loyal Subject to follow the standard of the enemy of his King some unjust and violent usurper of his Kingdom And indeed it cannot be thought but that the Pope himself and his Cardinals if they believed themselves such as the adversary party publishes them would condemn themselves and all those which follow them On the other side the Catholicks accuse their Adversaries of a temerarious separation from the true Church and of having added Heresie to Schism amassing their Religion up of all those heresies which have been condemned by the ancient Councils and moreover of having to heresie added Rebellion against the Pastors whose vocation is onely true and legitimate Also of having abolisht the most sacred Mysteries which our Saviour instituted subverted all order of Discipline from top to bottom in a word of having revolted from the faith and obedience of the Supreme Monarch of the Church the Vicarius of our Lord Jesus the sole and infallible dispenser of his mysteries Now if this accusation contain as much truth as upon seeing it explicated and maintain'd in the writings of those great and even incomparable personages which have undertaken the quarrel in favour of the Roman Church in our times it seems to have verisimilitude what man so perswaded can with a good conscience associate himself to people culpable of so many heinous crimes as of Schisme heresie rebellion temerity and sacriledge against God impudence towards men and above all of disobedience to him that represents Jesus Christ and God his Father upon earth Surely he that should in the least connive at or bear with the reproaches cast upon him might be thought even capable of attempting on the person of the Redeemer of the World From all this it is easily colligible That this opinion of Indifference of all Religions in outward profession is false and pernicious renders all the exhortations of God himself in his Gospel to suffer for the truth insignificant disparages the sober judgement of the Apostles who were the first that propos'd themselves examples of inflexible resolution and consequently leads to the contempt of God and of all Religion in the World For like as one that should profess it indifferent to him what man he ownes for his Father or what Prince's badge he wears instead of his King 's would tacitely intimate himself to be of some spurious or degenerate off-spring and that he ha's a venal and unnatural soul So he that cares not of what God he bears the cognisance here below declares sufficiently that he acknowledges none for his own part and that his following of any Religion is onely out of interest and complacency and those Pretexts we mentioned in the beginning how specious soever are onely a coverture to this profane humor Truth say they is hard to be disentangled from the confusion of the many Religions which have the vogue in the world And God is of his own Nature so merciful that he is not strictly inquisitive concerning it but is better pleas'd with the love of peace and society then with the adherence to certain particular opinions which occasions such disturbances and miseries Strange people who complain of the difficulty of a thing they never enquir'd after who limit the prerogatives of God and his affections without understanding them and who under colour of tenderness for peace with men make no conscience to wage war against God who for the preservation of Civil Society which onely regulates and contains the duties of men among themselves subvert and confound the Laws of Religion in which are contained our duties towards him who created the World and Men. Certainly had these Opinionists imploy'd in the search of God's truth half the time they bestow on unprofitable occupations of this life they would not judge Religion a thing full of spinous questions and irresolvable difficulties The sole reading of the Old and New Testaments which would not take up so much of their time as a quarter of Amadis or the Romance of Astrea would clear up all those perplexities and cause them to pronounce resolutely provided they come to it with attentive minds and free from evil prejudices for the preeminence of the
notwithstanding after they came to be discovered the World it self hath consented to the mind of man acquiesces in them and the shadows which have remained of them in the Fables of the Pagans do serve for even indubitable evidence and testimony unto them On the other side it contains a doctrine of that excellency that no men of howsoever transcendent accomplishments could ever have invented the same which is so conformable to our Reason that although it be admirably sublime there is nothing in it which subverts or incounters the soberness of our judgements in a word all the parts of it have such excellent proportion amongst themselves that so many different spirits which have left it us in writing in several Ages could not have carried on so unitedly and with such uniformity a design of like grandeur without a guidance other then humane Above all there is remarkable in it a marveilous efficacy to comfort a man in his misery after it hath first given him to understand it and unvailed his mind from the ignorance of himself and his own calamity which without doubt are effects whereof our conscience instructs us we â—annot be the cause Lastly this Divinity whâ—â— men have sought after as it were gropingâ—y in all Ages is manifested to us therein with such clearness that after so long experience which we have made of our natural blindness it can be nothing but enormous stupidity not to see that God reveals himself therein and that no other could have spoken so suitably of his nature and of his perfections In the mean while the Epicureans do not receive this Revelation as proceeded from God nor attribute so much to it by far as to the Writings of Plato Cicero and Aristotle If they may be believed all the Prophets were men of alienated understandings and the Apostles vagabond circulators who went about abusing the greatest part of the World So that it is not from these men that they have learnt this truth That there is a God for if they gave credit to them in this particular and avouched to hold it from them why should they disbelieve them in the rest Or how is it credible that so great frontless Imposters as they imagine the Prophets and Apostles were should be the first discoverers of so excellent a truth Or if they did not first discover it so as to merit the title of its Inventors and that notwithstanding we hold it from them whence can it be conjectured they should have drawn it It remains of necessity that if they had it not from Divine Revelation they attained it by study and contemplation either of the World or of themselves As to the World it is easie that it could not be made by it self and consequently must have an Author The construction of so vast a fabrick speaks the power of its Architect and its â—dmirable motions which have remained so reâ—â—lar and constant after so many Ages offer to our wonder his incomprehensible Wisdom In the Harmony of such variety of things and contrary qualities linked one with another and in the convenient disposure of all the creatures to a subserviency in mutual offices without which the World could not subsist his Goodness is presented visible as it were to our eye and palpable by our hand In the shaping of every thing and the apt Symmetry of its parts appears an Art not only inimitable by us but even such as we are not capable perfectly to comprehend The conservation of the Universe and administration of all it containes clearly evidences a Providence conducting natural causes to their effects and animating them with powers to produce them which disposes of all evenements of things agreeably to his will wisely ordering the most casual and contingent And although there are not wanting some to complain of his regiment and to reproach to him oftentimes the prosperity of the Bad and calamitous estate of the Good yet it does visibly enough defend and recompence Virtue and on the contrary avenges Wickedness frequently sometimes even to the displaying of dreadful judgements upon eminent impieties Insomuch that there is not a Star in the Heavens nor a Flower upon the Earth whether considered in the gross or in parcel but declares aloud that there is a God Creaâ—â—â— Consâ—rvator and Governor of all things Nevertheless the Epicureans do not acknowledge that the World ever had a Beginning or if it had according to their opinion yet they will not confess that it was framed otherwise then by the fortuitous concourse of infinite peteâ—t Atomes And for what concerns the regiment and conservation of it they will not have the Deity imployed in the Government of Nature and things here below and do not behold as they profess in all the Universe any footstep of his Providence For t is their general Apophthegm that God hath no affairs of his own and takes no part in those of another least he should interrupt his repose and the serene tranquillity of his eternal beatitude So that if we believe them all things come to pass in the World by a fatal necessity or as it pleases Fortune who being blind and wonderfully temerarious hath neither counsel nor aim in her actions There remains the consideration of Man In our selves we may in the first place observe the structure of our Bodies which are composed after so fair a Symmetrie that the most excellent entendments are ravished and confounded in the speculation and even the illterate and they which regard it more superficially cannot but express their astonishment at the same In effect were there in them onely the Masterpiece of our Eyes and that Activity of our Hands which renders us so expedite to all sorts of services there would be enough to raise amazement in us and direct us to the knowledge of that infinite Wisdom whereunto we ow our Originals Moreover besides this Life which is the Energy of our Soul and that imperceptible dispensation of spirits which she manages with so much diligence for the motions of our Members and the functions of our Senses The light of our Intellect its agitations so vivid regular conduct and great capacity to comprehend all things The faculty which inables us to reason concerning the Deity and dispute of it one against another sufficiently evidences that there is some Principle of Understanding without us from which this ray we posses is derived into our Nature For it must needs be that we have drawn it from without us since by it we so far surpass our selves that our Fathers confes themselves unable to have communicated it to their chrâ—â—ten as also for their own particular that they did not receive it from their fathers or Ancesters More signally the Fear which men naturally have when they apprehend the Deity will revenge their misdoings and the Hope to find support from it with which they comfort themselves as often as straits and necessity afflicts them two Passions which are almost the sole motives that
the other side of the world be very much mistaken if they should likewise have this imagination on their part that God resides in that moiety of Heaven which covers them and which they behold Add hereunto that neither the one nor the other can have assurance that God sees them or that he understands their hearts and esteems their motions and thoughts acceptable unto himself Now is it possible that a man that doubts whether God hears and sees him should have any rational devotion towards him In what fashion can that person serve God in the secret of his Thought that is not assured whether God hath Eyes piercing enough to know the inclinations of his Heart If they conceive God to be of an infinite nature as in truth he is so that he is present to all things even to their most secret and profound meditation which without question they never learnt from the discipline of their Master there will suâ—ely remain no trouble to them to what part they should direct the thoughts of their minds besides that I understand not how it is more unworthy of the Majesty of God or more interruptive of his eternal quiet to govern all things in the Universe then to know them so nearly and penetrate into them with his essence As the infinite comprehension of his Wisdom gives him the understanding of all things exempt from solicitude and perplexity and as the inviolable purity of his essence renders him their presence and if I may so say their contact exempt from the contagion of their immundicity so the infiniteness of his power frees the government and administration of them from being troublesome and the invariable firmitude of his being secures him from receiving any alteration in his Eternal Felicity CHAP. IV. A more particular consideration of the Honor which the Epicureans pretend to render to God in respect of his Power Goodness Justice and Wisdom BUt after these General reasons let us proceed to Survey those which may be drawn from a more particular consideration of the Properties of the Divine Essence and in the first place inquire what Honor the Epicurean Doctrine ascribes to him in reference to his Power They who acknowledge God to have created All things of Nothing a position indeed which we owe to Revelation from Heaven yet such as the right renson of Man subscribes to have a very powerful inducement to become absolutely ravish'd and swallowed up in admiration of his Omnipotence For whereas there is a chasme of infinite extent between Entity and Non-Entity of necessity the Power that ha's produc'd some thing from Nothing to Being must be likewise infinite Wherefore in case they had no more before their Eyes but this one Proof that God hath given concerning what He is they ought to be so far convinced as to separate him from Parity with all other things and render him an honor of Adoration wholly different from that which they exhibite to Creatures For seeing the power wherewith they are capable to be indued bears no proportion to that of the Creator they cannot be intitl'd to the same sort of Honor with him not so much as in the lowest degree if it were possible to admit degrees in the honor due to an Infinite Being They which conceive the Matter of sensible things to be eternal but that God composed the World of the same as a Potter frames his vessel of his Clay which seems to have been the opinion of Plato do not consider the Divine Power in so eminent a degree albeit they do indeed attribute an effect to it which to serious perpension seems onely atchievable by an infinite cause For any power below infinite could never have been capable to bestow so excellent a Form upon a Chaos devoid of all nor to impart the like to all other things which the World contains by distributing formes to them so different as they are according to the divers rank that each holds in the Universe and the various functions to which they are designed So that likewise those of this judgement have ample argument and occasion to proclaim the wonders of it As for them who assert the world such at it presents it self to our eyes had never any Beginning but that it proceeded from God by emanation as Light do's from the Sun and by a necessary and natural production they do in truth very much detract from the glory of this Virtue notwithstanding they always imply an acknowledgement that the Universe owes its Original unto him although that great Effect were not produced by that Cause by the disposure of free Volition but by the necessity of an inevitable dependance Yet this Order also were there nothing else but the Circumgyration of the Celestial Orbes of which they repute God the first cause hath cause to admire the force that is requisite thereunto For whether God move the Heavens immediately and by himself without the intervening assistance of any other thing as one applies his hand to a wheel to turn it notwithstanding any aptitude they may have to circular motion by reason of their natural figure yet there needs a mighty strength to stir all that great Machine and to govern so many different revolutions to preserve them in harmony and to hinder them from clashing or interferring for ever Or whether he moves the same by the Mediation of Intelligences according to the conceit of Aristotle who was father to this Opinion of the Worlds Eternity nevertheless God will always be the first Efficient of their motion and if the Intelligences which are far inferior to him can do that He is without doubt able to do much more Moreover we know that Philosopher speaks very advantageously of the dignity of the First Mover attributes to him the glory of being the primary Principle of all things But in reference to the Epicureans they want our charity to make up so much as a probability that they believe the Supream Being is indued with any power at all For what evidence have they for such a perswasion from his effects if He hath not created the least Mushrom nor given impulsion to so much as one of those small Bodies by whose concurrence they hold the World had its contexture Certainly if they measure this power by the knowledge they have of it and their knowledge by the effects they behold of it and it is clear they cannot know it otherwise it must needs be extreamly inconsiderable or rather none at all in case they keep themselves to their Maximes But peradventure some among them will answer that being there is a God it is necessary he should possess all Perfection required to the constitution of so excellent a nature and that among those perfections there ought to be a power also proportionate to the excellence of that nature We will not scruple to concede this to them although we shall afterwards shew where they learnt to reason in this manner for the discipline of their
their violence Insomuch that where there is lest one sparkle of piety and hope of pardon men would not have this opinion true That God hath no care of men and that he prepares neither Good nor Evil for them in the other world And where there is not so much as the least seed of piety although they are very desirous that Opinion were true yet they are not able to perswade themselves that it is so And hereof the Epicureans themselves supply us with an evident Instance For what else intends their Poet in these lines Vsque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam Obterit pulchros fasces saevasque secures Proculcare ludibrio sibi habere videtur What is it I beseech you that he denotes by that hidden Power Is it Nature No surely for Nature takes pleasure in the production and conservation of things not in their ruine besides that these Accidents which he mentions are not dependant on the ordinary laws of Nature Is it Fortune then No much less For wherefore should he say that she takes pleasure to shatter the grandeurs of the World disdainfully at her Feet seeing she hath no knowledge either of little or great nor whether those be the bagdes of Power or not which she tears in pieces and dashes to powder It remains therefore that it is that which we call the Providence of God which indeed sometimes takes pleasure in convincing men of their vanity and overturning the highnesses and excellencies of the Earth And this is that which extorts from Horace a disciple of the same School that handsome confession that having been formerly a contemner of the Gods the dreadful violences of thunder made him renounce that foolish wisdom wherewith he had been imbued and pronounce this memorable sentence Valet ima summis Mutare insignem attenuat Deus So great is the power of truth that even from the mouth of its adversaries it draws testimonies to its advantage CHAP. VII Of the Epicurean Opinion concerning the Immortality of the Humane Soul and the Supreme Good and what may redound from it HItherto I have touch'd but transiently upon the Questions of the Immortality of the Soul and of the Supreme Good of Man and I now come to examine what they judge of the one and wherein they place the other Which though they both require to be treated of distinctly I shall dispatch with brevity according to the universal design of this Work And forasmuch as they of former times thought that the Soul survives not the Body and the opinion of the modern Sectators is doubtful thereof some affirming others denying the same it is necessary for me to shew that if they grant that the Humane Soul is immortal they are also obliged to confess that there is a Providence I shall not scruple in the first place to alledge here for proof of the incorruptibility of our minds The consent of all Nations although I have already made use of that Argument in another matter For it seems such to me as ought in no wise to be rejected unless by contentious spirits who when they have contradicted a truth of how great evidence soever think they have atchieved an exploit of great applause For I beseech you if the soul of man be not immortal if there be no firm reasons to induce us to believe that it is so how hath such a fancy been able to become so rooted in our Minds that there is not any opinion that ha's a greater vogue in the World Not onely the Greeks and the Romanes who seem to have been better refined then other Nations have been imbued with it but the Barbarians and least civilised people have equally had this perswasion of the perpetual duration of their Minds although the quality of their estate after death was almost equally unknown to them all What therefore are those reasons that perswaded them of it and rendred that perswasion so firm and unalterable Should I say that all Nations have received it from hand to hand from their Ancesters perhaps it would stir the Epicureans spleen to mockery yet I should not affirm either an absurdity or an impertinence For all Mankind being derived from one single person and he having been indued with a more clean and particular understanding of his Being then others have had since because the race of men ha's been gradually depraved and degenerate according to the distance at which they have been removed from their originals he imparted the principles and knowledge to his descendants which are ingrasted in them and intertained from Age to Age. And although it were no more then a tradition from hand to hand which ha's been altered in divers manners by Lapse of time yet the principal part thereof which consists in the belief it self of the Immortality of the Soul hath such a foundation in Truth and in Nature that it hath been impossible even for many Ages of time which ordinarily decays all things to prevail against it or at least to deface it out of the minds of Men. Now no Relation ought to be discredited which is accompained with these evidences First that no solid and indubitable reasons can be brought against the same to convince it of falsitie as I am well assured there is none to be found against this of any reasonable probability And Secondly which is equally spread through out the whole Universe and hath been with extreme forwardness received by all Nations and Lastly which hath born up against the encounters of time and constantly maintained it self in the midst of so â—any revolutions of humane affairs so that it hath pass'd into the remotest Islands and the territories separated from us by so great seas that they have lain undiscover'd to us till within these last two hundred years Is it not a thing worthy our marveil that in such places where men had lost all knowledge of their Original and of the streights over which the people pass'd from whom they are descended and where they have in a manner forgotten humanity it self they should notwithstanding have preserv'd this belief that there is some other thing in them besides the Body of greater excellence and which subsists beyond their fate and ashes But if there be people sound in some other part of the New World which are fallen to so low a degree beneath themselves and to such a measure of brutality as not to have retain'd amongst them any shadow of this Sentiment though I much doubt whether there be any such their testimony ought not to be of any consideration not onely because they are very few in number in comparison of the rest of the World but also because that it would not be strange if they whom barbarisme ha's unman'd in all other things even so far as to have no inclination to society should likewise have extinguish'd in their Minds that impression of Nature and the tradition of their Ancestors But praised be God there are other reasons which
till he was enter'd into the Sanctuary of the Lord of Hosts and had consider'd the End that is reserved for such people And Claudian likewise declared his dissatisfaction till afterwards Abstulit hunc tandem Ruffini poena tumultum Absolvitque Deos. But seeing Death arrives equal to all and that that of the Wicked as the Prophet saith is very frequently without regrets and although it should be accompanied with some thing particularly terrible or painful yet that punishment do's not by much equal the atrocity of the crimes which they have committed if there be not some other chastisement reserved for the Wicked to come and some other recompense prepared for good men the Conduct of the Deity does not remain fully enough justified therein This consideration ought to suffice rational men to evince that our Souls subsist after our Bodies but we have other evidences besides of such firmeness that they could never be defaced by Barbarism it self For he that pleases to consider never so little attentively the capacity our Understandings have to comprehend so many and so different things their agitations so suddain as to fly from East to West and from North to South in a moment their inconceiveable swiftness in climing up in an instant even to the highest Heavens there contemplating their motions and the Earth which they environ as a point the power which they have to remember past things to connect them with the present and thence to frame conjectures of the future which are sometimes so certain that they seem to be Prophecies to embrace when they please in one gross all the mass of the Universe and also when they please to single out of it the most minute parts only the faculty which they employ to discover the beginning of the World and its annihilation to keep a register of times past not by Ages and years onely but by Moneths and Weeks and Days and Hours and Minutes to almost an infinite division the exactness they attain to in calculating so perfectly the courses of the Heavens that they divine and point out the Eclipses even for several Ages to come and their dexterous vivacity in inventing so many excellent Arts and industrious Mysteries in polishing illustrating and piercing into so many occult Sciences and difficult and intricate questions what can be said upon consideration of all these perfections but that there is something in us of greater excellence then our Bodies yea a spirit issued from the breath of God himself And herein I dare appeal to the testimony of the Epicureans themselves They do not stick to publish that their Philosopher is worthy of immortality and even to be acknowledged for a God in respect of his rare inventions in Philosophy although the rest hold him for a person absolutely ignorant of the things which he undertook to meddle with and impertinent in those which he treated of and imagined he understood Do they think then that that Divine personage as they call him who first dared to display the mighty power of his ardent spirit to break and wrest open the gates of Nature to dive into secrets formerly unknown to pass beyond the flaming Walls of the World and post over that immense space of things with his understanding to bring from thence the victorious knowledge of the Causes of the universe that he I say had no other Soul but a little Breath of Air that is dissipated in dying and I know not what kind of vital heat which is extinguished with this corporeal Mass And were it not a strange disorder in the Nature of things that Epicurus should have merited the immortality of the Gods and nevertheless could not arrive to the third part of the Age of a Raven For what advantage is it to him now while he is mingled with the dust of so many men dead before and after him that others speak of his singular devices in Philosophy And if the cause of his Life differ'd in nothing from that of a Horse whence came those faculties for which they pretend men are obliged to consecrate Temples and Statues to him Truely as an immortal faculty is requisite to serve and honor the Deity so for certain in case he had had no other principle of his Life but a pitiful mortal puffe of Air he would not have dared so audaciously to encounter the sentiments of other men and taught Irreligion with so mad an impudence as could not be repress'd by any terrors or respects whatsoever Quem nec fuma Deum nec fulmina nec minitanti Murmure compressit coelum sed eo magis acrem Virtutem inritat animi confringere ut arcta Naturae primus portarum claustra cupiret For there needs almost an equal strength of wit to do so well and so ill Moreover if our Souls be corruptible they result undoubtedly from the temperature of the Elements in our Bodies and by that means are howsoever subtle they be corporeal themselves If so how can they have any conception of spiritual substances which are absolutely separated from matter For there is required some proportion berween the thing understood and that which understands for which reason Philosophers affirm that by means of the conception of things the Understanding becomes in a manner of the same nature with them How then if we be nothing but Bodies do we comprehend that there are things which are not such and how do we enter into discourse of the Deity it self Must not he be a very Brute that imagines that the Facultie whereby we comprehend that there is a Deity and dispute of a spiritual and eternal Essence and its Properties differs not but in a degree of heat and refining of our humors from the Faculties of Beasts Aristotle taught that an Understanding was either an act of the Fancy or at least was not performed without the intervention of those Images which are form'd in the Fancy upon occasion of objects that strike our Senses And like a cautious person as he was made use of that Dis-junction to the end he might not shake the doctrine of the immateriality of the Intellect of which in truth he seems sometimes to speak dubiously but in other places renders such advantageous testimonies thereunto that there appears no ground of doubting but that he had very rational sentiments concerning it Pompanatius as great a Peritatetick as he is hath liked better to determine that the act of Understanding is nothing but the formation of such Images What picture then do's the Fancy delineate in it self whereby to represent the Deity and principally in them who are so clearly perswaded of the spirituality of his Nature that if it ever happens to them to conceive any Idea of him according to the similitude of Bodies they presently condemn their conceptions and indeavor as much as possible to abstract their Mjnds and raise them above all corporeal Beings to the end they may have no other thoughts thereof but such as are purely intellectual It is
absolute contempt of the Deity there is great probability that it was occasion'd by the ill opinion which they had of their false Gods and there being at a loss in finding out the means to substitute the true one in their room But certainly I do not conceive that any other reason induc'd Socrates to reclaim men from the contemplation of divine and celestial things which had been the principal imployment of the Philosophers which liv'd before him to the study of a Civil Life and of the Laws of Policy and Virtue after the vain attempts of his predecessors and his own Whence it came to pass that he was condemned as a despiser of the Religion of his Country because he saw that all their doctrine of the Gods was erroneous and their ceremonies superstition and vanity and so finding no other Religion which satisfied him he addicted himself to things in which the mind of man sees somewhat more clearly such as is the doctrine of Virtue and of the Laws upon which Governments are founded As it is natural to us to take pleasure in things which are easie and which we understand and to disesteem those which are high and which we perceive are too remote for us to attain But all this is not sufficient unless we shew by evident reasons that the particular declaration of the will of God in this point is absolutely necessary Which shall be my undertaking in the ensuing Chapters CHAP. II. How greatly it imports true piety That every man be throughly assured that his Religion is Good And that that cannot be unless it be of Divine Revelation ALthough there be certain verities in Religion so evident that the greatest part of mankind assents to them unanimously as that there is a God That he ought to be honored That men are oblig'd to live agreeably to Reason and Nature and That the Deity which commands it so rewards the observation of that commandment and punishes those severely which transgress it yet as to the manner of serving God aright and also of living consentaneously to Nature and Reason there ha's been alwayes a thousand differences amongst those who of their own motion have gone about to teach it to others For scarce can there be found any Commonwealth among those which have been esteemed the best polici'd in which some grand and signal vice ha's not been excused or permitted or even sometimes recommended by publike Laws But though they had accorded much better in the description of the duties incumbent on men one towards another as it cannot be denied but that they have less disagreed therein then in that which pertains to Religion there is no person so meanly versed in the history of the Pagans ceremonies in matter of Religion but observes a wonderful strange dissension about them For under the name of Pagans I comprehend not onely the Greeks and Romans although there was a great medley in their mysteries but I also understand all other Nations which either have been heretofore or are still destitute of the knowledgè of the true God in several parts of the World And this is not to be marvell'd at For since they have differ'd so much concerning the Nature of the Elements and the principles of the composition of things and have disputed so hotly touching fire air and water things which fall under the notice of Sense how was it possible they should agree in that which with common consent surpasses all the power and acuteness of the mind of man And in so great and almost unimaginable confusion of opinions what wit had been capable to discover and sift out the truth if there had been any in them and to assure himself certainly that he had found it In which regard the most prudent and moderate amongst them affirmed that it was the safest way not to penetrate too far into things and that God is a Being improportionably transcending humane comprehension And the story of Simónides is too well known to need relating How then could they know the means of serving God as they ought seeing the reverence which we bear towards any thing is naturally measur'd according to the knowledge which we have of its nature So that in the incertainty in which the mind of man fluctuates perpetually without any stay or guide what could the devotion of those be who could not be solidly instructed in that knowledge or what could the zeal of those be towards any Religion who hold all to be of humane institution and indifferent For there are but two guides in us under whose conduct we are able to compass any thing namely Reason and Appetite Reason is moved by knowledge of the becommingness and profitableness of that which is offer'd to it when it apprehends them in one object conjointly for right reason will never account that profitable which is not honest too but where it perceives honesty conjoyn'd with apparent utility it is carried forth towards the same without scruple Passion is excited to motion by an infinite variety of incentives of which none can be commendable when they are repugnant to reason as hath been very well observed by the Philosophers themselves If therefore a man be uncertain whether the Religion he professeth be good and profitable that is commendable in it self and congruous to reason and that it teacheth the means of obtaining the favour of the Deity which is the aime all Religions drive at one of these two things will necessarily happen either he will be very coldly affected towards it or in case he be carried to it with zeal it will be but a vehemence of Passion in his mind destitute of the guidance of reason without which a man can do nothing worthy of commendation For if Passion principally move him to it the incertainty of the Nature of his Religion being considered with reason will keep his affection in suspense and if he be lead on onely by the bent of Passion it will neither be a legitimate affection nor a just and rational zeal Now on the one side I do not conceive these people make any account of a Devotion which is not but onely in appearance without the heart being affected therewith since they would scarce allow their slaves to owe them such a kind of service and on the other that there is no appearance that they think the Deity accepts the worship which is performed by a blind passion and destitute of all rule and knowledge It is indeed true that I meet with some even among them which we are the name of Christians who are of opinion that God look't with a favorable eye upon the devotion in which all Nations pretended heretofore to serve him in so many different forms and that even their piety although blind and dark in that profound ignorance wherein they liv'd was oftentimes followed with the benedictions of Heaven But herein they do not concur with the principal Ministers of the Author of Christian Religion who tell us
not produce neither is it able to preserve it self It belongs to the same faculty to preserve and make it If by the Word Nature they understand the world it self composed and contrived with all the things in the order we behold it or as the Author of the Book De Mundo speaks the well ordered compages of all the parts of the Universe How could that make it self For the thing which makes exists already and that which is making is not yet existent The Carver is before the Statue and the Watch-maker before his Springs that point out the hour yea even before he begins to make them But the Statue or the Watch though begun are neither of them such nor yet when they are in making till the whole work be compleated and all the parts adjusted and united in due order In like manner if the world made it self it was before its own being namely the world producing before the world produced though but one and the same World Which is a like folly as if a man should say that he begat himself without a father Whence also it follows that it is not able to govern or support and maintain it self no more then a Watch is if there be no body to fit and guide its Wheels and Springs and to winde it up and duely order it If they say that the World is eternal is it so without dependance on God or is it eternal by emanation from him as the Light of the Sun is of as great duration as the Sun it self If it be eternal with dependance on the Deity then God having produc'd the World as naturally as the fire burns or the Sun shines must also preserve it in the same manner and because it will be a natural action there will be no obligation to him for it in as much as he can do no otherwise as the Sun cannot restrain its beams nor withhold its light from illuminating the Universe And moreover such conservation of the World will be no longer an act of Providence For that can never be termed Providence which is an inevitable necessity of things depending on their indissoluble natural connexion So that I wonder with what reason the Stoicks called their Fatal destiny Providence or thought those two things compatible together For whereas Providence administers things with a freedom of Wil what Liberty can there be in the conduct of that which depends on a fatal and Determinate necessity which is precedent to any act of Providence If it be eternal without dependance on the Deity it is it self God as some heretofore accounted it And because that which is eternal is also immutable and maintains it self always uniformly neither shall God have any right to meddle in the government of the World which does not depend on him nor the World any necessity of being governed or preserved by him since there would be no change to be feared in it it s own eternity exempting it from all subjection to alteration Wherefore it must either be confess'd that the World had God for its Author or denied that God is any thing at all concern'd in the government and preservation of the World Now there is one thing considerable above others Which is that though these reasons be so evident that nothing can be brought against them to refell them yet there was never any man that perceiv'd them clearly unless he were first instructed of the creation of the World in the Books of Moses Aristotle believed it eternal Plato attributed eternity onely to the Matter and in his Dialogue of the Creation he commits so many impertinences unworthy so great a Philosopher that he that ha's the patience to read will partly laugh at his conceipts and partly pity his extravagances and esteem it as easie to combine the Atomes of Democritus together as to conjoyn the minute subtleties of those Platonical speculations Besides I am not satisfi'd and the opinion of those which affirm it hath very great probability of truth but Plato might have learn't all he knew of this matter from tradition of the Egyptians and Syrians who had receiv'd it from Moses for he had travell'd into those Countries and was there imbued with truths formerly unknown in Greece but afterwards endevour'd to cloath the same in the dress of Philosophy to the end they might be more readily entertain'd by his Country-men And being passionately devoted to Geometry observing what is most true that all things were fram'd with a wonderful wisdom as it were by weight rule and measure he interweav'd his Discourse with splendid conceptions of Lines Proportions Numbers Whence it came to pass that Aristotle who did not attribute much to the tradition of others but examined all things by his own reason and otherwise observed an insufferable confusion in all these Numbers of Plato and moreover perhaps took too much pleasure in opposing his Opinions designing to get all the reputation to himself which he detracted from his Master as Plato himself complains in Diog. Laertius that he had us'd him as rudely as young Colts that kick their Dams and so disceded from his opinion and introduc'd that of the eternity of the World with dependance on the Deity although such a dependance as infers a necessary and natural production And upon this consideration as God willing we shall shew more amply hereafter he seems to have had so cold a respect for the Deity Nor is there any ground to imagine that the Philosophers of latter times are more intelligent in these matters then those of old were since the World furnishes them with no new arguments nor Nature with new faculties or otherwise disposed to comprehend the same They know indeed that the World was created and have a clearer understanding of the truth of arguments which confirm it then the ancients and even then right reason it self could supply them with but it is since the thing was acertained by revelation And if they would be ingenuous to confess it they learn't it from the Books of Moses But what will some say could not Moses perhaps have a greater reach of wit then Plato or Aristotle and so invent arguments of himself and sound the truth to the bottom and then communicate it to others and that without any especial revelation although he boasted thereof to gain greater authority amongst his people Truely a very vain objection and a pitiful subterfuge For what should have hindred him from declaring his reasons as well as Aristotle hath done his And nevertheless he makes a very plain Narration of it as Galen reproaches to him And if his design were to enhance his authority and so render those over whom he commanded more plyable and flexible out of respect to the Deity why did he refuse that charge of exercising authority over that people and to conduct them And how does he boast of so many miracles which might have been contradicted by men then living if the relation of them had not been
Kingdomes it must needs be particularly loved by the Deity since he so terribly revenges the injuries that are done to it Lastly being wholly designed for reclaiming men off from Idolatry and superstition to the service of the true God and conforming their irregular appetities to reason a thing impossible to be done because men naturally love Idols as debauched men do courtisans and are yet addicted to their own concupiscences as much or more then they are to idols nevertheless if it ha's surmounted all resistance overcome the most obstinate hearts and triumphed gloriously over the humane understanding leading their thoughts as prisoners by the force and clearness of its truth so that it ha's subjugated even the greatest Empires and all other Religions doctrines and sects have fallen and been scatter'd before it Who can doubt for the future but that it is a divine truth and accompanied with divine assistance Especially since for the propagating of it into all quarters of the world there was employed neither arms nor factions and conspiracies nor the favour of great men nor commotions of people nor the subtlety of Philosophers nor the eloquence of Orators nor any thing else that bears a splendor and lustre in the eyes of men but onely the naked proposall of a simple truth and a firm and invincible resolution to indure all things for it Certainly where the means which men ordinarily serve themselves of are rejected and such as are contrary to them used the design cannot but be some other then humane And if it prosper in spight of the world's and mens opposition it must needs be through a divine and celestial virtue Now we shall see by the help of God's grace in the sequell that there is a Religion in the world to which all these tokens or evidences do sute and agree and that they cannot be found but in that alone and this in order to evince as my first purpose obliges me that they who acknowledge a particular or special revelation from Heaven in matter of Religion ought not to account all kinds indifferent as to external profession which must be the subject of the third part of my Work The end of the Second Part. A TREATISE Concerning RELIGIONS Against those who esteem all Indifferent The third Part. CHAP. I. That such as acknowledge a Particular Revelation cannot allow indifference in Profession of Religion HAving shewn by manifest and necessary reasons that in order to performing a service agreeable to God and beneficial to the salvation of men there needs an other light then that of Nature and that they ought to be inlightened by a special revelation and having declared the most evident tokens by which the same may be known it should be our next business to enquire where they are found in as much as Religion will infallibly be there found also And this ought without longer dispute to be sufficient against those who acknowledging the necessity of this particular revelation likewise confessing that there is such in the world do notwithstanding account the external profession of all Religions indifferent For where God hath revealed his truth and declared his will in things that concern him and his service what humane imaginations are to be preferr'd before him or what excuses can be pleaded for disobedience unto him But the obstinacy of men and the importance of the matter requires further discussing and illustration In man there are three distinct faculties of which each ha's its respective influence in the profession and exercise of Religion The understanding wherewith we apprehend the truth of things The Will in which are the motions of piety and habits of virtue And the Senses which are subservient to both For it is by the Senses that objects arrive to the Understanding and by the Understanding they excite sutable motions in the Will Upon which account there must be three sorts of things in Religion that correspond thereunto First such as are propounded as truths to be believ'd that so man who is otherwise buried in ignorance may attain a wisdom worthy the excellence of his nature For how can Religion subsist without a true understanding of the nature of God and his Attributes and other truths dependent thereon so far at least as humane understanding is capable of the same And since the supreme perfection of man consists in the legitimate practise of the true Religion how can man be render'd perfect if his intellect remain notwithstanding clouded with darkness and ignorant of the most excellent of all natures and from which alone all other things derive their perfection The second sort of things include such as are proposed not onely to be believed but to be done and which lye in practise as the precepts of piety towards God and charity amongst men the duties of which are diffus'd through all the parts of humane life Lastly the third comprehends all external things as the actions and ceremonies designed to give instruction of that which must be believ'd and to beget affection towards that which is to be done with that regularity according to which the Religious Society is administred Now all these particulars ought to have such an accord among them that the truths proposed to be believ'd be of a nature proper to beget piety and virtue in the minds of men n as much as there is so strait an alliance between the Understanding and the Will that the Will follows the steerage government of reason which is the guide and conductor of it Whence that the motions of piety may be sincere and worthy of the person in whom they are and to whom they are directed it is requisite that the wisdom of the understanding be very pure and its light very serene clear In like maner it is requâ—site that the precepts which contain the duties of piety and virtue have no repugnance with the truths in knowledge of which consists the wisdom of the understanding but as they mutually depend on one another so there may be a perfâ—ct correspondence between them And lastly it is meet that the ceremonies and external government of this society have such a congruity with all other things of Religion that first they be in nothing repugnant to the truths in which wisdom consists and next that they be peculiarly instrumental to the begetting and exciting of piety and virtue For as the internal part of man is much more excellent then his external and Religion is destinated to perfectionate his soul so is it fit that the exterior and sensible things imployed as instruments thereunto be proper to the end to which they are adressed And it would be a great absurdity to imploy means to attain to such an end which were not onely uncongruous therewith but opposite and contrary These things being thus premised I demand whether they that believe a celestial revelation necessary and think there is one in the world and nevertheless account the external profession of all Religions indifferent
we if the truth was there of which we are in despair ever to have any intelligence Shall we then have recourse to find it in the books of the Poets Truely it would be an excellent design to go about to build a Religion upon the model afforded us in the Theology of Hesiod the Hymmes of Orpheus the Poems of Homer the Odes of Pindar the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the divine Theology of the great Virgil who is so hard put to it to save the gods of the poor Aeneas from the sack of Troy and who trusses them up in the same fardel with the little Ascanius as companions of the same fortune It were more rationally credible that the beasts and trees held that rare converse together which Aesop reports of them in his Fables then to give belief to the adventures and exploits which those Poets ascribe to their Deities For in the first there would be nothing but childishness or at most but brutishness in the latter impiety and blasphemy And if as some would have it believ'd of them though perhaps themselves never thought of any such matter their intent was to cover under the veil of those fables several true mysteries pertaining to the knowledge of the Deity and understanding of the secrets of nature so far was the teaching the same after such a manner from being a divine intention that on the contrary the honor of the Deity hath thereby been unworthily impaired and the truth smother'd under most horrible lies It follows therefore that we go to the writings of Philosophers to which we cannot without great injury to truth ascribe the commendation of being proceeded from celestial inspiration since the authors themselves though sufficiently presumtuous do not pretend they were so And indeed we have shewn above that they were either wholly ignorant of the requisites to a true piety towards God or if they had knowledge of some few it was wonderfully obscure and dubious But how could the revelation of God have suffered them to groap and wander in that ignorance To conclude is it then to those Oracles of Delphos Dodona Jupiter Ammon and others the like that we owe the glory of this divine knowledge Truly it moves both shame and pity to hear themselves speak both of the original and faculty of divination and cessation of Oracles It was a heard of Goats that first brought that of Delphos which was the most famous and venerable of all into reputation But the virgins that were placed there to give answers to inquirers which they receiv'd by their obscene parts were not long there but there arise most notorious scandals of them All their predictions were ambiguous and doubtful like our Almanack-makers who prophesie by hap-hazard and themselves gave this account of it that the Daemons which spoke there not knowing things to come but by inspection of the Stars and so being able to gather from thence but incertain conjectures they shrouded their ignorance under the ambiguity of words capable of different interpretations to the end they might make good their credit whatsoever the event of things might be In a word afâ—er Plutark had bestirr'd himself on all sides to finde out the causes of these Oracles and their ceasing and sometimes conceiv'd them perishable and mortal Daemons sometimes immortal but that they chang'd place he seems to resolve upon this worthy Philosophy That the earth was in some places indued with certain prophetick Virtues which come by exhalations to be mingled and insinuated into souls fitting to receive those inspirations and so cause in them those Enthusiasmes and predictions of future things Afterwards when all the virtue is spent and the whole mass that was made thereof in the subterranean caverns evaporated then the prediction that was made by the Oracles of things to come ceases and is extinguish'd Without question those divinations could not but be very clear which proceeded onely from the fumes of the earth and the religious devotions very good that were paid to these divining exhalations and the persons who received the impressions of them in their souls But perhaps though the evidences of this divine revelation be lost I mean the books in which it was recorded yet it ha's remained in the memory of man and is preserved by practise as by a living transcript Be it so Let us therefore now examine the Pagan Religion in it self Which certainly if it was divine ought to have afforded a great knowledge of those supreme truths in the understanding of which consists the perfection of our souls And yet it ha's been pitifully defective herein For setting a part at present those principles of Christian Religion which seem most incredible and by reason of which profane men reject or suspect it there is no person that ha's a dram of common sense but will freely confess that we have beyond comparison more knowledge of the nature of the Deity and true virtue then the ancient Greeks or Romanes ever had which notwithstanding we have drawn from books more ancient then them by many ages and which condemn the Gods of all other Nations Whence therefore came it to pass that if they had that particular revelation we enquire after they were so ignorant of those indubitable truths of which we are so knowing who have learnt the same from those that are profess'd enemies to the Pagan Deities If what they believ'd in matter of Religion was truth whence do those truths which we perceive now so clearly and comprehend so certainly convince them of falshood And if the Gods which the Pagans ador'd were true Gods why do the books which have taught us so many excellent things whereunto humane reason cannot repugne call them Gods of clay And indeed they were marveillous Gods for even those that ador'd them knew their parents and could shew their tombes and tell a thousand debaucheries of them which confirm that they were so far from being worthy to reign in the heavens that on the contrary they deserved publick punishment upon earth Their thefts their rapes and adulteries their attempts against parents their whoredoms whereby if we believe their authors they filled the heavens with bastards their Sodomies and incests would not have been suffered unpunish'd by those that built Temples and Altars to them if they had apprehended them in the jurisdiction of their respective Republicks And the supreme Jupiter himself must not be excepted of whom Menelaus exclaimed with more reason then he imagin'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jupiter pater nemo Deorum est te perniciosior What a kind of Religion is that whose Gods have had a beginning and that a long time after men of whose history we have certain knowledge For Jupiter and Saturne and Vranus are none of them so ancient as Abraham On the other side what Gods had the Nations before these came into the world Whosoever saith Plutark would search into the histories of the times that preceeded Theseus and Hercules shall find therein nothing
Tiberus Gracchus had observed in the books of Augurs that they were created contrary to the custome and that the pavillions were not rightly placed in the publike Assemblies Lastly the means us'd to promote and propagate this Religion were meerly humane as wars conspiracies encroachments invasions sieges of places and battels For how did the Romanes impose other Gods upon other Nations but by force of Arms And how did they possess the Gods of their people but as spoiles of their enemies and trophies of their victories Whereas as we shall see hereafter it was overthrown and ruin'd without a blow strucken after a most wonderful manner CHAP. III. Whether the Profession of all Religions be Indifferent according to the Religion of Mahomet And that this Religion is not of Divine Institution IT is of some difficulty to know certainly what was the opinion of Mahomet the Author of the Turkish Religion concerning this Question Whether the Profession of all Religions be Indifferent For he seems sometimes to affirm it as when he says in the Chapter of the Fable That Jews Samaritans Christians all that shall have trusted in God and believed the Resurrection of the Dead and done good Works shall be exempt from affliction and they shall have nothing to fear at the day of Judgement Sometimes again he denies it as when in the same Chapter and Page he saies Certainly they which say that Jesus the son of Mary is God are impious and the entrance into Paradise is forbidden to him that says God hath a companion equal to himself but hell shall be his habitation Which Assertions are manifestly contradictory And he is otherwise alike unconstant and fluctuating For sometimes he promises the grace of God to all those that do good works provided they believe the unity of the Deity a thing which he is very instant in recommending And sometimes he sayes that his Law is the onely way of truth and salvation and almost every where he teaches to promote it by force of Arms which does not well consist with his former maxime For if all Religions equally endear to God and his favour what necessity is there of so many bloody wars for the propagation of Mahometisme In truth it would be a strange thing if a good Musulman should think his salvation secur'd in the profession of the Christian Religion which censures Mahomet for the greatest and most abominable Deceiver that ever liv'd upon the Earth and his Alcoran for a piece of unparallell'd imposture and execrable impiety or if he should partake in a communion where they pray continually for the destruction of the Empire of the Turke and the extirpation of the Mahometan Religion It is possible he might dextrously explicate his meaning by this distinction whereof there are some shadows frequently in his book That if a person who once embraced the faith afterwards happen to relapse from or renounce the same by constraint yet he shall not be condemned provided he retain the same in his heart but if he do it voluntarily and without any violence he shall never be redressed or restored into the right way by God but shall be adjudged unto eternal pains And it is well known that whatever the Alcoran saies to the contrary The Turkes hold the Persians for eternally damn'd as hereticks of their Law though they consent in the principal points of the same and both unanimously hold that impostor for a supreme Prophet But as to matter of life and ordinary practise there is no people under the Sun more scrupulous in observation of things which they account as making part of their Religion or come neer it within a hundred leagues as not to imploy any paper to unclean uses because the Alcoran is written in it and other such niceties which speak them indeed sufficiently foolish but otherwise exact observers of their most minute ceremonies Their publike prayers are constantly frequented their private never neglected Their Fasts are strict and inviolable and seeing they condemn the use of Wine as abominable how can they be indifferent in other things more essential and important to Religion Certainly though Christians have without comparison better grounds for this pretension that the truth is on their side yet they are nothing neer so passionate for the promoting of Christianity as the Turks are for the propagation of the Law of Mahomet For they invite Christians to them by great rewards they favour and advance renegadoes and when a war is undertaken they are wonderfully zealous and ardent therein if there be hope of extending their Belief further thereby and planting it amongst the Nations which they invade Which also themselves are so obstinate in retaining that it is very ordinary to find amongst them great numbers of persons that have abandoned the name of Christ but to see converted Turks in Christendom is a thing then which nothing is more rare Yea there have been some who have rather chosen to suffer an ignominious death then to accept of a pardon for notorious crimes committed by them on condition of being baptised But admit that Mahomet and the doctrine of his Law made for our adversaries yet I can scarce imagine that in this great light both of holy and profane learning any man in these parts of the world would put any stress upon the testimony of those people who have not onely a profest enmity to all liberal Sciences and such as are sutable to the excellence of humane understanding but whose sottish and abominable superstition equals and in some things surpasses that of the Pagans themselves 'T is true he teaches not onely one supreme but one single and solitary Deity infinite in essence and power and condemns all those trifling Deities which rendred the Pagan Religion so contemptible He acknowledges that this Deity governs the World by his Providence and that all is subject to his Empire even things natural fortuitous and contingent and the motions of the mind of man He preaches in general that God is a rewarder of virtue and that he will repay wickedness with sutable punishments He extolls the mercy of God and declares that he invites men to repentance He exhorts to good works and asserts the resurrection with a final judgement of all men at the consummation of the World But all these things which are so specious and plausible in themselves are but as Sugar blended with his poisonous doctrines to make them be swallow'd more pleasingly and unadvertedly nor needs there any long discourse to discover his imposture I shall not at present insist on the qualifications of his person how he was a wretched and vile Arabian and raised himself to a reputation only by robberies Nor shall I mention his adulteries and impure concubinage nor his fraudes and violences I shall pass over with silence that it was onely the ambition of establishing an Empire amongst theeves that induc'd him to invent and hatch that Religion which he suted to the genius of those he was
of wives and concubines came from the Schole of the Nicolaitans The rare carnal Paradise was the invention of Cerinâ—hus and the ancient Chiliasts and that other foist That Christ did not suffer really but onely some Fantasme in his place was forged by the Cerdonians and others of that stamp The greatest part of his Fables are borrowed from the Jews and some Apocryphal Authors that were current like false money in those times and his gross follies wherewith he hath larded and strewed it throughout came from his own ignorance and for that having himself no knowledge at all neither of the Old nor New Testament nor of the writings of the Jews nor profane histories nor the Poets he trusted to the memory of a lewd Monk and some false Christians or false Jews who never understood very much of them whence all that he relates out of them is delivered rashly and at random But on the other side though there were nothing but truth in the whole Alcoran nothing but what were rational in it self and consentaneous to the Holy Scriptures both for histories and doctrines yet the author of it ought nevertheless to be held for no other then an Impostor for that he dares to vaunt himself for a great Prophet For such a Prophet as he pretends to be ought not onely to declare things agreeing with those that were before him but either to reveal doctrines unknown till then or to expound those which were delivered enigmatically and to unveil them out of their obscurities and withall to make faith of his calling either by miracles or prophesies of things to come ratified by the events the prediction of which does not import the vivacity of humane wit by penetrating by conjectures into some things undiscern'd by vulgar eyes but the wisdom of God to whom the bottom of the most impenetrable secrets is conspicuous Otherwise all Divines that ever writ concerning Religion either Jewish or Christian congruously to the books of the Old and New Testament should be either Prophets or Apostles Besides were there no errors in the Alcoran yet how many books have we that treat the best things contained therein in a manner incomparably more excellent Wherefore he ought to be accounted a Deceiver and the father of Deceivers who being so ignorant so impertinent so absurd so discordant from truth so fabulous and pollute he yet glories that he is the greatest of all the Prophets by whose ministry God revealed himself to men Now if Mahomet himself was so gross and mad a fool his principal Doctors and interpreters had yet more need of manacles and chaines then he which I shall shew onely by the sample of two books which they have in esteem In one of which is described the journey of Mahomet into Paradise by the conduct of the Angel Gabriel He entred say they into the first heaven being mounted upon Alborach an animal something bigger then an Asse and having a humane face where he observ'd that that first sphere was of fine silver and so thick as would require the space of five hundred years to be travell'd over by a foot-man There they found an Angel so high as it would be a thousand years journey from his head to his foot with seventy thousand other Angels each of which had seventy thousand heads every head seventy thousand hornes every horn seventy thousand knots and the distance of fourty years journey between one knot and another Also every head had seventy thousand faces in every of which there were seventy thousand mouths in every mouth seventy thousand tongues and every tongue spoke a thousand languages in which they praised God seventy thousand times a day you may imagine what a rare melodious noise they made In the second heaven which is made all of burnished gold they found a great multitude of Angels greater then the former amongst whom there was one whose se et touch'd the earth and his head the eighth Heaven 'T is strange no body ever saw him at least in one of the hemispheres But all these were but pygmies in comparison of another whom they met in the third Heaven who was so prodigiously great that if he should hold all the world in the palm of his hand he could nevertheless shut it Yet betwixt him and those which were in the fourth heaven it is hard to say whether there were any proportion unless some new Geometry be f und out to express it For every one of them had seventy pair of wings in each of which were seventy thousand pinions and every pinion was seventy thousand cubits long But as for him that they saw in the fifth sphere the Poets with their Briareus never understood any thing of him for what was he with his hundred armes to the Angel that opened the gate to them who had seven thousand arms at the end of each of which he moved seventy thousand hands In the other spheres they scarce found Angels of so enormous a stature but in the eighth sphere they beheld I cannot tell what huge Gyant so dreadful that he could have swollowed the Globe of the Earth Sea as easily as a little Pill Is the true History of Lucian and the Chronicles of Garagantua to be compared to this In the other Book is recited the discourse between a Musulman and a Jew who puts questions to him about the principal points of his doctrine and here it is that the spirit of error and lying displayes its full sails He saies God created a large Carton or Paper-volume and a pen of so rare a shape that it was five hundred days journey in length and four and twenty in breadth and that with this pen which ha's four and twenty points he writes continually in that Paper all that ever was is or shall be in the world That the light of the Sun and the Moon were equal in the beginning so that the day could not be well distinguish'd from the night but the Angel Gabriel as he flew by struck the Moon with the end of his wing and made it loose half its light Mention is made there of an Ox of so immense a greatness that between each of his horns whereof he hath fourty there is the distance of a thousand years journey And yet he says this Ox is under the Earth which the Hollanders sail round about in less then a year And least the Sea should complain of being destitute of Mahometical Monsters he assignes a fish to it whose head is in the East and tail in the West which carries on his back the whole earth seas and mountains a heavy load indeed but the air and darkness which he casts into his burden do not much increase his weight He makes Rats to have been produc'd in the Ark of the sneesing of a Hog and Cats of the sneesing of a Lyon perhaps by reason of the resemblance of their snout and muzzle And he saies that Seraphiel whosoever he be is not worth much enquiry
they would fall did not he infuse Light into them they would become darkness as well as we There remains therefore but one Expedient which is for God who alone is infinite to satisfie himself And here it is that humane Reason is confounded Let us nevertheless experience how far we are able to comprehend this abysse By the words above recited out of the Prophet Isaiah it appears that he that underwent the chastisement of our peace was to be man A man of sorrows saith he and acquainted with grief who must lay down his soul an offering for sin and this cannot be meant of any other Creature But had he had not express'd the same so manifestly the nature of the punishment which it behov'd him to suffer necessarily requires it For this is the wages of sin In the day thou eatest of the fruit of this Tree thou shalt dye the death that is thou shalt be under the subjection and condemnation of death both as to body and soul For as the Reward of Piety ha's respect to the whole complete man compos'd of body and soul so also ha's the retribution of sin which ha's corrupted both the one and the other And indeed he that was to break the Serpents head according to the word of God was to be the seed of the Woman If therefore the satisfaction which he was to render to God ought to be of an infinite value what person is able to render it though a man unless himself be of an infinite dignity And if such man be of an infinite dignity what remains but that he is also God since infiniteness of dignity cannot reside but in the divine Essence and Nature Certainly infiniteness of Dignity is as much incommunicable as infiniteness of Essence for it ha's its root and foundation in infiniteness of Essence and the one is as the natural reflexion or irradiation of the other So that as it is impossible to separate the light and strength of the Sun from the Sun it self or to imagine that something should possess that admirable splendor and vivificant virtue which is in the Sun and not fancy it to be the Sun it self So yea much more impossible is it to attribute a dignity beyond all limits to any whatsoever and not withall attribute to him an uncircumscrib'd and infinite essence And to this how seemingly repugnant soever to their reason do the Divine Scriptures manifestly astipulate out of which I shall for brevity's sake produce but some few irrefragable passages Thus speaks the Prophet Malachi in the 3. chap. of his Prophecy Behold I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the may before me and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his Temple even the messenger of the Covenant whom ye delight in Words which we have shewn above and the Jews grant are intended of the Messias alone the Messias who alone was promis'd to be a Redeemer to his Church Now I beseech you to whom was the Temple of Jerusalem dedicated but to the true God and can it then be meant of any simply a Creature that it was his Temple Certainly neither the Jealousie of the Lord could endure it nor the ancient piety of the Jews have permitted it the erection of Temples and dedication of Altars being not due but to the Deity alone as testimonies of the soverain honor we owe to his supreme nature and Majesty But David apertly terms him God in the 45. Psalm and will not have us put to the necessity of gathering it by consequence Thy throne O GOD is for ever and ever The scepter of thy kingdom is a right scepter Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness therefore O God thy God hath annointed thee with the oyl of gladness above thy fellows For I challenge any man to make out to whom else these words can sute but to the Messias Whose throne is this that must abide for ever and to eternity For that the words he uses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie a duration without end they know who understand any thing in this language Now there is no appearance that the Holy Spirit would give the name of God to a simple creature on this manner together with a Kingdom of everlasting duration So likewise in the 110. Psalm where David calls the Messias his Lord ther 's no question but he would have him understood to be something more besides a meer man For David was a King and depended of no other but God so that between the Divine Power and that which is truely Regal such as that of David was there can be no other intermediate And yet he stiles him with the same appellation subjects use to their soverain Prince In the 110. Psalm The Lord said unto my Lord sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool But least any further cavill at this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which sometimes in Scripture is given both to men and to Angels by reason of the greatness of their strength and eminence of power though it cannot be found attributed to one alone in particular either of Angels or men that are in power in the world Isaiah makes the commentary of it For unto us a child is born unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderfull Counsellor The mighty God The Father of Eternity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Prince of Peace Are these titles competent to a creature I know well that they assay to turn this passage to Hezekiah and refer all these titles to God except that of the Prince of Peace which they say is given by him to Hezekiah but it behoveth to have lost both shame and the use of common sense to believe them For in what other place of the Scripture where the Prophets mean to speak of God and some action purposed by him to be done do they accumulate so many titles Besides that to them that understand it the genius of the language contradicts them very evidently and their best Paraphrasts being overcome with the clearness of the truth refer it to the Messias But the Prophet Jeremy speaks with the greatest clearness possible in the 23. chap. of his Prophecy Behold the days come saith the Lord that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch and he shall raign as King and shall execute judgement and justice in the Earth In his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely and this is his Name whereby he shall be called THE LORD OVR RIGHTEOVSNESSE 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For here the Ineffable name of God is us'd which is as much incommunicable according to the opinion of the Jews themselves as his very essence And indeed the greatest part of his other Names seem to hold forth his Properties but this denotes his eternally permanent essence This is it by which he delights to call himself and glorifies himself in it 'T is true
bear a Son and shall call his name Immanuel And though this might have had its accomplishment after the time of the Prophets by the extraordinary birth of some infant for a sign of the deliverance which is promis'd here yet in the second place it ha's regard to the Messias as many things in the Prophets agree to the type in one respect which are referr'd to the thing signified by the type in another And in truth besides that all temporal deliverances have as shadows prefigur'd the great and spiritual one and this being very signal ought to prefigure the same in a more signal manner what kind of sign was here chosen to assure Achaz and his people of Deliverance For if the child of which he spoke was to be born after an ordinary manner certainly the sign was not great nor capable of suggesting much assurance If there ought to be something extraordinary in his birth the election of this sign among so many others is strange if it had no remoter aim Add hereunto that were all which the Jews alledge concerning the word Virgin true and that it should sometimes signifie a young woman because there is but little distance of time between these two conditions yet being its proper and most common signification denotes a Maid 't is a manner of expression marvellously strange to intimate that a young woman shall bear a child by saying A Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son So that according to this meaning should the Prophet have shewn with his finger the young woman he spoke of he had left Achaz and his people at as great a loss by this uncouth speech and the condition of the times was sutable to such biassed Prophecies Now Iesus was born of a Virgin in a miraculous manner Which the Jews now cannot handsomely deny whose Ancesters that condemn'd him never did him this outrage though they had rigorous laws against adulterers and means enough to prove that he was not born in marriage to which they might have had the acknowledgement of Ioseph and his Mother Micai had expresly designed the place of his birth chap. 5. But thou Bethlehem Ephratah though thou be little among the thousands of Iudah yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel whose goings forth have been from of old from everlasting And all the Prophets promised him of the seed of David in their Revelations Histories and Psalms As for the place the Evangelists declare it expresly and as for his blood they rehearse the race of Christ from father to son and from time to time up to David Iudah and even Adam himself And the Jews never called in question his being of the royal line Iacob prefixed the time of his coming at the subversion of all government and political power in Iudah and Malachi before the ruine of the second Temple Daniel after seventy weeks of years to be reckoned from the time of his Prophecy And the revelation of it was so clear and the tradition founded on it so constant that all the Jews waited for this time and several impostors rose up about this time to abuse their expectation Now Christ was born at the predetermin'd time when Herod possess'd himself of the Kingdom and extinguisht all that was left of the race of David in any political Power or probability of attempting to gain it a little before the destruction of the Temple and the total desolation of the Nation and the ruine of the Soverainty of Herod himself and at the time when the seventy weeks of the Prophet were expired It was foretold that he should be both a contemptible man in his external appearance and of a Life unblamable in his conversation For God calls him his just servant and Isaiah The despised and rejected of men And Iesus spent the space of about thirty years unknown of all not acknowledg'd even by his kindred with parents of abject condition although of royal descent The calamities of the house of David having reduc'd some of his posterity to these termes and his enemies reproacht to him as if he had been the Son of a Carpenter and a Carpenter himself As for the integrity of his Life his most capital Adversaries and calumny it self found nothing to reprehend in it Isaiah uttered these remarkable words in the 35. Chapter of his prophecy Behold your God shall come with vengeance even God with a recompence he will come and save you Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped Then shall the lame man leap us an hart and the tongue of the dumbe shall sing A promise too magnificent to receive accomplishment under any other then the Messias both in reference to healing the imperfections of the body and also in relation to the vices of the soul of which those are in a manner resemblances As for the first the Miracles which Jesus performed were so great in themselves so notorious in the sight of his enemies so consonant to this Prophecy that none can with any shadow of verity question that this Prophecy was accomplish'd in him For he gave sight to the blind he healed such as were impotent from the wombe he raised the dead opened the ears of the deafe loosned the tongue of the dumbe commanded the winds and the Sea and they obey'd him and surpassed as well in number as magnificence of his miracles all the Prophets that came before him 'T is true there are some Jews who accuse him of having done the same by Magick But then their Ancestors who condemn'd him would have bethought themselves to make this a part of his Indictment and insert it into the sentence of his condemnation For what law is more severe then theirs in constituting terrible penalties for Sorcerers and all such as addict themselves to Magick And nevertheless he did these wonders before their Eyes under the view and cognisance of all the world in the City and the Country in the house and the street and for the most part in the presence of the greatest multitudes Yet they never accus'd him of Sorcery Some Pharisees indeed whose eyes were perstring'd by the lustre of his deeds accus'd him of effecting them by Beelzebub the Prince of Devils But their own followers did not believe them and the Answer he gave them was perfectly convincing That his Doctrine wholly tending to the subversion of the Empire of Satan the Devil would never have confederated with and assisted him that went about thus to undermine the foundations of his Kingdom And truely what diabolical art or what sleight of Magick could be imploy'd in restoring life to the deceas'd and sight to those which never had any to heal persons desperately sick at a great distance from him and by his Word alone and to stop a continued flux of blood of twelve years onely by the touching of his garments to reinfuse decayed strength in a moment and rectifie
forsook his boat or his cottage If he abus'd them also and impos'd upon them by his fair language 't is yet a thing surpassing all admiration that this deceit should have rendred them of idiots and rusticks the most excellent persons of the world and incited them who knew nothing beyond mending nets to undertake the reformation of Religion and manners of all the people of the habitable world For even a rejecter of the Gospel cannot but judge it requisite for them to have been endow'd with extraordinary graces not adequate to Fishers and toll-gatherers that they might perswade men to embrace things of such a surprising nature and bring it so to pass that whereas Mahomet with all his Armies and they which have succeeded him have not been able to establish a firm Empire but in the space of some hundreds of years twelve mean and despicable men in half an Age drew the greatest part of the World to them and establisht an Empire over the consciences of men which continues unshaken after so many generations and furthermore which is observable above the rest they effected this by teaching men things repugnant to their natural inclinations and exhorting them to dye courageously for one that was crucifi'd whereas Mahomet publish'd a Law which flatters the body with carnal pleasures and likewise the mind by indulging it in its most violent passions But will they venture to give credit to what the Apostle Saint Paul writes concerning himself We have shewn above that it would be too great impudence to deny the Epistles which bear his name to be his too great perversity not to believe it I demand therefore whether when he relates the means by which he was converted to Christ he do's it according to truth or to promote the Illusion For if it were onely to play his part in the Comedy what advantage was it to him to abandon the honors and priviledges he enjoy'd in his own Nation and expose himself to hunger and thirst the hatred of his Countrymen and the sury of cruel beasts onely to deceive the world in favor of another Deceiver and he one that was crucifi'd for which he had no other reward to hope but at length to perish by the same sort of punishment If it was according to truth what power had a dead man to cause him to see such visions to speak to him from heaven and captivate all his thoughts as he speaks to his obedience Yet perhaps both the one and the others Christ and his Embassadors intended the glory of God and did all this in favour of true virtue by an honest zeal which clos'd their eyes against all dangers and was also seconded with some especial strength from God ennabling them to contemn all things in comparison of the advancing of their enterprise Let us therefore inquire what their piety and virtue may have been if the opinion of these people be admitted And first did they use this proceeding by the command of God No surely For God who is the God of truth would not have commanded them to teach a Lye or to make use of one to perswade some other thing that were true He is powerful to cause the truth to be embrac'd by other means and a greater injury cannot be done to him then to go about to gratifie him with what he hates Much less would God have commanded a mere man to call himself his eternal Son and God equal to him so to add blasphemy and sacriledge to a lye Indeed what appearance is there that whereas men ought to honor and venerate him as God alone he should not onely have favour'd by his connivance but enjoynd by his expres commandment that a mortal man should take upon him to be eternal God and draw the hearts and veneration of men to himself But if they had no such command what prodigious boldness would it have been for a man whose conscience was convinc'd he was no more to dare to call himself God And what a hideous impiety in those who seconded him in this design to preach him for such throughout the whole world These people make shew of commending Christ because he brought the minds of men to the knowledge of the purity of virtue and taught a more refin'd and exquisite holiness then any that ever was besides and yet they represent him to us the most notorious lyar and most impious blasphemer of men The wise men of old exclaimed against the folie of Alexander the great who suffer'd himself to be almost flatter'd into a belief that he was the Son of Jupiter though he liv'd in a dark Age and Country in which the stories of the lewdness of the Gods made it no incredible thing Bacchus and some others worse being in the number whose atchievements were short of his But these subtle people we deal with represent him to us for a modest person and worthy of imitation for his virtue whom they judge to have abused the world by so notorious an imposture Moreover what piety could Christ have had towards God For what an insolence was this to believe himself God if he was not so And if he did not believe it why did he not having no command to profess himself such tremble with horror as oft as he reflected on God and his own blasphemy Certainly if he had been such as these people describe him he had deserved far worse then the cross which he suffer'd But behold something yet more strange They say that among the great and glorious things which Christ did this excels the rest That he abolisht Idolatry and the rable of Gods which were ador'd by the Pagans and restor'd the knowledge and true worship of the Deity And yet if what they say be true he ha's establish'd the highest and most universal Idolatry that ever was seen in the world For almost all Nations have embrac'd the doctrine of Christ And amongst those Nations very few persons can be found but acknowledge him for God blessed for ever Nor is it material here to alledge that his intention was not to be acknowledg'd for such For why did he call himself God unless that men might believe it Wherefore does he complain of the incredulity of the Jews when they will not acknowledge him for such but accuse him of blasphemy And how would he have men believe him God without adoring him since it is as much sin not to adore him whom we believe to be God as to adore him whom we esteem not to be so Besides he never repell'd any that adress'd to him under that notion and his Apostles universally own it Was it not therefore by his commandment Or if it were not by his express commandment ought not he to have redress'd so dangerous a mistake One thing there is which I would understand certainly whether they against whom I dispute give any credit to the Books which we call the Gospel For what ever good outside they wear I doubt they believe them not
Faith of Christ against all the superstitions of the world And though some knot may be met with here or there by the way yet what man is there who addicting himself to the study of a science is deterr'd from it by one or two difficulties he finds in it How often ha's such a one vex'd his brains for the understanding of Aristotle and how many days and nights ha's he spent in the reading of his writings dispairing of being ever able perfectly to understand them who having scarce once in his life cast his Eyes upon the Epistles of Saint Paul complains of the contexture of his ratiocination and the obscurity of his doctrines And yet the affair with the Philosopher was perhaps no more then to know whether Demonstration from the Effect deserves the title of Demonstration as well as that which is made from the Cause or whether according to the Peripatetick doctrine Universals have a subsistence out of our Intellect or what reasons justifie the opinion of ranking Privation among Principles of things empty questions and of no importance in reference to Life whereas in the writings of the Apostle the argument is concerning the glory of God and the salvation of our souls But the truth is where the business is to render to God the service which we owe him the most even ways seem rugged to us but where 't is to follow our fancies all precipices become easily superable and we level mountains Had these people once understood Religion and well conceived the idea of it they would exalt the mercy of God without comparison more then they do and withal have a greater dread of his justice and where he ha's reveal'd his celestial truths they would not dare to bring a Lye into competition where he ha's manifested his will they would not presume to prefer their own before it where he ha's described the form of Religion he would have us to follow with his own hand they would not offer to equal with it either humane imaginations or inventions of Devils where he hath sworn that As he lives he will not give his glory to another and that he will bring vengeance upon his enemies by drenching his arrows in their blood they would not abuse his mercy to impiety nor sleep in so profound a supinity but would learn from those who have most of all extoll'd his compassions that 't is a terrible thing to fall into his hands The great judgements wherewith he hath chastis'd all Nations by reason of their Idolatries the dreadful calamities which he brought on his beloved People for having imitated the same the unparallel'd desolation of the City of Jerusalem and the visible Curse which pursues that miserable Nation every where for having rejected the Gospel the breaking to pieces of the Roman Empire for having persecuted it and the judgements which lie pours down from time to time upon all those who provoke him would be sufficient documents to them that though his patience be marvellous yet he is terrible in revenging contempt towards himself and the truth revealed by him As for what is alledged concerning the peace and union of minds inflam'd with so great passion through the occasion of Religion some against others and of the tranquillity of States put in combustion by differences in sacred matters did we see no other means to obtain the same but those of impiety it were more eligible to be at perpetual jars and enmities Did Christ who knew well that he came to bring fire and sword into the world by the preaching the Gospel desist therefore from preaching it or command his Apostles to conform themselves to all professions according to occasion for fear of exciting seditions and tumults No surely Should the world perish by combustions his truth must be maintained But by the grace of God we are not reduc'd to those terms To turbulent and inconsiderate minds Religion is often a pretext of commotions to violent and bloody souls the same Religion is sometimes an incitement to murders and massacres But wise and politick Princes who give not themselves up to their own passion or to the furious zeal of others have well understood how notwithstanding the diversity of professions to contain their people within the compass of duty towards them and concord together and experience hath attested that when they will employ their prudence and authority therein as they ought they are equally well served by opposite Parties So that the zeal of Religion being moderated by the laws of reason and humanity does not so transport mens minds but that they may live peaceable together under one Government although in contrary profession of Religion Besides the two Societies Civil and Religious have their rights and their laws distinct and the knowledge of the true God do's not lead to the troubling or subverting of humane Commonwealths no more then ardency we ought to have for his glory ought to render men murderers and barbarians But what tends all this discourse to For certainly these people who speak so much of the publick peace have no great care for it t is their own peace they are solicitous of And because their God is the grandeur pleasure and contentment of the world they hate the profession which crosses thâ—ir designs and lays obstacles before them which hinders them from mounting whether they aspire And being 't is an infamous thing to be accounted a despiser of the Deity and they which declare freely that Religion is not worthy to be prefer'd before the things of the world are ordinarily lookt upon as monsters by others they shelter themselvs under the fair appearence of the desire of peace and seek masks to disguise so uncomely an aspect But he that should behold the bottom of their hearts and they cannot so well hide themselves but they may be discerned cross their veil would find there the contempt of God and of his service which shame hinders them from laying open to the world In Christendom whoever is neither a Catholick nor Reformed he must of necessity be an Atheist since he cannot be either Pagan or Jew or Mahometan unless he have lost common sense together with all gust of piety And indeed for the most part either their lives or discourses convince them to be such For if there be any such person that lives in a measure honestly in the sight of the world yet he speaks disdainfully of Religion and looks upon all those as besotted who are lovers of the same Others swim in all sorts of pleasure and are so abandon'd to dissoluteness that they cause shame to mankind and horror to any that considers them These Truth accounts it a glory to have her enemies The former she cares for so much the less as they are much more rare I pray God restore them to a better mind And to him who hath afforded us the grace to bring this small work to its conclusion be honor and glory to all eternity Amen FINIS