consequently that the line of two foot has a multitude of parts greater than infinite Which Reasonings may let us see that we may be reduced either to reject Inferences legitimately drawn from manifest or granted Truths or to admit conclusions that appear absurd if we will have all the common Rules whereby we judge of other things to be applicable to Infinites And now Gentlemen having acquainted you with what sorts of things seem to be above Reason I must to prevent mistakes desire you to take along with you this Advertisement That though the nobleness and difficulty of so uncultivated a Subject inclined me to offer something towards the elucidating of it by sorting those things into three kinds yet I shall not and need not in this Conference insist on them severally or lay any stress on this partition For though I have above intimated that a Proposition may speak of somewhat that is supra-intellectual or else contain somewhat which we cannot conceive how it may be true or lastly teach us somewhat for a truth that we cannot reconcile with some other thing that we are convinced is true yet if but any one of these have true Instances belonging to it That may suffice for my main purpose in this place where I need only shew in general that there may be things that surpassour Reason at least so far that they are not to be judged of by the same measures and rules by which men are wont to judge of ordinary things for which reason I shall often give them one common name calling them Priviledg'd Things Euge. Methinks that to manifest the Imperfections of our Reason in reference to what you call Priviledg'd Things you need not have recourse to the unfathomable Abysses of the Divine Nature since for ought I know Pyrocles as well as I may be non-plus'd by an instance that came into my mind de Compositione continui Timoth. Since Sophronius has not thought fit to give us any of the Arguments of the contending party's I shall be glad to know what difficulty occurr'd to you Euge. Suppose a great Circle divided into its three hundred and sixty degrees and suppose that as great a number as you please or can conceive of strait lines be drawn from the several designable parts of some one of these degrees to the Centre 't is manifest that the degrees being equal as many lines may be drawn from any and so from every one of the others as from that degree which was pitched upon Then suppose a Circular Arch equal to the assumed degree to be further bent into the circumference of a little circle having the same Centre with a great one it follows from the nature of a Circle and has been geometrically demonstrated that the semi-diameters of a Circle how many soever they be can no where touch one another but in the Centre Whence 't is evident that all the lines that are drawn from the circumference to the Centre of the greater Circle must pass by differing points of the circumference of the smaller for else they would touch one another before they arrive at the Centre and consequently that as many lines soever as can even mentally be drawn from the several points of the circumference of the great Circle to the common Centre of both Circles must all pass through different points of the little Circle and thereby divide it into as many parts proportionably smaller as the greater Circle is divided into So that here the circumference of the lesser Circle presents us with a curve line which was not possibly divisible into more parts than an Arch of one degree or the three hundred and sixtieth part of the Circumference of the greater Circle and yet without being lengthned becomes divisible into as many parts as the whole circumference of the same greater Circle And though we should suppose the circumference of the internal Circle not to exceed one inch and that of the exterior Circle to exceed the circumference of the Terrestrial Globe or even of the Firmament it self yet still the demonstration would hold and all the lines drawn from this vast Circle would find distinct points in the lesser to pass through to their common Centre Timoth. Though I will not pretend to confirm what Sophronius has been proving by adding Arguments a priori yet I shall venture to say that I think it very agreeable both to the nature of God and to that of man that what he has endeavoured to prove true should be so for we men mistake and flatter Humane Nature too much when we think our faculties of Understanding so unlimited both in point of capacity and of extent and so free and unprepossest as many Philosophers seem to suppose For whatever our self-love may incline us to imagine we are really but created and finite Beings and that probably of none of the highest orâ—ders of intellectual Creatures and we come into the world but such as it pleased the Almighty and most free Author of our Nature to make us And from this dependency and limitedness of our Natures it follows not only that we may be for I now dispute not whether we are born with certain congenit Notions and Impressions and Appetites or Tendencies of Mind but also that the means or measures which are furnished us to employ in the searching or judging of Truth are but such as are proportionable to Gods designs in creating us and therefore may probably be supposed not to be capable of reaching to all kinds or if you please of Truths many of which may be unnecessary for us to know here and some may be reserved partly to make us sensible of the imperfections of our Natures and partly to make us aspire to that condition wherein our faculties shall be much enlarged and heightned It seems not therefore unreasonable to think both that God has made our faculties so limited that in our present mortal condition there should be some Objects beyond the comprehension of our Intellects that is that some of his creatures should not be able perfectly to understand some others yet that he has given us light enough to perceive that we cannot attain to a clear and full knowledge of them Pyrocl. I think Sophronius that I now understand what you mean by Things above reason or as you not unfitly stiled them priviledged things But I presume you need not be told that to explain the sence of a Proposition and to make out the truth of it unless in common Notions or things evident by their own light are always two things and oftentimes two very distant ones Sophr. I need not scruple Pyrocles to grant the truth of what you say but I must not so easily admit your application of it for among the examples I have been proposing there are some at least that do not only declare what I mean by things above reason but are instances and consequently may be proofs that such things there are And to those I could
her self unable to frame conceptions of them fit to be acquiesc'd in and this sort of Objects I do upon that account call inconceivable or on some occasions supra-intellectual But when by attentively considering the attributes and operations of things we sometimes find that a thing hath some property belonging to it or doth perform somewhat which by reflecting on the beings and ways of working that we know already we cannot discern to be reducible to them or derivable from them we then conclude this property or this operation to be inexplicable that is such as that it cannot so much as in a general way be intelligibly accounted for and this makes the second sort of our things above Reason But this is not all for the Rational Soul that is already furnished with innate or at least primitive Idaeas and Rules of true and false when she comes to examine certain things and make successive inferences about them she finds sometimes to her wonder as well as trouble that she cannot avoid admitting some consequences as true good which she is not able to reconcile to some other manifest Truth or acknowledged Proposition And whereas other Truths are so harmonious that there is no disagreement between any two of them the Heteroclite Truths I speak of appear not symmetrical with the rest of the body of Truths and we see not how we can at once embrace these and the rest without admitting that grand absurdity which subverts the very foundation of our reasonings That Contradictories may both be true As in the controversie about the endless divisibility of a strait line since 't is manifest that a line of three foot for instance is thrice as long as a line of one foot so that the shorter line is but the third part of the longer it would follow that a part of a line may contain as many parts as a whole since each of them is divisible into infinite parts which seems repugnant to common sence and to contradict one of those common Notions in Euclid whereon Geometry it self is built Upon which account I have ventured to call this third sort of things above Reason Asymmetrical or Unsociable of which eminent instances are afforded us by those controversies such as that of the compositio continui wherein which side soever of the question you take you will be unable directly and truly to answer the objections that may be urged to show that you contradict some primitive or some other acknowledged truth These Eugenius are some of the considerations by which I have been induced to distinguish the things that to me seem to over-match our Reason into three kinds For of those things I have stil'd Unconceivable our Idaeas are but such as a moderate attention suffices to make the mind sensible that she wants either light or extent enough to have a clear and full comprehension of them And those things that I have called Inexplicable are those which we cannot perceive to de upon the Idaeas we are furnished with and to resemble in their manner of working any of the Agents whose nature we are acquainted with And lastly those things which I have named Unsociable are such as have Notions belonging to them or have conclusions deducible from them that are for ought we can discern either incongruous to our primitive Idaeas or when they are driven home inconsistent with the manifest Rules we are furnished with to judge of True and False Eug. I presume Sophronius that by sorting things above Reason into three kinds you do not intend to deny but that 't is possible one object may in differing regards be referred to more than one of these sorts Sophr. You apprehend me very right Eugenius and the truth of what you say may sufficiently appear in that noblest of Objects God Timoth. We owe so much to God the most perfect of Beings not only for other blessings but for those very Intellects that enable us to contemplate him that I shall be very glad to learn any thing that may increase my wonder and veneration for an Object to whom I can never pay enough of either Sophr. You speak like your self Timotheus and I wish I were as able as I ought to be willing to satisfie your desire But since we are now discoursing like Philosophers not Divines I shall proceed to speak of that gloriousest of Objects But as his Nature or some of his Attributes afford me instances to the purpose for which I presum'd to mention him When God therefore made the World out of nothing or if Pyrocles will not admit the Creation when he discerns the secretest thoughts and intentions of the Mind when he unites an immaterial Spirit to a humane Body and maintains perhaps for very many years that unparallel'd union with all the wonderful conditions he has annex'd to it when I say he doth these and many other things that I must not now stay to mention he supplies us with instances of things that are Inexplicable For such operations are not reducible to any of the ways of working known to us since our own Minds can but modify themselves by divers manners of thinking and as for things without us all that one body can do to another by acting on it is to communicate local motion to it and thereby produce in it the natural consequences of such motion in all which there is no action like any of those I just now ascrib'd to God And if we consider that the praescience of those future events that we call contingent being a perfection is not to be denyed to God who is by all acknowledged the perfectest of Beings and that yet the greatest Wits that have laboured to reconcile this infallible praecognition with the liberty of mans will have been reduced to maintain some thing or other that thwarts some acknowledged truth or dictate of Reason If we duly consider this I say it will afford us an instance of truths whose consistency and whose symmetry with the body of other truths our Reason cannot discern and which therefore ought to be referred to that sort of things above Reason that I call Unsociable And now I come to the third sort of these things which is that I formerly mention'd first under the name of Incomprehensible or supra-intellectual which Title whether or no it belongs to any other Object which I will not now enquire doth certainly belong to God whose Nature comprehending all perfections in their utmost possible degrees is not like to be comprehensible by our minds who altogether want divers of those perfections and have but moderate measures not to call them shadows of the rest We are indeed born with or at least have a power and divers occasions to frame an Idaea of a Being infinitely perfect and by this Idaea we may sufficiently discriminate the Original of it God from all other Objects whatsoever But then when we come to consider attentively minutely what is contained in the notion of Omnipotence Omniscience
general may be if I may so speak but gradual notions of truth and but limited and respective not absolute and universal And here give me leave as a farther consideration to take notice to you that though perfect Syllogism be counted the best and most regular forms that our Ratiocinations can assume yet even the laws of these are grounded on the doctrine of Proportions For even between things equal there may be a proportion namely that of equality upon which ground I suppose it is that Mathematical Demonstrations have been publickly proposed of the grand Syllogistical Rules And in consequence of this I shall add that Geometricians will tell you that there is no proportion betwixt a finite line and an infinite because the former can never be so often taken as to exceed the latter which acâ—cording to Euclid's definition of Proportion it should be capable to do Of which Premises the use I would make is to perswade you that since the understanding operates but by the Notions and Truths 't is furnished with and these are its instruments by proportion to which it takes measures and makes judgments of other things these Instruments may be too disproportionate to some Objects to be securely employed to determine divers particulars about them So the eye being an instrument which the understanding employs to estimate distances we cannot by that safely take the bredth of the Ocean because our sight cannot reach far enough to discover how far so vast an object extends it self And not only the common instruments of Surveyors that would serve to measure the height of an house or a steeple or even a Mountain cannot enable them to take the distance of the Moon but when Astronomers do by supposition take a chain that reaches to the Centre of the Earth and therefore is by the Moderns judged to be near four thousand miles long even then I say though by the help of this and the Parallaxes they may tolerably well measure the distance of some of the neerer Planets especially the Moonâ— yet with all their great industryâ— they cannot by the same way oâ— perhaps any other yet known witâ— any thing tolerable acurateness measure the distance of the fixed Stars the Semidiameter of the Earth bearing no sensible proportion to that of so vast a Sphere as the Firmament whose distance makes the Parallaxes vanish it being as to sence all one whether at so great a remove a Star be observ'd from the Centre or from the surface of the Earth Eug. In a matter so abstruse a little Illustration by examples may be very proper and welcome Sophr. 'T is scarce possible to find very apposite examples to illustrate things of a kind so abstruse and heteroclite as those may well be suppos'd that do surpass our Reason But yet some assistance may be borrowed from what we may observe in that other faculty of the mind which is most of kin to the Intellect I mean the Imagination For when for instance I think of a Triangle or a Square I find in my fancy an intuitive Idea if I may so call it of those figures that is a Picture clear and distinct as if a figure of three sides or four equal sides and Angles were placed before my eyes But if I would fancy a myriagon or a figure consisting of ten thousand equal sides my Imagination is overpowered with so great a multitude of them and frames but a confused Idea of a Polygon with a very great many sides For if to speak suitably to what the excellent Des Cartes has well observed in the like case a man should endeavour to frame Ideas of a Myriagon or a Chiliagon they would be both so confused that his Imagination would not be able clearly to discriminate them though the one has ten times as many sides as the other So if you would imagine an Atome of which perhaps ten thousand would scarce make up the bulk of one of the light particles of dust that seem to play in the Sunbeams when they are shot into a darkned place so extraordinary a littleness not having fallen under any of our Senses cannot truly be represented in our imagination So when we speak of Gods Primity if I may so call it Omnipotence and some other of his infinite Attributes and Perfections we have some conceptions of the things we speak of but may very well discern them to be but inadequate ones And though divers Propositions relating to things above Reason seem clear enough to ordinary Wits yet he that shall with a competent measure of attention curiosity and skill consider and examine them shall find that either their parts are inconsistent with one another or they involve contradictions to some acknowledged or manifest Truths or they are veil'd over with darkness and incumbered with difficulties from whence we are not able to rescue them Thus when the side and Diagonal of a Square are proposed we have clear and distinct Ideas of each of them apart and when they are compared we may have a conception of their incommensurableness But yet this negative notion if it be throughly considered and far enough pursued clearly contains that of a strait lines being divisible in infinitum and that divisibility is incumbred with so many difficulties and is so hard to be reconciled to some confessed dictates of Reason that as we have seen already Philosophers and Geometricians that are convinc'd of the truth are to this day labouring to extricate themselves out of those perplexing intricacies I will not trouble you with the puzling if not insuperable difficulties that incumber the doctrine of Eternity as 't is wont to be proposed in the Schools of Divines and Philosophers lest you should alledge that these difficulties spring rather from the bold assumptions and groundless subtleties of the Schoolmen than from the nature of the thing it self But I will propose somewhat that cannot be denyed which is that some substance or other whether as I believe God or as the Peripateticks say the World or as the Epicureans contend Matter never had a beginning that is has been for ever But when we speak of an eternity à parte ante as they call it we do not speak of a thing whereof we have no conception at all as will appear to a considering person and yet this general notion we have is such that when we come attentively to examine it by the same ways by which we judge of almost all other things the Intellect is non-plus'd For we must conceive that the time efflux'd since Adam or any other man as remote from us as he is said to have been began to live bears no more proportion to the duration of God or of Matter than to those few minutes I have imployed about mentioning this instance Nay if we would be Aristotelians the same thing may be said as to those men that lived many thousand millions of years before the time we reckon that Adam began
receive or contain bodies and would subsist tho God should annihilate all the Substances he has created And for the same reason it is not to be called an Accident since that necessarily requires a Substance to reside in according to that received Axiom Accidentis esse est inesse whereas in case of the annihilation of the world it self and consequently all Substances that compose it their place or space would still remain and be capable of admitting a new world of the same extent if God should be pleased to create it whence Gassendus wittily infers that Bodies are rather accidental in respect of place than space in respect of Bodies But without staying to examine this Paradox I shall venture to say in general that he who shall with an heedful and unprejudiced eye survey the several Hypotheses or Systems maintain'd by the differing Sects of Philosophers may find that tho the Instances will not be all of them the same yet there is none of these Systems in which one may not observe some thing or other to which every one of the Rules that reach to the other Snbjects treated of in that Philosophy cannot safely be apply'd And indeed the mind of man being naturally far more desirous to know much than to take the pains requisite to examine whether he does so or not is very prone to think that any small number of things that it has not distinctly considered must be of the same nature and condition with the rest that he judges to be of the same kind For by thus attaining to the knowledge of things by way of Inference the mind gratifies at once both its vanity and its laziness looking upon these Conclusions as marks of the excellency of its rational faculty whilst they rather proceed from a want of the due exercise of it Pyrocles But if the receiv'd Dictates of Reason be not always safe grounds to proceed upon in our Discourse I would gladly know by what Rules we shall judge of those Rules and discover them to be erroneous in case they be so and by what measures we shall estimate truth and falsehood in those things wherein the use of those Rules must be laid aside Arnobius Your double objection Pyrocles I confess to be weighty enough to deserve a considerate answer and to give you the sum of mine in few words I shall tell you that in my opinion since there is no progress in infinitum in the Criteria of truth and that our faculties are the best instruments that God has given us to discover and to examine it by I think a clear light or evidence of perception shining in the understanding affords us the greatest assurance we can have I mean in a natural way of the truth of the judgments we pass upon things whether they be other things or the vulgar rules of reasoning or subjects that claim a privilege from those rules And here give me leave to consider that it is not by induction but by evidence that we know that ex vero nil nisi verum sequitur By which it appears that the innate light of the rational faculty is more primary than the very Rules of Reasoning since by that light we judge even of the lately mention'd Axiom which is it self the grand principle of Ratiocinations made by Inference Eugenius This matter may be perchance somewhat illustrated by observing that as the understanding is wont to be look'd upon as the eye of the mind so there is this Analogy between them that there are some things that the eye may discern and does judge of organically if I may so speak that is by the help of instruments as when it judges of a Line to be streight by the applicasion of a Ruler to it or to be perpendicular by the help of a Plumb-line or a Circle to be perfect by the help of a pair of Compasses But there are other things which the eye does perceive and judge of immediately and by intuition and without the help of Organs or Instruments as when by the bare evidence of the perception it knows that this colour is red and that other blue and that Snow is white not black and a Char-coal black not white and such a Picture is very like or another unlike to the face it was drawn to represent For thus there are some things that the Intellect usually judges of in a kind of Organical way that is by the help of certain Rules or Hypotheses such as are a great part of the Theorems and Conclusions in Philosophy and Divinity But there are others which it knows without the help of these Rules more immediately and as it were intuitively by evidence or perception by which way we know many prime notions and Effata or Axioms Metaphysical c. as that Contradictory Propositions cannot both be true that from truth nothing but truth can legitimately be deduc'd that two things that are each of them equal to a third thing are equal to one another that a whole number is either even or odd And 't is also upon this evidence of perception that we receive with an undoubted assent many primitive Ideas and notions such as those of extended Substance or Body Divisibility or Local Motion a streight Line a Circle a right Angle and many other things that it would be here superfluous to mention Arnobius I think the internal Light that the Author of Nature has set up in mans Intellect qualifies him if he makes a right use of it not only to apply the Instruments of Knowledge but also to frame and to examine them For by the help of this Light the Understanding is enabled to look about and both to consider apart and compare together the natures of all kinds of things without being necessitated to employ in its Speculations the Rules or Dictates of any particular Science or Discipline being sufficiently assisted by its own Light and those general Axioms and Notions that are of a Catholick Nature and perpetual truth and so of a higher order than the Dictates or Rules of any particular or subordinate Science or Art And by these means the Understanding may perceive the imperfection and falsity of such Rules or Theorems as those men that look no higher nor no further than their own particular Science or Art embrace for certain and unquestionable Thus when Philosophers observ'd that they could frame a clear notion of a thing without considering whether it were actually in being or not or even when they suppose that 't is not actually in being as we can frame a clear conception of a Rose in Winter when there are none to be found growing and have a clear notion of a Myriagon tho 't is very like there is no such Figure really existent in the world They have generally concluded that the essence of things is differing and separable from their existence And yet when we consider that God is a Being infinitely perfect and that actual existence being a perfection must
belong to Him we may by the same light of Reason that dictated Essence Existence to be two separable things in all other Beings discern that they must be inseparable in God and consequently that the forementioned Rule tho more general than almost any other is not absolutely universal but must be limited by the light of Reason And thus also Philosophers considering that not only all sorts of Bodies but the immaterial Souls of Men and Angels themselves supposing such Beings are all endowed with Qualities which are Accidents have included it in the very notion of a substance to be the subject of Accidents or as the Schoolmen speak substare Accidentibus and accordingly substantia is wont to be derived à substando But the infranchised Intellect finding in it self a notion of an absolutely perfect and therefore existent Being and considering that to be the subject of Accidents is not a thing agreeable to the highest perfection possible it concludes that in God there are no Accidents And this Conclusion has been embraced as a part not only of Christian but of Natural Theology and maintain'd by divers Philosophers themselves upon Metaphysical and other meerly rational grounds In short the native light of the mind may enable a man that will make a free and industrious use of it both to pass a right judgment of the extent of those very Dictates that are commonly taken for Rules of Reason and to frame others on purpose for priviledg'd things so far forth as they are so But I fear Gentlemen the fourth Advice I have ventured to offer you has by its tediousness made you justly impatient of being detain'd by it so long and therefore I shall advanced to the Fifth which imports The Fifth Advice or Rule That where Privileg'd Things are concern'd we are not always bound to reject every thing as false that we know not how to reconcile with some thing that is true Pyrocl. You may call this an Advice but I doubt others will style it a Paradox and possibly think it one of the greatest that ever was broach'd Arnob. Yet perhaps you will find by and by that it may be in great part made good by what has been already discoursed and by you admitted I think it will not be doubted but that there are or may be conceived streight Lines whereof one is a hundred or a thousand times longer than another 'T is also generally granted that a longer Line consists of or may afford more parts than a shorter for a Line equal to the shorter being taken out of the longer and consequently just as divisible as it there will remain of the longer Line another Line perhaps many times exceeding the shorter Line And lastly 't is generally acknowledged that no Number can be greater than infinite since if the lesser number were capable of accession as it must be if it fall short of another number it would need that accession or a greater to make it infinite which yet 't is supposed to be already Pyrocl. I see not yet to what all this may tend Arnob. You will quickly perceive it when I shall have desired you to reconcile these Propositions with the demonstrations of Geometers of the endless Divisibility of all streight Lines whence they deduce that tho they be very unequal among themselves yet the shortest of them contains or may afford infinite parts Pyrocl. But is there any thing more clear to humane understanding or more supposed in almost all our Ratiocinations than that two Truths cannot be contradictory to each other Arnob. Tho I am far from affirming that one Truth can really contradict another truth yet I think that which is but a gradual or limited truth may in some few cases not be reconcileable by Us to an absolute and universal Truth For I think we may with Sophronius distinguish those Propositions we call true into Axioms Metaphysical or Universal that hold in all Cases without reservation and Axioms collected or emergent by which I mean such as result from comparing together many particulars that agree in something that is common to them all And some of these tho they be so general that in the usual Subjects of our Ratiocinations they admit of no exceptions yet may not be absolutely and unlimitedly true of which I know not whether I formerly gave you an instance even in that Axiom which almost all meerly Natural Philosophers have supposed and built on that ex nihilo nihil fit which tho at least one of the highest of gradual or collected Truths may yet be not universally true since for ought we know God that is acknowledged to be a Being that is infinitely perfect may have and may have exercised the power of Creating And in such Cases as this not to be able to reconcile a truth concerning a privileged thing with a Proposition that generally passes for true and in other Cases is so indeed will not presently oblige us to reject either Proposition as false but sometimes without destroying either only to give one of them a due limitation and restrain it to those sorts of things on which 't was at first grounded and to which 't was because of mans ignorance or inconsiderateness that 't was not at first confin'd And if the Miracles vouch'd either for the Christian or for any other Religion be any of them granted to be true as almost all mankind agrees in believing in general that there have been true Miracles it cannot well be deny'd but that Physical Propositions are but limited and such as I called Collected Truths being gathered from the settled Phaenomena of Nature and are lyable to this limitation or exception that They are true where the irresistible power of God or some other supernatural Agent is not interpos'd to alter the course of Nature Pyrocl. But do you think there are no inconsistent Propositions that you would call Truths wherein you cannot shew that one of them is but a gradual or emergent Truth Arnob. 'T is one thing to inquire whether men have yet discerned or I am able to make out that one of the Propositions you speak of is but a limited truth and another to inquire whether speaking absolutely and universally it may to any Intellect appear to be no more than such For first I consider that the Reason why we judge things to be repugnant Being that the Notions or Ideas we have of them seem to us inconsistent if either of these notions be wrong framed or be judged of by an unfit Rule we may think those Propositions to be contradictory that really are not so as if you heedfully mark it you shall find that those that are wont to employ their imaginations about things that are the proper Objects of the Intellect are apt to pronounce things to be unconceivable only because they find them unimaginable as if the Fancy and the Intellect were Faculties of the same extent Upon which account some have so grosly err'd as to deny all immaterial
of his Power and Will various degrees of Intellectual Capacities as well as a limitedness of Nature And as it will not follow that because we can see with our eyes very small Objects and imagine such as are yet much smaller either the eye or the imagination can ever reach to so small an Object as an Atome so it will not follow that because we are able to frame Conceptions of immaterial Beings we must therefore be able to understand the nature of God and the Harmony of all his Monadical Attributes A little Boy may have a clear notion of three four five or other smaller numbers and yet may be unable to frame good conceptions of Triangular and other Polygon Numbers as some call them and much more of the abstruse affections of surd Numbers and the Roots of the higher Algebraical Powers To discern particular Truths is one thing and to be able to discover the Intercourse and Harmony between all Truths is another thing and a far more difficult one as a Traveller may upon the English Shoar know that he sees the Ocean and upon the Coast of Affrick be made to do the like and at the East Indies also he may know that he sees the Ocean and yet not know how those so distant Seas communicate with each other tho that may be manifest enough to a Cosmographer Arnob. What you say brings into my mind that I have sometimes thought God and men enjoy Truth as differingly as they do Time For we men as we enjoy time but by parcels and always leave far the greatest part of it unreach'd to by us so we know but some particular Truths and are always ignorant of far more than we attain to Whereas God as his eternity reaches to all the portions of time or measured Durations so his Omniscience gives him at one view a prospect of the whole extent of Truth As if a man could see the whole River of Nilus with all its turnings and windings from its hidden Springs to its entrance into the Sea Upon which account he sees all particular Truths not only distinct but in their Systeme and so sees a Connexion between those that to us seem'd the most distant ones Arnob. There remains now Gentlemen but one part more of your penance to be undergone for 't is high time I should hasten to the relief of a Patience I have so long distress'd and therefore I shall give it but one exercise more and conclude your Trouble with some reflections on this last Advice The Sixth Advice or Rule That in Privileg'd Things we ought not always to condemn that opinion which is liable to ill Consequences and incumbred with great inconveniencies provided the positive proofs of it be sufficient in their kind That this Advice may be the more easily admitted I shall separately suggest three things which I desire may be afterwards considered all together First that clear positive proofs proportionate to the nature of things are genuine and proper motives to induce the understanding to assent to a proposition as true so that 't is not always necessary to the evidence and firmness of an Assent that the Intellect takes notice of the Consequences that may be drawn from it or the difficulties wherewith it may be incumbered This is plain in those Assents which of all others at least that are meerly natural are by knowing men thougt to be the most undoubted and the best grounded I mean the Assents that are given to the Truth of Geometrical Demonstrations And yet Euclid for instance in all his Elements of Geometry in some of which surprising Paradoxes are delivered as in the sixteenth proposition of the third Book and the 117th of the tenth Book to name no more contents himself to demonstrate his Assertions in a Mathematical Way and does not that I remember answer or take notice of any one Objection and the Geometricians of our days think they may safely receive his Propositions upon the Demonstrations annexed to them without knowing or troubling themselves about the subtleties employed by the Sceptick Sextus Empiricus or others of that Sect in their writings against the Mathematicians and all Assertors of assured knowledge The second thing I would offer to your consideration is that the former part of our Discourse has manifested that there are some things which our humane and imperfect understandings either cannot or at least do not perfectly comprehend and that nevertheless men have not refrain'd from presuming to dogmatize and frame Notions and Rules about such things as if they understood them very well Whence it must needs come to pass that if they were mistaken as in things so abstruse 't is very like they often were those that judge by the Rules they laid down must conceive the Propositions opposite to their mistakes to be liable to very great if not insuperable Difficulties and Objections And this second Consideration in conjunction with the first will make way for the third as a natural production of them which is That as we need not wonder that privileged things which are wont to be so sublime as to have been out of the view of those that fram'd the Rules whereby we judge of other things should be thought liable to great Objections by them who judge of all things only by those Rules so we should not require or expect more evidence of a Truth relating to such things than that there are for it such sufficient positive Reasons as notwithstanding Objections and Inconveniences make it upon the whole matter worthy to be embraced Pyrocles But can that be worthy to be assented to which is liable to Objections and Inconveniences which the maintainers confess they know not how to avoid Does not your Euclid himself in some of his Demonstrations imploy that way of reasoning which some of his Latine Interpreters call Deductio ad Absurdum Arnob. Euclid indeed as well as other Mathematicians besides that more satisfactory way of direct probation which perhaps he might have oftner imployed than he did has sometimes where he thought it needful made use of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you speak of But in these cases he never goes out of the Discipline he treats of and confining himself to Arguments drawn from quantity he urges nothing as absurd but what is undeniably repugnant to some Truth he had already demonstrated or to those clear and undisputed Definitions Axioms or Postalata which he supposes to have been already granted by those he would convince But tho he thus argues to prove that his Readers cannot contradict him without contradicting themselves yet we find not that he was at all solicitous to clear those Difficulties that so quick-sighted a man could not but know some of his Theorems to be attended with but contents himself to demonstrate the incommensurableness of the Side and Diagonal of a Square without troubling himself to take notice of the Difficulties that attend the endless Divisibility of a Line which would follow from what