satisfaction It is that which satisfies and never satiates which the deeper it is look'd into pleaseth the more as containing new and hid Treasures by the opening whereof there always springs up in the mind fresh pleasure and new desire Whereas Humane Writings like all humane things cloy by their continuance and we can scarce read them the second time without irksomeness and oftentimes not without nauseating those fine things that please so wonderfully at the first reading The Sum of all is this we busie our selves in the search of Knowledge we tire out our Thoughts and wast our Spirits in this pursuit and afterwards flatter our selves with mighty Acquirements and fill the World with Volumes of our Discoveries Whereas would we take as much pains in discovering our Weakness and Defects as we spend time in Oftentation of our Knowledge we might with half the time and pains see enough to show us our Ignorance and might thereby learn truer Wisdom We frame to our selves New Theories of the World and pretend to measure the Heavens by our Mathematical Skill that is Indefinite Space by a Compass or Span whilst we know little of the Earth we tread on and every thing puzzles us that we meet with there We live upon the Earth and most Men think they rest upon it and yet it is a very difficult Question in Philosophy whether the Earth rests or moves and is it not very wonderful that we should be such strangers to the place of our Abode as to know nothing whether we rest there or travel a daily Circuit of some thousand Miles We rack our Inventions to find out Natural Reasons for a Deluge of Waters by fetching down Comets from above and cracking the Cortex of the Earth to furnish out sufficient stores for that purpose and yet from the Convexity of the Waters it is hard to account in the Course of Nature why there should not bea Deluge every day And perhaps Providence is the surest Bar that has set Bounds to the Waters which they shall not pass We are not only puzzled by things without us but we are strangers to our own Make and Frame for tho' we are convinced that we consist of Soul and Body yet no Man hitherto has sufficiently described the Union of these two or has been able to explain how Thought should move Matter Or how Matter should act upon Thought Nay the most Minute things in Nature if duly considered carry with them the greatest wonder and perplex us as much as things of greater bulk and show And yet we who know so little in the smallest matters talk of nothing less than New Theories of the World and vast Fields of Knowledge busying our selves in Natural Enquiries and flattering our selves with the wonderful Discoveries and mighty Improvements that have been made in Humane Learning a great part of which are purely imaginary and at the same time neglecting the only true and solid and satisfactory Knowledge Things that are obscure and intricate we pursue with eagerness whilst Divine Truths are usually disregarded only because they are easie and common Or if there be some of an higher nature they shall possibly be rejected because they are above or seemingly contrary to Reason whilst we admit several other things without scruple which are not reconcil able with Revelation tho Revealed Truths be certainly Divine and the other either no Truths at all or at the best only Humane This sort of Conduct is very preposterous for after all true Wisdom and satisfactory Knowledge is only to be had from Revelation and as to other Truths which are to be collected from Sense and Reason our Ignorance of them will always be so much greater than our Knowledge as there are a thousand things we are ignorant of to one thing that we throughly know APPENDIX WHilst I have been free in censuring others faults I ought to be ready to acknowledge my own I never doubted but I was as subject to them as other men tho upon a serious review of my Book I have not yet met with many and such as I thought material I have Corrected The great Objection that has been made by my Friends is rather a Defect than a Fault I am told by them my Conclusion is too Short and that I ought to have enlarg'd upon the necessity of Revelation This I am sensible of and freely own the Charge but have neither time nor opportunity now to redress it and besides the Argument has been so well and largely treated of by other Hands that little new can be said upon the Subject On the other side I have receiv'd Letters and Papers from several Hands which flatter me with an opinion that I have done somewhat well some of which it would have been an advantage both to my self and Book to have publish'd But I deny my self herein only make this small but grateful acknowledgment to the Worthy Persons from whom they came FINIS AN Answer to the Dissenters Pleas for Separation or an Abridgment of the London Cases wherein the Substance of those Books is digested into one short and plain Discourse By Tho. Bennet M. A. and Fellow of St. John's College in Cambrige Printed for A. Bosvile at the Sign of the Dial against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street Price 4 s.
Revelation God may have so order'd in his Wise Providence thereby to keep us in a constant dependance upon himself and under a necessity of consulting him in his Word which since Profane Men treat so neglectfully already they would have it in greater Contempt and it would be much more vile in their Eyes did they find any thing within them equally perfect which might guide them in their Course and bring them to the Haven where they would be But this since they do not meet with it ought to wean them from an opinion of themselves and incline them to seek out satisfaction somewhere else and to take shelter where it may be found I have said nothing in this whole Discourse nor can I repeat it too often with design to discredit humane Learning I am neither of their mind p Anabaptists in Germany who were for burning all Books except their Bibles nor of that Learned Man's opinion who thought the Principles of all Arts and Sciences might be borrow'd from that Store-house I would willingly put a just Value upon the one without depressing the other But where Men lash out the other way and take the liberty to exalt Learning to the prejudice of Religion and to oppose shallow Reason to Revelation it is then time and every Man's business to endeavour to keep it under at least to prevent its aspiring by not suffering it to pass its due Bounds Our Reason is a proper Guide in our Enquiries and is to be follow'd where it keeps within its Sphere but shining dimly it must borrow Rays from the Fountain of Light and must always act subordinately to Revelation Whenever it crosseth that it is out of its Sphere and indeed contradicts its own Light for nothing is more reasonable than to believe a Revelation as being grounded upon God's Veracity without which even Reason it self will be often doubting That whatever God who is Truth it self reveals is true is as sure and evident a Proposition as any we can think of It is certain in its Ground and evident in its Connexion and needs no long Consequences to make it out whereas most of our rational deductions are often both weakly bottom'd and depending upon a long train of Consequences which are to be spun from one another their strength is often lost and the thread broken before we come at the Conclusion And tho' it be commonly objected that there are as many differences concerning Divine Truths as about those of Nature yet I think there needs nothing further be said to this but that Men would approach Divine Truths with the same dispositions that are requir'd by Philosophers to the reading of their Writings and the Objection would soon fall to the ground The best Philosophers require that in reading their Books we should lay aside partiality to a Party all passion and other prejudice and let Men only approach the Scriptures with the same preparations of Mind and with these and ordinary Grace that is never wanting to those that seek it I dare be confident they will have no reason to complain of Obscurity or Ambiguity in those Sacred Writings With these Helps that are had by asking the weakest and most ordinary Capacity shall see enough and shall not stand in need of deep Reach or Penetration which are necessary to the understanding of Natural Truths God who would have all Men happy has likewise made them all so far wise and has so order'd that the most important Truths should be the most easie and common and if it can be no objection that to the understanding of them we must make use of ordinary means and must come prepar'd with suitable dispositions This is what is necessary in all other things for every thing is best understood by the same Spirit by which it is writ God has gone yet farther with us Necessary Truths are not only the most common but he has likewise made them the most convincing and has given them a power that is not easily resisted Rational Arguments however convincing they may seem are usually repell'd by Reason and it is hard to convince a Man by such methods that is equally Master of Reason with our selves whereas Divine Truths make their own way they act upon us with a secret Power and Press the mind with an almost irresistible Strength and do not only perswade but almost force an assent The first only act like Light the other strike down and pierce us through like Lightning We have as remarkable a passage to this purpose q Sozoâ—â— Hist. l. 1 c. 18. Rufin Hist. l. 1. c. 3. as most in Ecclesiastical Story which tho' well attested yet were it only a Parable the Moral of it might be of good use Upon the Convening of the first General Council at Nice and the appearing of the Christian Bishops there several of the Heathen Philosophers offer'd themselves among the Sons of God intending to signalize themselves upon so great an occasion by attacking the Faith in its most Eminent Professors and by endeavouring to overthrow it by Philosophy and Reason To this End several Conferences were held upon the Principles of Reason by the most noted Men of either Party in which one of the Philosophers more forward than the rest begun to grow Insolent upon a suppos'd advantage and must needs Triumph before Victory An aged Bishop took fire at this one who had been a Confessor in the late Persecution and was more noted for his Faith than Learning Philosophy he had none but encounters his Adversary in a new manner in the name of Jesus and by the word of God and with a few plain Weapons drawn from thence he humbles the Pride of this arrogant Philosopher and straitway leads him Captive to the Font All the Reply our Philosopher had left him was that while he was encountred by Philosophy and humane Learning he defended himself the same way but being attack'd by higher Reasons it was necessary for him to yield himself up to the power of God Such is the Force of that Word which simple vain Men so much contemn What then must we do Are we to give our selves up to this Word and lay aside all humane Learning I am far from thinking so and have already caution'd against any such Wild and Anabaptistical Conceit these two may well consist Learning is of good use in explaining this Word and the Word serves very well to lessen our opinion of humane Learning the former may be serviceable whilst it acts ministerially and in subservience to the latter but being only a Hand-maid to Religion whenever it usurps upon that it is to be kept down and taught its Duty it is still only humane Learning that is very weak and very defective and after all the great things that can he said of it and the uses that may be assigned it it must after all be confess'd that our Bible is our best Book and the only Book that can afford any true and solid
sometimes darken one part of the Moons Body and sometimes another whereas now the dark and Luminous parts are always the same So that as far as I can see we know little more of the Moon than that it is an Opake and solid Body and so much we were pretty well assur'd of before Telescopes came in fashion No doubt Telescopes are a noble Invention and the discoveries that have been made by them are very considerable but as to the discovering thereby the Nature and Substance of Heavenly Bodies I look upon it as utterly impossible And yet this is the modish way of framing new Worlds we first observe Seas and Rivers in the Moon and if such be there there must be Plants that they water and if Plants there must be likewise Animals to feed upon them and all these are design'd for the service of Men. The reason is easily carry'd further for if the Moon be a World by parity of Reason so must the other Planets be also and if all the visible Planets are carried about in the Vortex of the Sun which is no better than the other Stars no doubt the other fix'd Stars have their attending Planets as well as the Sun and so we have a Plurality of Worlds with a witness but this chain of reasoning is easily broken by breaking its first Link for if there be no Waters in the Moon in consequence of that neither are there any Plants or Animals or Men and if none of these be there by parity of reason neither are there any in the other Planets and so the whole Chain falls to pieces These World-mongers are always objecting the improbability of God's framing so many vast and glorious Bodies only for the sake of this Earth so inconsiderable a portion of the whole Amongst the rest Hugeniâ—s who in one place makes this Objection in another part of his Book r P. 33. as if he had forgot himself thinks it enough to say That God rais'd this mighty Frame of things that he might contemplate and delight himself thereby and were there no other reason we ought to acquiesce in this But they that argue thus seem to measure things by their Bulk which is a false way of reasoning there is more Beauty and Contrivance in the Structure of a humane Body than there is in the Glorious Body of the Sun and more perfection in one rational immaterial Soul than in the whole Mass of Matter be it never so bulky There cannot then be any absurdity in saying that all things were created for the sake of this inferior World and the Inhabitants thereof and they that have such mean thoughts of it seem not to have consider'd who it was that died to redeem it Let them measure the World by that Standard and they cannot undervalue it any longer without some reproach to infinite Wisdom CHAP. IX Of Metaphysics MEtaphysics having so great an affinity with Logic and being so interwoven with the learning of the Scholes I need say less of them in this place They are stil'd by Aristotle Natural Theology from whence we may be enabled to take some measures of them for Natural Theology is in it self a poor weak thing and Reason unassisted has not been able to carry the clearest Philosophers very far in their pursuit after Divine Matters We have seen this already in practical Truths and the Reason lies stronger in such as are Speculative And if we see so dimly in physical matters which are nearer our Sense and in a manner expos'd to view how much more must we be bewildred in our search after Spiritual abstracted Truths in the consideration of Universals and of things of a Transcendental Nature such as fall properly under the consideration of Metaphysics For tho Metaphsiycal Truths may be certain enough in their own nature yet they are not usually so to us but being abstruse things and lying deep and remote from Sense it is not every one that is capable of understanding them and there are yet fewer that understand their true use They are usually under the Conduct of subtle Men and these nice Professors instead of resolving doubts have spun out new difficulties and fram'd Labyrinths out of which they have scarce been able to disentangle themselves So that Metaphysics which were at first only Natural Theology are now become the most artificial thing in the World One need only dip into any System to see how these Men are plung'd in setting out for whereas there are two things of principal consideration in Metaphysical Knowledge its Object and Affections and whereas Philosophers are pretty well agreed about the Object of other Sciences as that Quantity is the Object of Mathematics and matter of Physics and so of the rest the Metaphysicians have not come to any tolerable agreement about the Object of this Science or Sapience or whatever you will call it Suarez produceth six different opinions and himself brings the seventh which is his own And as to its Affections they are again at a plunge to find out Affections different from Being which seems to comprehend every thing for if the Affections and Subject are the same their Demonstrations are Indentical and prove nothing But these are dry Considerations What Aristotle has done upon this Subject is much short of a perfect Work and is rather an Essay than a Compleat Treatise for tho' he has left fourteen Books upon the Subject yet they are loose and indigested which was not usual with Aristotle where he has given his last hand and the two last are so Foreign to his design and so unsuitable to the place they stand in that some have thought fit either to strike them out of his Works or to place them in a new order And indeed his twelfth Book should seem to be his last which concludes with his Notion of God and Spiritual Beings though none of his Books are Divine enough to give a true account of Natural Theology It is plain he wants light in these matters and neither knows where to fix nor what to determine which is one reason of the obscurity of his Books of Metaphysics for no Man can write clearer than he thinks And therefore his Commentators have often tug'd in vain in labouring to make out a meaning where possibly the Author himself was at a loss If any Man could have understood him Avicen had the best plea who was as subtle a Philosopher and study'd him as much as perhaps any Man ever did and yet after he had read his Metaphysics forty times over and had them all by heart which I will venture to say is more than ever any Man will do again he was forc'd to lay them aside as unintelligible s V. vit Avicen p. 3. In one thing I must do him right that whereas he has been represented as too Positive and Dogmatical in his opinions it is the fault of his Followers not his He begins these Books in a very different manner His
to be blam'd they would have been more excusable had they explain'd them less and had not trusted too much to rational helps in explaining things that are not the Objects of our Understanding but tho' Mysteries are not to be explain'd other things in Religion are clear enough and would continue so were they not clouded and involv'd by too much Art I do not charge this as a general fault tho' it be too common some of the Schoolmen are less obnoxious to this charge and generally the first are least Obscure and Lombard and Aquinas the two Authors of the Sentences and Sums have been more plain than many of those that have writ upon them whose Comments have often helpt to obscure the Text. It is an odd Commendation that is given by Cardan k De Subtil l. 16. to one of our Countrymen one of the most subtle among the Doctors that only one of his Arguments was enough to puzzle all Posterity and that when he grew old hâ— wept because he could not understand his own Books Men that write De Subtilitate must be allow'd to say what they please but those of ordinary Capacities would have thought it a greater Character that our Doctor had well explain'd that one Argument and had writ so that he might have been understood There are great Charms in being esteemed subtle and it is an argument hereof that Cardan commends this Author for his subtilty whom in all probablity he had never seen otherwise he could not so foully have mistaken his name as he does l Richard al. Raymund Suiseth Venet. 1520. ap Caâ—dan Iohan. Suiisset and as some others have done that have spoke of this Author who is very rare He is indeed profoundly obscure tho' I must confess I have only lookt into him so far as to observe his way of â—riting which is really such as if he never meant to be understood Others have been faulty enough in this way and it were no hard task to show it in many of the rest but having mentioned this Man I can say nothing worse against obscurity 5. Rough Language and Barbarousness of Expression that were made so great Objections upon the reviving of Learning and are yet so with Polite Men whose ears can bear nothing without ornament and smoothness shall be no great faults with me and in abstruse Subjects may be born with and I should digest Caramuel's new Scholastic Dialect provided it conduced to promote knowledge However a bad Dress and ill Meen are Blemishes upon knowledge tho' they detract nothing from its strength and ought to be some mortification to those Men who are apt to ver-value themselves upon imaginary Perfection Of all Men they are farthest from it and after so many Imperfections as have been charg'd upon them it was surprising to me to meet with one of the laâ—t Commentators upon the Sum m Bapt. Gonet Clyp Theolog. Par. 1669. writing as if he had liv'd before Luther In a Prefatory Discourse entitl'd Commendatio Doctrinae D. Thomae he endeavours to prove in so many several Chapters that St. Thomas had writ his Books not without special infusion of God Almighty Chap. 1. That in writing them he receiv'd many things by Revelation Chap. 2. That all he writ was without any Error Chap. 4. That Christ had given Testimony to his Writings Chap. 6. And to show of how near the same Authority St. Thomas's Sum is to the Holy Scriptures he assures us That as in the first General Councils it was usual to have the Holy Bible laid open upon the Altar as the Rule of their proceedings so in the last General Council which with them is the Council of Trent St. Thomas's Sum was plac'd with the Bible upon the same Altar as another Inferior Rule of Christian Doctrine Chap. 8. which is very agreeable to what has been writ by a Jesuit n Tauner Quaest. 1. Dub. 2. upon the same Subject That all the General Councils that have been held since St. Thomas liv'd have taken the opinions they defin'd from his Doctrine It were needless after this to cite the Elogy of another Jesuit o Petr. â—abbe ap Gonet ibid. where St. Thomas is styl'd an Angel and that as he learnt many things from the Angels so he taught Angels some things That St. Thomas had said what St. Paul was not suffer'd to utter That he speaks of God as if he had seen him and of Christ as if he had been his voice and more to this effect When such bold expressions are openly vented it is time to look about us and it concerns every Man to endeavour to give a check to such daring assertions I am far from detracting either from the Knowledge or Holiness of St. Thomas which doubtless were both extraordinary but when a Mortal Man is equall'd to the Angels in Heaven and such Elogies given him as if he were capable of hearing he must blush to receive it is justice to him to rescue him from false and undue Praises To do him Right he has improv'd natural Reason to an uncommon height and many of those proofs of a God and Providence and Natural Religion that have been advanced of late as new Arguments with so much applause have been borrow'd from him or other Schoolmen and are only not his by being put in a new Dress and sometimes in a worse method Had it been his fortune to have lived in a happier Age under better opportunities and with those helps that we now enjoy he must have made a greater Genius than many of those who are now look'd upon with wonder CHAP. XIX Conclusion AND now having gone through the several sorts of Learning and observ'd the various defects and oft-times uncertainties which they are subject to The Conclusion is obvious That since no compleat satisfaction is to be met with from them we are to seek for it somewhere else if happily it may be found It may be found but not in our own powers or by our own strength and that which our most exalted Reason under all its improvements cannot yield us is only to be had from Revelation It is there we may securely rest after the Mind has try'd all other ways and methods of Knowledge and has tir'd it self with fruitless Enquiries It is with the Mind as with the Will and Appetites for as after we have try'd a thousand Pleasures and turn'd from one Enjoyment to another we find no rest to our Desires till we at last fix them upon the Soveraign Good So in pursuit of Knowledge we meet with no tolerable satisfaction to our Minds till after we are wearied with tracing other methods we turn them at last upon the one supreme and unerring truth And were there no other use of humane Learning there is at least this in it That by its many defects it brings the Mind to a sense of its own weakness and makes it more readily and with greater willingness submit to