Ochus which saith Vossius was in the second year of 107. Olympiad This Manetho Gebenyta was High Priest of Heliopolis in the time of Ptolomaeus Philadelphus at whose request he writ his History which he digested into three Tomes the first containing the 11. Dynastyes of the Gods and Heroes the 2d 8. Dynasties the 3 d. 12. all containing according to his fabulous computation the sum of 53535. years These Dynasties are yet preserved being first epitomized by Iulius Africanus from him transcribed by Eusebius in his Chronica from Eusebius by Georgius Syncellus out of whom they are produced by Ios. Scaliger and may be seen both in Eusebius and his Canones Isagogici Now Manetho as appears by Eusebius voucheth this as the main testimony of his credibility that he took his History ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã From some pillars in the Land of Seriad in which they were inscribed in the sacred dialect by the first Mercury Tyth and after the stood were translated out of the sacred dialect into the Greek tongue in Hieroglyphick Characters and are laid up in books among the Revestryes of the Egyptian Temples by Agathodaemon the second Mercury the Father of Tat. Certainly this fabulous author could not in fewer words have more fully manifested his own Impostures nor blasted his own credit more then he hath done in these which it is a wonder so many Learned men have taken so little notice of which have found frequent occasion to speak of Manetho and his Dynastyes This I shall make appear by some great improbabilities and other plain impossibilities which are couched in them The improbabilities are first such pillars being in such a place as Seriad and that place no more spoken of either by himself or by any other Egyptians nor any use made of these insâriptions by any other but himself As to this terra Seriadica where it should be the very learned and inquisitive Ioseph Scaliger plainly gives out and ingenuously professeth his ignorance For in his notes on the fragments of Manetho in Eusebius when he comes to that ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã he only saith Quae nobis ignota quaerant Studiosi But Isaac Vossius in his late discourses de aetate mundi cries ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and confidently perswades himself that it is the same with Seirath mentioned Iudg. 3. 16. Indeed were there nothing else to be considered but affinity of names it might well be the same but that ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which we render the stone-quarries should signifie these pillars of Mercury is somewhat hard to conceive The Seventy render it as himself observes ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã by which they understand graven Images So the word is used 2 Chron. 33. 19. Deut. 7. 5. Isai. 10. 19. The vulgar Latine renders it ad locum Idolorum which were the certain interpretation if Chytraeus his conjecture were true that Eglon had lately set up Idols there but if it be meant of pillars I cannot but approve of Iunius his interpretation which I conceive bids fairest to be the genuine sense of the place viz. that these stones here were the 12 stones pitched by Ioshua in Gilgal after the Israelites passed over Iordan and these stones are said to be by Gilgal Iudg. 3. 19. So that notwithstanding this handsom conjecture we are as far to seek for the pillars of Mercury as ever we were and may be so to the worlds end Secondly the standing of these pillars during the stood which must be supposed certainly to have some singular vertue in them to resist such a torrent of waters which overthrew the strongest built houses and most compacted Cities the plain impossibilities are first that Manetho should transcribe his Dynastyes from the beginning of the History of Aegypt to almost the time of Alexander out of sacred Inscriptions of Thoyth who lived in the beginning of the very first Dynasty according to his own Computation Sure this Thoyth was an excellent Prophet to write an History for above 0000 years to come as Manetho reckons it Secondly it is as well still that this History after the flood should be translated into Hieroglyphick Characters what kind of translation is that we had thought Hieroglyphicks had been representations of things and not of sounds and letters or words How could this History have at first been written in any tongue when it was in Hieroglyphicks Do Hieroglyphicks speak in several Languages and are they capable of changing their tongues But thirdly it is as good still that the second Mercury or Agathodaemon did translate this History so soon after the Flood into Greek Was the Greek tongue so much in request so soon after the Flood that the Aegyptian History for the sake of the Greeks must be translated into their language Nay is it not evident from Herodotus and Diodorus that the Graecians were not permitted so much as any commerce with the Aegyptians till the time of Psammet hicus which sell out in the 26. Dynesty of Manetho and about a Century after the beginning of the Olympiads We see then how credible an Author Manetho is and what truth there is like to be in the account of ancient times given by the Aegyptian Historians when the chief of them so lamentably and ominously stumbles in his very entrance into it And yet as fabulous as this account is which Manetho gives of his taking his history from these pillars before the Flood I cannot but think that Iosephus an Author otherwise of good credit took his famous story of Seths pillars concerning Astronomical observations before the flood from this story of Manetho and therefore I cannot but look upon them with as jealous an eye as on the other although I know how fond the world hath been upon that most ancient monument as is pretended of learning in the world Du Bartas hath writ a whole Poem on these pillars and the truth is they are fitter subjects for Poets then any else as will appear on these considerations First how strangely improbable is it that the posterity of Seth who as is pretended did foreknow a destruction of the world to be by a flood should busie themselves to write Astronomical observations on pillars for the benefit of those who should live after it Could they think their pillars should have some peculiar exemption above stronger structures from the violence of the rough and furious waters If they believed the flood absolutely universal for whom did they intend their observations if not to what end did they make them when the persons surviving might communicate their inventions to them But secondly if either one or both these pillars remained whence comes it to pass that neither the Chaldeans nor any of the eldest pretenders to Astronomy should neither mention them nor make any use of them Nay thirdly whence came the study of Astronomy to be so lamentably defective in those ancient times if they had such certain observations of the heavenly bodies gathered
their genuine followers they instead of the common and rude name of impostors gave them a more civil title of Philosophers and looked upon their doctrine as a sublimer kind of Philosophy non utique divinum negotium existimant sed mag is Philosophiae genus as Tertullian tells us because the Philosophers pretended so much to moral vertues which they saw the Christians so excellent in but as Tertullian there replies nomen hoc Philosophorum Daemonia non fugat The Devil was never afraid of a Philosophers beard nor were diseases cured by the touch of a Philosophick pallium There was something more Divine in Christians then in the grave Philosophers and that not only in reference to their lives and the Divine power which was seen in them but in reference to the truth and certainty of their doctrine it being a true character given of both by that same excellent writer in behalf of the Christians of his time Veritatem Philosophi quidem affâctant possident autem Christiani what the Philosophers desired only the Christians enjoy which was Truth and as he elsewhere more fully speaks mimicè Philosophi affectant veritatem affectando corrum punt ut qui gloriam captant Christianieam necessariò appetunt integri praestant ut qui saluti suae curant Truth is the Philosophers mistress which by courting he vitiates and corrupts looking at nothing but his own glory but truth is the Christians Matron whose directions he observes and follows because he regards no glory but that to come And to let them further see what a difference there was between a Christian and a Philosopher he concludes that discourse with these words Quid adeo simile Philosophus Christianus Graeciae Discipulus et coeli famae negotiator et vitae verborum et factorum operator rerum aedificator et destructor amicus et inimicus erroris veritatis interpolator et integrator furator ejus et custos As much distance saith he as there is between Greece and Heaven between applause and eternal glory between words and things between building and destroying between truth and error between a plagiary and corrupter of truth and a preserver and advancer of it so much is there between a Philosopher and a Christian. The Heathens might suspect indeed some kind of affinity between the first Preachers of the Gospel and the antient Sophists of Greece because of their frequent going from place to place and pretending a kind of Enthusiasm as they did but as much difference as there is between a Knight Errant and Hercules between a Mountebank and Hippocrates that and much greater there is between a Greek Sophist and an Apostle Socrates in Plato's Euthydemus hath excellently discovered the vanity and futility of those persons under the persons of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus and so likewise in his Protagoras their intent was only like the retiaries in the Roman Spectacles to catch their adversaries in a net to intangle them with some captious question or other but how vastly different from this was the design of the Apostles who abhord those endless contentions which then were in the Heathen world and came to shew them that Truth which was revealed with an intent of making them better men We see the Apostles were not carried forth by any mean and vulgar motives neither did they drive on any private ends of their own all that they minded was the promoting of the doctrine which they preached Nay they accounted no hazards comparable with the advantage which the world enjoyed through the propagation of the Christian Religion This shewed a truly noble and generous spirit in them which would not be hindred from doing the world good though they found so bad entertainment from it yea they rejoyced in their greatest sufferings which they underwent in so good a cause wherein those Primitive Christians who were the genuine followers of the Apostles did so far imitate them that etiam damnati gratias agunt they gave the Iudges thanks that they thought them worthy to lose their lives in a cause which they had reason to triumph in though they died for it And when any of them were apprehended they discovered so little fear of punishment ut unum solummodo quod non ante suerint paeniteret that nothing troubled them so much as that they had been Christians no sooner as one of their number speaks And when the Heathens usually scoffed at them and called them Sarmentitii and Semaxii because they were burned upon the Cross one of them in the name of the rest answers hic est habitus victoriae nostrae haec palmata vestis tali curru triumphamus the Cross was only their triumphant chariot which carried them sooner to Heaven Now this courage and resolution of spirit which was seen in the first planters of Christianity in the world made all serious and inquisitive persons look more narrowly into those things which made men slight so much the common bug-bears of humane nature sufferings and death Quis enim non contemplatione ejus concutitur adrequirendum quid intus in re sit quis non ubi requisivit accedit ubi accessit patiexoptat These sufferings made men enquire this enquiry made them believe that belief made them as willing to suffer themselves as they had seen others do it before them Thus it appeared to be true in them ãâã qââque crudelitas illecebra magis est sectae plures âfficimur quââties metimur a vobis semen est sanguis Christianorum The cruelty of their ânemies did but increase their number the harvest of their pretended justice was but the seed-time of Christianity and no seed was so fruitful as that which was steeped in the blood of Martyrs Thence Iustin Martyr ingenuously saith of himself that while he was a Platonick Philosopher he derided and scoffed at the Christians but when he considered their great courage and constancy in dying for their profession he could not think those could possibly be men wicked and voluptuous who when offers of life were made them would rather choose death then deny Christ. By which he found plainly that there was a higher spirit in Christianity then could be obtained by the sublime notions and speculations of Plato and that a poor ignorant Christian would do and suffer more for the sake of Christ then any of the Academy in defence of their master Plato Now since all men naturally abhor sufferings what is it which should so powerfully alter the nature and disposition of Christians above all other persons that they alone should seem in that to have forgot humanity that not only with patience but with joy they endured torments and abode the flames What! were they all pâssessed with a far more then Stoical Apathy that no sense oâ pain could work at all upon them or were they all besotted and infatuated persons that did not know what it was they underwent ât is true some of the
was the great Seal of our Saviours being the Son of God therefore we find the Apostles so frequently attesting the truth of the resurrection of Christ and that themselves were eye-witnesses of it This Iesus saith Peter hath God raised up whereof we all are witnesses And again And killed the Prince of life whom God hath raised up from the dead whereof we are witnesses and both Peter and Iohn to the Sanhedrin For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard And the whole Colledge of Apostles afterwards And we are his witnesses of these things and so is also the Holy Ghost whom God hath given to them that obey him In which words they give them that twofold rational evidence which did manifest the undoubted truth of what they spake for they delivered nothing but what themselves were witnesses of and withall was declared to be true by the power of the Holy Ghost in the miracles which were wrought by and upon believers Afterwards we read the sum oâ the Apostles Preaching and the manner used by them to perswade men of the truth of it in the words of Peter to Cernâlius and his company How God annointed Iesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the Devil for God was with him And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Iews and in Hierusalem whom they stew and hanged on a tree Him God raised up the third day and shewed him openly not to all the people but unto witnesses chosen before of God even to us who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead And he comâanded us to âreach unto the people that it is be which was ordained of God to be the Iudge of quick and dead By all which we see what care God was pleased to take for the satisfaction of the world in point of rational evidence as to the truth of the matters which were discovered concerning our Saviour Christ because he made choice of such persons to be the preachers and writers of these things who were the best abâe to satisfie the world about them viz. such as had been eye witnesses of them Now in order to the making it more fully evident what strength there was in this Testimony given by the Apostles to the miracles of Christ we shall more fully manifest the rational evidence which attended it in these following propositions Where the truth of a doctrine depends upon a matter of fact the truth of the doctrine is sufficiently manifested if the matter of fact be evidently proved in the highest way it is capable of Thus it is in reference to the doctrine of Christ for the truth of that is so interwoven with the truth of the story of Christ that if the relations concerning Christ be true his doctrine must needs be Divine and infallible For if it be undoubtedly true that there was such a person as Christ born at Bethlehem who did so many miracles and at last suffered the death of the Cross and after he had lain three dayes in the grave rose again from the dead what reason imaginable can I have to question but that the Testimony of this person was certainly Divine and consequently what ever he preached to the world was most certain and undoubted truth So that if we have clear evidence as to the truth of these passages concerning our Saviour we must likewise believe his doctrine which came attested with such pregnant evidences of a Divine commission which he had from God to the world No Prince can think he hath any reason to refuse audience to an Embassador when he finds his Credentials such as he may rely upon although himself doth not see the sealing of them much less reason have we to question the truth of the doctrine of the Gospel if we have sufficient evidence of the truth of the matters of fact concerning Christ in such a way as those things are capable of being proved The greatest evidence which can be given to a matter of fact is the attesting of it by those persons who were eye-witnesses of it This is the Foundation whereon the firmest assent is built as to any matter of fact for although we conceive we have reason to suspect the truth of a story as long as it is conveyed only in a general way by an uncertain fame and tradition yet when it comes to be attested by a sufficient number of credible persons who profess themselves the cye-witnesses of it it is accounted an unreasonable thing to distrust any longer the truth of it especially in these two cases 1. When the matter they bear witness to is a thing which they might easily and clearly perceive 2. When many witnesses exactly agree in the same Testimony 1. When the matter it self is of that nature that it may be fully perceived by those who saw it i. e. if it be a common object of sense And thus it certainly was as to the person and actions of Iesus Christ. For he was of the same nature with mankind and they had as great evidence that they conversed with Iesus Christ in the flesh as we can have that we converse one with another The miracles of Christ were real and visible miracles they could be no illusions of senses nor deceits of their eyes the man who was born blind and cured by our Saviour was known to have been born blind through all the Countrey and his cure was after as publike as his blindness before and acknowledged by the greatest enemies of Christ at the time of its being done When Christ raised up the dead man at Naim it was before much people and such persons in probability who were many of them present at his death But least there might be any suspition as to him that he was not really dead the case is plain and beyond all dispute in Lazarus who had been to the knowledge of all persons thereabouts dead four dayes here could be no deceit at all when the stone was rowled away and Lazarus came forth in the presence of them all And yet further the death and passion of our Saviour was a plain object of sense done in presence of his greatest adversaries The souldiers themselves were sufficient witnesses of his being really dead when they came to break his bones and spared him because they saw he was dead already At his resurrection the stone was rowled away from the Sepulchre and no body found therein although the Sepulchre was guarded by souldiers and the Disciples of Christ all so fearful that they were dispersed up and down in several places And that it was the same real body which he rose withall and no aëreall vehicle appears by Thomas his serupulosity and unbelief who would not believe unless âe might put his hands into the hole of his sides and see
to the minds of men besides that tranquillity and calmness of spirit that serene and peaceable temper which follows a good conscience whereever it dwells it were enough to make men welcom that guest which brings such good entertainment with it Whereas the amazements horrours and anxieties of mind which at one time or other haunt such who prostitute their Consciences to a violation of the Lawes of God and the rules of rectified reason may be enough to perswade any rational person that impiety is the greatest folly and irreligion madness It cannot be then but matter of great pity to consider that any persons whose birth and education hath raised them above the common people of the World should be so far their own enemies as to observe the Fashion more then the rules of Religion and to study complements more then themselves and read Romances more then the sacred Scriptures which alone are able to make them wise to salvation But Sir I need not mention these things to You unless it be to let You see the excellency of your choice in preferring true Vertue and Piety above the Ceremony and Grandeur of the World Go on Sir to value and measure true Religion not by the uncertain measures of the World but by the infallible dictates of God himself in his sacred Oracles Were it not for these what certain foundation could there be for our Faith to stand on and who durst venture his soul as to its future condition upon any authority less then the infallible veracity of God himself What certain directions for practice should we have what rule to judge of opinions by had not God out of his infinite goodness provided and preserved this authentick instrument of his Will to the World What a strange Religion would Christianity seem should we frame the Model of it from any other thing then the Word of God Without all controversie the disesteem of the Scriptures upon any pretence whatsoever is the decay of Religion and through many windings and turnings leads men at last into the very depth of Atheism Whereas the frequent and serious conversing with the mind of God in his Word is incomparably useful not only for keeping up in us a true Notion of Religion which is easily mistaken when men look upon the face of it in any other glass then that of the Scriptures but likewise for maintaining a powerful sense of Religion in the souls of men and a due valuation of it whatever its esteem or entertainment be in the World For though the true genuine spirit of Christianity which is known by the purity and peaceableness of it should grow never so much out of credit with the World yet none who heartily believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God and that the matters revealed therein are infallibly true will ever have the less estimation of it It must be confessed that the credit of Religion hath much sufferd in the Age we live in through the vain pretences of many to it who have only acted a part in it for the sake of some pâivate interests of their own And it is the usual Logick of Atheists crimine ab uno Disce omnes if there be any hypocrites all who make shew of Religion are such on which account the Hypocrisie of one Age makes way for the Atheism of the next But how unreasonable and unjust that imputation is there needs not much to discover unless it be an argument there are no true men in the World because there are so many Apes which imitate them or that there are no Jewels because there are so many Counterfeits And blessed be God our Age is not barren of Instances of real goodness and unaffected piety there being some such generous spirits as dare love Religion without the dowry of Interest and manifest their affection to it in the plain dress of the Scriptures without the paint and set-offs which are added to it by the several contending parties of the Christian World Were there more such noble spirits of Religion in our Age Atheism would want one of the greatest Pleas which it now makes against the Truth of Religion for nothing enlarges more the Gulf of Atheism then that ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã that wide passage which lies between the Faith and Lives of men pretending to be Christians I must needs say there is nothing seems more strange and unaccountable to me then that the Practice of the unquestionable duties of Christianity should be put out of Countenance or slighted by any who own profess and contend for the Principles of it Can the profession of that be honourable whose practice is not If the principles be true why are they not practised If they be not true why are they professed You see Sir to what an unexpected length my desire to vindicate the Honour as well as Truth of Religion hath drawn out this present address But I may sooner hope for your pardon in it then if I had spent so much paper after the usual manner of Dedications in representing You to your self or the World Sir I know You have too much of that I have been commending to delight in Your own deserved praises much less in flatteries which so benign a subject might easily make ones pen run over in And therein I might not much have digressed from my design since I know few more exemplary for that rare mixture of true piety and the highest civility together in whom that inestimable jewel of religion is placed in a most sweet affable and obliging temper But although none will be more ready on any occasion with all gratitude to acknowledge the great obligations You have laid upon me yet I am so far sensible of the common vanity of Epistles Dedicatory that I cannot so heartily comply with them in any thing as in my hearty prayers to Almighty for your good and welfare and in subscribing my self Sir Your most humble and affectionate servant Iune 5. 1662. ED. STILLINGFLEET THE PREFACE TO THE READER IT is neither to satisfie the importunity of friends nor to prevent false copies which and such like excuses I know are expected in usual Prefaces that I have adventured abroad this following Treatise but it is out of a just resentment of the affronts and indignities which have been cast on Religion by such who account it a matter of judgement to disbelieve the Scriptures and a piece of wit to dispute themselves out of the possibility of being happy in another world When yet the more acute and subtile their arguments are the greater their strength is against themselves it being impossible there should be so much wit and subtilty in the souls of men were they not of a more excellent nature then they imagine them to be And how contradictious is it for such persons to be ambitious of being cryed up for wit and reason whose design is to degrade the rational soul so far below her self as to make her become like the beasts
will unto the true Prophets The grand question propounded how it may be known when predictions express Gods decrees and when only the series of causes For the first several rules laid down 1. When the prediction is confirmed by a present miracle 2. When the things foretold exceed the probability of second causes 3. When confirmed by Gods oath 4. When the blâssings fore-told are purely spiritual Three rules for interpreting the Prophâcyes which respect the state of things under the Gâspel 5. When all circumstances are foretold 6. When many Prophets in several ages agree in the same predictions Predictions do not express Gods unalterable purposes when they only contain comminations of judgments or are predictions of temporal blâssings The case of the Ninivites Hezekiah and others opened Of repentance in God what it implyes The jewish objâctions âbout predictions of temporal blâssings answered In what cases miracles were expected from the Prophets when they were to confirm the truth of their religion Instanced in the Prophet at Bethel Elijah Elishah and of Moses himself Whose divine authority that it was proved by miracles is demonstrated against the modern Iews and their pretences answered p. 177 CHAP. VII The eternity of the Law of Moses discussed The second case wherein miracles may be expected when a Divine positive Law is to be repealed and another way of worship established in stead of it The possibility in general of a repeal of a Divine Law asserted the particular case of the Law of Moses disputed against the Iews the matter of that Law proved not to be immutably obligatory because the ceremonial precepts were required not for themselves but for some further end that proved from Maimonides his confession the precepts of the Ceremonial Law frequently dispensed with while the Law was in force Of the Passover of Hezekiah and several other instances It is not inconsistent with the wisdom of God to repeal such an established Law Abravanels arguments answered Of the perfection of the Law of Moses compared with the Gospel Whether God hath ever declared he would never repeal the Law of Moses Of adding to the precepts Of the expressions seeming to imply the perpetuity of the Law of Moses Reasons assigned why those expressions are used though perpetuity be not implyed The Law of Moses not built upon immutable reason because many particular precepts were founded upon particular occasions as the customs of the Zabii many ceremonial precepts thence deduced out of Maimonides and because such a state of things was foretold with which the observation of the Ceremonial Law would be inconsistent That largely discovered from the Prophecies of the old Testament CHAP. VIII General Hypotheses concerning the Truth of the Doctrine of Christ. The great prejudice against our Saviour among Iews and Heathens was the meaness of his appearance The difference of the miracles at the delivery of the Law and Gospel Some general Hypotheses to clear the subserviency of miracles to the Doctrine of Christ. 1. That where the truth of a doctrine depends not on evidence but authority the only way to prove the truth of the Doctrine is to prove the Testimony of the revealer to be infallible Things may be true which depend not on evidence of the things What that is and on what it depends The uncertainty of natural knowledge The existence of God the foundation of all certainty The certainty of matters of faith proved from the same principle Our knowledge of any thing supposeth something incomprehensible The certainty of faith as great as that of knowledge the grounds of it stronger The consistency of rational evidence with faith Yet objects of faith exceed reason the absurdities following the contrary opinion The uncertainty of that which is called reason Philosophical dictates no standard of reason Of transubstantiation and ubiquity c. why rejected as contrary to reason The foundation of faith in matters above reason Which is infallible Testimony that there are wayes to know which is infallible proved 2. Hypoth A Divine Testimony the most infallible The resolution of faith into Gods veracity as its formal object 3. Hypoth A Divine Testimony may be known though God speak not immediatly Of inspiration among the Iews and Divination among the Heathens 4. Hyp. The evidences of a Divine Testimony must be clear and certain Of the common motives of faith and the obligation to faith arising from them The original of Infidelity CHAP. IX The rational evidence of the Truth of Christian Religion from Miracles The possibility of miracles appears from God and providence the evidence of a Divine Testimony by them God alone can really alter the course of nature The Devils power of working miracles considered Of Simon Magus Apollonius The cures in the Temple of Aeseulapius at Rome c. God never works miracles but for some particular end The particular reasons of the miracles of Christ. The repealing the Law of Moses which had been setled by miracles Why Christ checked the Pharisees for demanding a sign when himself appeals to his miracles The power of Christs miracles on many who did not throughly believâ Christs miracles made it evident that he was the Messias because the predictions were fulfilled in him Why John Baptist wrought no miracles Christs miracles necessary for the everthrow of the Devils Kingdom Of the Daemoniaeks and Lunaticks in the Gospel and in the Primitive Church The power of the name of Christ over them largely proved by several Testimonies The evidence thence of a Divine power in Christ. Of counterfeit dispossessions Of miracles wrought among Infidels Of the future state of the Church The necessity of the miracles of Christ as to the propagation of Christian Religion that proved from the condition of the publishers and the success of the Doctrine The Apostles knew the hazard of their imployment before they entred on it The boldness and resolution of the Apostles notwithstanding this compared with heathen Philosophers No motive could carry the Apostles through their imployment but the truth of their Doctrine not seeking the honour profit or pleasure of the world The Apostles evidence of the truth of their doctrine lay in being eye-witnesses of our Saviours miracles and resurrâction That attested by themselves their sufficiency thence for preaching the Gospel Of the nature of the doctrine of the Gospel contrariety of it to natural inclinations Strange success of it notwithstanding it came not with humane power No Christian Emperour till the Gospel universally preached The weakness and simplicity of the instruments which preached the Gospel From all which the great evidence of the power of miracles is proved pag. 252 CHAP. X. The difference of true miracles from false The unreasonableness of rejecting the evidence from miracles because of impostures That there are certain rules of distinguishing true miracles from false and Divine from diabolical proved from Gods intention in giving a power of miracles and the providence of God in the world The inconvenience of taking
away the rational grounds of faith and placing it on self-evidence Of the self-evidence of the Scriptures and the insufficiency of that for resolving the question about the authority of the Scriptures Of the pretended miracles of Impostors and false Christs as Barchochebas David el David and others The rules whereby to judge true miracles from false 1. True Divine miracles are wrought to confirm a Divine testimony No miracles necâssary for the certain conveyance of a Divine testimony proved from the evidences that the Scriptures could not be corrupted 2. No miracles Divine which contradict Divine revelation Of Popish miracles 3. Divine miracles leave Divine effects on those who believe them Of the miracles of Simon Magus 4. Divine miracles tend to the overthrow of the devils power in the world the antipathy of the doctrine of Christ to the devils designs in the world 5. The distinction of true miracles from others from the circumstances and manner of their operation The miracles of Christ compared with those of the Hâathen Gods 6. God makes it evident to all impartial judgments that Divine miracles exceed created power This manifested from the unparalleld miracles of Moses and our Saviour From all which the rational evidence of Divine revelation is manifested as to the persons whom God imployes to teach the world pag. 334 BOOK III. CHAP. I. Of the Being of God The Principles of all Religion lie in the Being of God and immortality of the soul from them the necessity of a particular Divine revelation rationally deduced the method laid down for proving the Divine authority of the Scriptures Why Moses doth not prove the Being of God but suppose it The notion of a Deity very consonant to reason Of the nature of Idea's and particularly of the Idea of God How we can form an Idea of an infinite Being How far such an Idea argues existence The great unreasonableness of Atheism demonstrated Of the Hypotheses of the Aristotelian and Epicurean Atheists The Atheists pretences examined and refuted Of the nature of the arguments whereby we prove there is a God Of universal consent and the evidence of that to prove a Deity and immortality of souls Of necessity of existence implyed in the notion of God and how far that proves the Being of God The order of the world and usefulness of the parts of it and especially of mans body an argument of a Deity Some higher principle proved to be in the world then matter and motion The nature of the soul and possibility of its subsisting after death Strange appearances in nature not solvable by the power of imagination pag. 360 CHAP. II. Of the Origine of the Universe The necessity of the belief of the creation of the world in order to the truth of Religion Of the several Hypotheses of the Philosophers who contradict Moses with a particular examination of them The ancïent tradition of the world consonant to Moses proved from the fonick Philosophy of Thales and the Italick of Pythagoras The Pythagorick Cabbala rather Aegyptian then Mosaick Of the fluid matter which was the material principle of the universe Of the Hypothesis of the eternity of the world asserted by Ocellus Lucanus and Aristotle The weakness of the foundations on which that opinion is built Of the manner of forming principles of Philosophy The possibility of creation proved No arguing from the present state of the world against its beginning shewed from Maimonides The Platonists arguments from the goodness of God for the eternity of the world answered Of the Stoical Hypothesis of the eternity of matter whether reconcilable with the text of Moses Of the opinions of Plato and Pythagoras concerning the praeexistence of matter to the formation of the world The contradiction of the eternity of matter to the nature and attributes of God Of the Atomical Hypothesis of the Origine of the Universe The World could not be produced by a casual concourse of Atoms proved from the nature and motion of Epicurus his Atoms and the Phaenomena of the Universe especially the production and nature of Animals Of the Cartesian Hypothesis that it cannot salve the Origine of the Universe without a Deity giving motion to matter pag. 421 CHAP. III. Of the Origine of Evil. Of the Being of Providence Epicurus his arguments against it refuted The necessity of the belief of Providence in order to Religion Providence proved from a consideration of the nature of God and the things of the world Of the Spirit of nature The great objections against Providence propounded The first concerns the Origine of evil God cannot be the author of sin if the Scriptures be true The account which the Scriptures give of the fall of man doth not charge God with mans fault Gods power to govern man by Laws though he gives no particular reason of every Positive precept The reason of Gods creating man with freedom of will largely shewed from Simplicius and the true account of the Origine of evil Gods permitting the fall makes him not the author of it The account which the Scriptures give of the Origine of evil compared with that of heathen Philosophers The antiquity of the opinion of ascribing the Origine of evil to an evil principle Of the judgment of the Persians Aegyptians and others about it Of Manichaism The opinion of the ancient Greek Philosophers of Pythagoras Plato the Stoicks the Origine of evil not from the necessity of matter The remainders of the history of the fall among the Heathens Of the malignity of Daemons Providence vindicated as to the sufferings of the good and impunity of bad men An account of both from natural light manifested by Seneca Plutarch and others pag. 470 CHAP. IV. Of the Origine of Nations All mankind derived from Adam if the Scriptures be true The contrary supposition an introduction to Atheism The truth of the history of the flood The possibility of an universal deluge proved The flood universal as to mankind whether universal as to the earth and animals no necessity of asserting either Yet supposing the possibility of it demonstrated without creation of new waters Of the fountains of the deep The proportion which the height of mountains bears to the Diameter of the earth No mountains much above three mile perpendicular Of the Origine of fountains The opinion of Aristotle and others concerning it discussed The true account of them from the vapours arising from the mass of subterraneous waters Of the capacity of the Ark for receiving the Animals from Buteo and others The truth of the deluge from the Testimony of Heathen Nations Of the propagation of Nations from Noahs posterity Of the beginning of the Assyrian Empire The multiplication of mankind after the flood Of the Chronology of the LXX Of the time between the flood and Abraham and the advantages of it Of the pretence of such Nations who called themselves Aborigines A discourse concerning the first plantation of Greece the common opinion propounded and
the general defect for want of timely records among Heathen Nations the reason of it shewed from the first Plantations of the World The manner of them discovered The Original of Civil Government Of Hieroglyphicks The use of letters among the Greeks no elder then Cadmus his time enquired into no elder then Joshua the learning brought into Greece by him ENquiries after truth have that peculiar commendation above all other designs that they come on purpose to gratifie the most noble faculty of our souls and do most immediately tend to re-advance the highest perfection of our rational beings For all our most laudable endeavours after knowledge now are only the gathering up some scattered fragments of what was once an entire Fabrick and the recovery of some precious Iewels which were lost out of sight and sunk in the shipwrack of humane nature That saying of Plato that all knowledge is remembrance and all ignorance forgetfulness is a certain and undoubted truth if by forgetfulness be meant the loss and by remembrance the recovery of those notions and conceptions of things which the mind of man once had in its pure and primitive state wherein the understanding was the truest Microcosm in which all the beings of the inferiour world were faithfully represented according to their true native and genuine perfections God created the soul of man not only capable of finding out the truth of things but furnished him with a sufficient ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã or touchstone to discover truth from falshood by a light set up in his understanding which if he had attended to he might have secured himself from all impostures and deceits As all other beings were created in the full possession of the agreeable perfections of their several natures so was man too else God would have never closed the work of Creation with those words And God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good that is endued with all those perfections which were suitable to their several beings Which man had been most defective in if his understanding had not been endowed with a large stock of intellectual knowledge which is the most natural and genuine perfection belonging to his rational being For reason being the most raised faculty of humane nature if that had been defective in its discoveries of truth which is its proper object it would have argued the greatest maim and imperfection in the being it self For if it belongs to the perfection of the sensitive faculties to discern what is pleasant from what is hurtful it must needs be the perfection of the rational to find out the difference of truth from falshood Not as though the soul could then have had any more then now an actual notion of all the beings in the world ocexisting at the same time but that it would have been free from all deceits in its conceptions of things which were not caused through inadvertency Which will appear from the several aspects mans knowledge ledge hath which are either upwards towards his Maker or abroad on his fellow-creatures If we consider that contemplation of the soul which fixes its self on that infinite being which was the cause of it and is properly ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã it will be found necessary for the soul to be created in a clear and distinct knowledge of him because of mans immediate obligation to obedience unto him Which must necessarily suppose the knowledge of him whose will must be his rule for if man were not fully convinced in the first moment after his creation of the being of him whom he was to obey his first work and duty would not have been actual obedience but a search whether there was any supreme infinite and eternal being or no and whereon his duty to him was founded and what might be sufficient declaration of his Will and Laws according to which he must regulate his obedience The taking off all which doubts and scruples from the soul of man must suppose him fully satisfied upon the first free use of reason that there was an Infinite Power and Being which produced him and on that account had a right to command him in whatsoever he pleased and that those commands of his were declared to him in so certain a way that he could not be deceived in the judging of them The clear knowledge of God will further appear most necessary to man in his first creation if we consider that God created him for this end and purpose to enjoy converse and an humble familiarity with himself he had then ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã in the language of Clemens Alexandrinus Converse with God was as natural to him as his being was For man as he came first out of Gods hands was the reflection of God himself on a dark Cloud the Iris of the Deity the Similitude was the same but the substance different Thence he is said to be created after the Image of God His knowledge then had been more intellectual then discursive not so much imploying his faculties in the operose deductions of reason the pleasant toyl of the rational faculties since the Fall but had immediately imployed them about the sublimest objects not about quiddities and formalities but about him who was the fountain of his being and the center of his happiness There was not then so vast a difference between the Angelical and humane life The Angels and men both fed on the same dainties all the difference was they were in the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the upper room in heaven and man in the Summer Parlour in Paradise If we take a view of mans knowledge as it respects his fellow-creatures we shall find these were so fully known to him on his first creation that he needed not to go to School to the wide world to gather up his conceptions of them For the right exercise of that Dominion which he was instated in over the inferiour world doth imply a particular knowledge of the nature being and properties of those things which he was to make use of without which he could not have improved them for their peculiar ends And from this knowledge did proceed the giving the creatures those proper and peculiar names which were expressive of their several natures For as Plato tells us ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã The imposition of names on things belongs not to every one but only to him that hath a full prospect into their several natures For it is most agreeable to reason that names should carry in them a suitableness to the things they express for words being for no other end but to express our conceptions of things and our conceptions being but ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as the same Philosopher speaks the resemblances and representations of the things it must needs follow that where there was a true knowledge the conceptions must agree with the things and words being to express our conceptions none are so fit to do it as those which
are expressive of the several natures of the things they are used to represent For otherwise all the use of words is to be a meer vocabulary to the understanding and an Index to memory and of no further use in the pursuit of knowledge then to let us know what words men are agreed to call things by But something further seems to be intended in their first imposition whence the Iews call it ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as Mercer tells us a separation and distinction of the several kinds of things and Kircher thus paraphraseth the words of Moses And whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof i. e. saith he Fuerunt illis vera germane nomina rerum naturis propriè accommodata But however this be we have this further evidence of that height of knowledge which must be supposed in the first man that as he was the first in his kind so he was to be the standard and measure of all that followed and therefore could not want any thing of the due perfections of humane nature And as the shekel of the Sanctuary was if not double to others as men ordinarily mistake yet of a full and exact weight because it was to be the standard for all other weights which was the cause of its being kept in the Temple So if the first man had not double the proportion and measure of knowledge which his posterity hath if it was not running over in regard of abundance yet it must be pressed down and shaken together in regard of weight else he would be a very unfit standard for us to judge by concerning the due and suitable perfections of humane nature But we need not have run so far back as the first man to evince the knowledge of truth to be the most natural perfection of the soul of man for even among the present ruines of humane nature we may find some such noble and generous spirits that discern so much beauty in the face of truth that to such as should enquire what they find so attractive in it their answer would be the same with Aristotles in a like case it was ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the Question of those who never saw it For so pleasing is the enquiry and so satisfactory the finding of truth after the search that the relish of it doth far exceed the greatest Epicurism of Apicius or the most costly entertainments of Cleopatra there being no Gust so exquisite as that of the mind nor any Iewels to be compared with Truth Nor do any persons certainly better deserve the name of men then such who allow their reason a full employment and think not the erectness of mans stature a sufficient distinction of him from Brutes Of which those may be accounted only a higher species who can patiently suffer the imprisonment of their Intellectuals in a Dungeon of Ignorance and know themselves to be men only by those Characters by which Alexander knew himself not to be a God by their proneness to intemperance and sleep So strange a Metempsychosis may there be without any change of bodies and Euphorbus his soul might become a Brute without ever removing its lodging into the body of an Ass. So much will the soul degenerate from its self if not improved and in a kind of sullenness scarce appear to be what it is because it is not improved to what it may be But if this knowledge of truth be so great so natural so valuable a perfection of humane nature whence comes so much of the world to be over-run with Ignorance and Barbarism whence come so many pretenders to knowledge to court a cloud instead of Juno to pretend a Love to truth and yet to fall down and worship errour If there were so great a sympathy between the soul and truth there would be an impatient desire after it and a most ready embracing and closing with it We see the Magnet doth not draw the iron with greater force then it seems to run with impatience into its closest embraces If there had been formerly so intimate an acquaintance between the soul and truth as Socrates fancied of friends in the other world there would be an harmonious closure upon the first appearance and no divorce to be after made between them True but then we must consider there is an intermediate state between the former acquaintance and the renewal of it wherein all those remaining characters of mutual knowledge are sunk so deep and lie so hid that there needs a new fire to be kindled to bring forth those latent figures and make them again appear legible And when once those tokens are produced of the former friendship there are not more impatient longings nor more close embraces between the touched needle and the Magnet then there are between the understanding and discovered truth But then withall we are to consider that they are but few whose souls are awakened out of that Lethargy they are fallen into in this degenerate condition the most are so pleased with their sleep that they are loth to disturb their rest and set a higher price upon a lazy Ignorance then upon a restless knowledge And even of those whose souls are as it were between sleeping and waking what by reason of the remaining confusion of the species in their brains what by the present dimness of their sight and the hovering uncertain light they are to judge by there are few that can put a difference between a meer phantasm and a real truth Of which these rational accounts may be given viz. Why so few pretenders to knowledge do light on truth First Want of an impartial diligence in the search of it Truth now must be sought and that with care and dilgence before we find it jewels do not use to lye upon the surface of the earth Highways are seldom paved with gold what is most worth our Finding calls for the greatest search If one that walks the streets should finde some inestimable jewel or one that travels the road meet with a bag of gold it would be but a silly design of any to walk the street or travel the road in hopes to meet with such a purchase to make them rich If some have happily light on some valuable truths when they minded nothing less then them must this render a diligence useless in inquiries after such No Truth though she be so fair and pleasing as to draw our affections is yet so modest as to admit of being courted and it may be deny the first suit to heighten our importunity And certainly nothing hath oftner forbid the banes between the understanding and Truth inquired after then partiality and preoccupation of Iudgement which makes men enquire more diligently after the dowry then the beauty of Truth its correspondency to their Interests then its evidence to their understandings An useful error hath often kept the Keys of the mind for free admission when important
truths but contrary to their pre-conceptions or interests have been forbidden entrance Prejudice is the wrong bias of the soul that effectually keeps it from coming near the mark of truth nay sets it at the greatest distance from it There are few in the world that look after truth with their own eyes most make use of spectacles of others making which makes them so seldom behold the proper lineaments in the face of Truth which the several tinctures from education authority custom and predisposition do exceedingly hinder men from discerning of Another reason why there are so few who find truth when so many pretend to seek it is that near resemblance which Error often bears to Truth It hath been well observed that Error seldom walks abroad the world in her own raiments she always borrows something of truth to make her more acceptable to the world It hath been always the subtilty of grand deceivers to graft their greatest errors on some material truths to make them pass more undiscernable to all such who look more at the root on which they stand then on the fruits which they bring forth It will hereafter appear how most of the grossest of the heathen errors have as Plutarch saith of the Egyptian Fables ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã some faint and obscure resemblances of truth nay more then so as most pernicious weeds are bred in the fattest soyls their most destructive principles have been founded on some necessary and important truths Thus Idolatry doth suppose the belief of the existence of a Deity and superstition the Immortality of the souls of men The Devil could never have built his Chappels but on the same ground whereon Gods Temples stood which makes me far less wonder then many do at the meeting with many expressions concerning these two grand truths in the writings of ancient Heathens knowing how willing the devil might be to have such principles still owned in the world which by his depraving of them might be the nourishers of Idolatry and Superstition For the general knowledge of a Divine nature supposing men Ignorant of the true God did only lay a foundation to erect his Idolatrous Temples upon and the belief of the souls surviving the body after death without knowledge of the true way of attaining happiness did make men more eager of imbracing those Rites and Ceremonies which canie with a pretence of shewing the way to a blessed immortality Which may be a most probable reason why Philosophy and Idolatry did increase so much together as they did for though right reason fully improved would have overthrown all those cursed and Idolatrous practises among the Heathens yet reason only discerning some general notions without their particular application and improvement did only dispose the most ordinary sort of people to a more ready entertainment of the most gross Idolatry For hereby they discerned the necessity of some kind of worship but could not find out the right way of it and therefore they greedily followed that which was commended to them by such who did withall agree with them in the common sentiments of humane nature Nay and those persons themselves who were the great maintainers of these sublimer notions concerning God and the soul of man were either the great instruments of advancing that horrid superstition among them as Orpheus Apollonius or very forward Complyers with it as many of the Philosophers were Although withall it cannot be denied to have been a wonderful discovery of Divine providence by these general notions to keep waking the inward senses of mens souls that thereby it might appear when Divine Revelation should be manifested to them that it brought nothing contrary to the common principles of humane nature but did only rectifie the depravations of it and clearly shew men that way which they had long been ignorantly seeking after Which was the excellent advantage the Apostle made of the Inscription on the Altar at Athens to the unknown God Whom saith he ye ignorantly serve him I declare unto you And which was the happy use the Primitive learned Christians made of all those passages concerning the divine nature and the Immortality of the souls of men which they found in the Heathen Writers thereby to evidence to the world that the main postulata or suppositions of Christian Religion were granted by their own most admired men and that Christianity did not race out but only build upon those common foundations which were entertained by all who had any name for reason Though this I say were the happy effect of this building errors on common truths to all that had the advantage of Divine revelation to discern the one from the other yet as to others who were destitute of it they were lyable to this twofold great inconvenience by it First for the sake of the apparent rottenness of the Superstructures to question the soundness of the foundations on which they stood And this I doubt not was the case of many considerative heathens who observing that monstrous and unreasonable way of worship obtaining among the heathen and not being able by the strength of their own reason through the want of divine revelation to deduce any certain instituted worship they were shrewdly tempted to renounce those principles when they could not but abhor the conclusions drawn from them for there is nothing more usual then for men who exceedingly detest some absurd consequence they see may be drawn from a principle supposed to reject the principle its self for the sake of that consequence which it may be doth not necessarily follow from it but through the shortness of their own reason doth appear to them to do so Thus when the Intelligent heathen did apparently see that from the principles of the Being of God and the Immortality of souls did flow all those unnatural and inhumane Sacrifices all those absurd and ridiculous Rites all those execrable and profane mysteries out of a loathing the Immoralities and impieties which attended these they were brought to question the very truth and certainty of those principles which were capable of being thus abused And therefore I am very prone to suspect the Apology usually made for Protagoras Diagoras and such others of them who were accounted Atheists to be more favourable then true viz. that they only rejected those heathen Deities and not the belief of the Divine nature I should think this account of their reputed Atheism rational were it any wayes evident that they did build their belief of a Divine nature upon any other grounds then such as were common to them with those whose worship they so much derided And therefore when the Heathens accused the Christians of Atheism I have full and clear evidence that no more could be meant thereby then the rejection of their way of worship because I have sufficient Assurance from them that they did believe in a Divine nature and an instituted Religion most suitable to the most common received notions
Which yet hath been done to very good purpose by Ioseph Scaliger and Bochartus and many others from the form of the Letters the order and the names of them It seems probable that at first they might use the form of the Phoenician Letters in which Herodotus tells us the three old Inscriptions were extant and Diodorus tells us that the brass pot which Cadmus offered to Minerva Lyndia had an Inscription on it in the Phoenician Letters but afterwards the form of the Letters came by degrees to be changed when for their greater expedition in writing they left the old way of writing towards the left hand for the more natural and expedite way of writing towards the right by which they exchanged the site of the strekes in several Letters as is observed by the forecited Learned Authors Not that the old Ionick Letters were nearer the Phoenician and distinct from the modern as Ios. Scaliger in his learned Discourse on the original of the Greek Letters conceives for the Ionick Letters were nothing else but the full Alphabet of 24. with the additions of Palamedes and Simonides Cous as Pliny tells us that all the Greeks consented in the use of the Ionick Letters but the old Attick Letters came nearer the Phoenician because the Athenians long after the Alphabet was increased to 24. continued still in the use of the old 16. which were brought in by Cadmus which must needs much alter the way of writing for in the old Letters they writ THEOâ for ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which made Pliny with a great deal of learning and truth say that the old Greek Letters were the same with the Roman Thence the Greeks called their ancient Letters ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as appears by Harpocration and Hesychius not that they were so much distinct from others but because they did not admit of the addition of the other eight Letters which difference of writing is in a great measure the cause of the different dialect between the Athenians and Ionians properly so called We see then the very Letters of the Greeks were no elder then Cadmus and for any considerable learning among them it was not near so old Some assert indeed that History began from the time of Cadmus but it is by a mistake of him for a younger Cadmus which was Cadmus Milesius whom Pliny makes to be the first Writer in Prose but that he after attributes to Pherecydes Syrius and History to Cadmus Milesius and therefore I think it far more probable that it was some writing of this latter Cadmus which was transcribed and epitomized by Bion Proconesius although Clemens Alexandrinus seems to attribute it to the Elder We see how unable then the Grecians were to give an account of elder times that were guilty of so much infancy and nonage as to begin to learn their Letters almost in the noon-tide of the World and yet long after this to the time of the first Olympiad all their relations are accounted fabulous A fair account then we are like to have from them of the first antiquities of the world who could not speak plain truth till the world was above 3000. years old for so it was when the Olympiads began So true is the observation of Iustin Martyr ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the Greeks had no exact history of themselves before the Olympiads but of that more afterwards This is now the first defect which doth infringe the credibility of these Histories which is the want of timely and early records to digest their own history in CHAP. II. Of the Phoenician and Aegyptian History The particular defect in the Historys of the most learned Heathen Nations First the Phoenicians Of Sanchoniathon his Antiquity and Fidelity Of Jerom-baal Baal-Berith The Antiquity of Tyre Scaliger vindicated against Bochartus Abibalus The vanity of Phoenician Theology The imitation of it by the Gnosticks Of the Aegyptian History The Antiquity and Authority of Hermes Trismegistus Of his Inscriptions on Pillars transcribed by Manetho His Fabulousness thence discovered Terra Seriadica Of Seths Pillars in Josephus and an account whence they were taken HAving already shewed a general defect in the Ancient Heathen Histories as to an account of ancient times we now come to a closer and more particular consideration of the Histories of those several Nations which have born the greatest name in the world for learning and antiquity There are four Nations chiefly which have pretended the most to antiquity in the learned world and whose Historians have been thought to deliver any thing contrary to holy Writ in their account of ancient times whom on that account we are obliged more particularly to consider and those are the Phoenicians Chaldeans Aegyptians and Graecians we shall therefore see what evidence of credibility there can be in any of these as to the matter of antiquity of their Records or the Histories taken from them And the credibility of an Historian depending much upon the certainty and authority of the Records he makes use of we shall both consider of what value and antiquity the pretended Records are and particularly look into the age of the several Historians As to the Graecians we have seen already an utter impossibility of having any ancient Records among them because they wanted the means of preserving them having so lately borrowed their Letters from other Nations Unless as to their account of times they had been as carefull as the old Romans were to number their years by the several clavi or nails which they fixed on the Temple doors which yet they were not in any capacity to do not growing up in an entire body as the Roman Empire did but lying so much seattered and divided into so many petây Republicks that they minded very little of concernment to the whole Nation The other three Nations have deseâvedly a name of far greater antiquity then any the Graecians could ever pretend to who yet were unmeasurably guilty of an impotent affectation of antiquity and arrogating to themselves as growing on their own ground what was with a great deal of pains and industry gathered but as the gleanings from the fuller harvest of those nations they resorted to Which is not only true as to the greatest part of their Learning but as to the account likewise they give of ancient times the chief and most ancient Histories among them being only a corruption of the History of the elder Nations especially Phoenicia and Aegypt for of these two Philo Biblius the Translator of the ancient Phoenician Historian Sanchoniathon saith they were ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã The most ancient of all the Barbarians from whom the others derived their Theology which he there particularly instanceth in We begin therefore with the Phoenician History whose most ancient and famous Historian is Sanchoniathon so much admired and made use of by the shrewdest antagonist ever Christianity met with the Philosopher Porphyrius But therein was seen
of Nabonasser Which if we should be so greedy of all empty conjectures which tend to our purpose as to take them for truths would be a very strong evidence of the falshood and vanity of the Chaldeans in their great pretences to antiquity But as the case stands in reference to their history we finde more evidence from Scripture to assert their just antiquity then ever they are able to produce out of any undoubted records of their own Which yet hath been endeavoured by an Author both of some credit and antiquity the true Berosus not the counterfeit of Annius whose vizard we shall have occasion to pull off afterwards This Berosus was as Iosephus and Tatianus assure us a Priest of Belus and a Babylonian born but afterwards flourished in the isle of Co and was the first who brought the Chaldean Astrology in request among the Greeks in honour to whose name and memory the Athenians who were never backward in applauding those who brought them the greatest news especially i suitable to their former superstition erected a statue for him with a guilded tongue A good emblem of his history which made a fair and specious shew but was not that within which it pretended to be especially where he pretends to give an account of the most antient times and reckons up his two Dynastyes before the time of Belus but of them afterwards It cannot be denyed but some fragments of his history which have been preserved from ruine by the care and industry of Iosephus Tatianus Eusebius and others have been very useful not only for proving the truth of the history of Scripture to the heathens but also for illustrating some passages concerning the Babylonian Empire as making Nabopolasser the Father of Nebucadonosor of which Scaliger hath fully spoken in his notes upon his fragments Far be it from me to derogate any thing even from prophane histories where they do not enterfere with the Sacred history of Scripture and it is certainly the best improvement of these to make them draw water to the Sanctuary and to serve as smaller Stars to conduct us in our way when we cannot enjoy the benefit of that greater light of Sacred history But that which I impeach these prophane histories of is only an insufficiency as to that account of antient times wherein they are so far from giving light to Sacred records that the design of setting of them up seems to be for casting a cloud upon them Which may seem somewhat the more probable in that those monstrous accounts of the Aegyptian and Chaldean Dynastyes did never publickly appear in the world in the Greek tongue till the time that our Sacred records were translated into Greek at Alexandria For till that time when this authentick history of the world was drawn forth from its privacy and retirement being as it were lookt up before among the Israelites at Iudea into the publick notice of the world about the time of Ptolomaeus Philadelphus these vain pretenders to antiquity thought not themselves so much concerned to stand up for the credit of their own Nations For till that time the onedulous world not being acquainted with any certain report of the creation and propagation of the world was apt to swallow any thing that was given forth by those who were had in so great esteem as the Chaldean and Aegyptian Priests were Because it was supposed that those persons who were freed from other avocations had more leasure to inquire into these things and because of their mysterious hiding what they had from the vulgar were presumed to have a great deal more then they had But now when the Sun of righteousness was approaching this Horizon of the world and in order to that the Sacred history like the day-star was to give the world notice of it by which the former shadows and mists began to fly away it concerned all those whose interest lay in the former ignorance of mankind as much as they could to raise all their ignes fatui and whatever might tend to obscure that approaching light by invalidating the credit of that which came to bespeak its acceptance It is very observable to consider what gradations and steps there were in the world to the appearance of that grand light which came down from heaven to direct us in our way thither how the world not long before was awakened into a greater inquisitiveness then ever before how knowledge grew into repute and what methods divine providence used to give the inquisitive world a taste of Truth at present to stay their stomacks and prepare them for that further discovery of it afterwards In order to this that Nation of the Iews which was an inclosed garden before was now thrown open and many of the plants removed and set in forraign Countries not only in Babylon where even after their return were left three famous Schools of learning Sora Pombeditha and Neharda but in Aegypt too where multitudes of them by Alexanders favour were setled at Alexandria where they had opportunity to season those two great fountains whence the current of knowledge ran into the rest of the world And now it was not in Iewry only that God was known but he whose name was great in Israel did make way for the knowledge of himself among all the Nations of the earth And that allwise God who directed the Magi by a star to Christ making use of their former skill in Astronomy to take notice of that star which came now on a peculiar errand to them to lead them to their Saviour The great God condescending so far to mankind as to take advantage of particular inclinations and to accommodate himself to them for which purpose it is very observable that he appeared in another way to the Wisemen then to the poor Shepherds the same God made use of the curiosity and inquisitiveness after knowledge which was in Ptolomaeus Philadelphus which he is so much applauded for by Athenaeus and others to bring to light the most advantageous knowleage which the world ever had before the coming of Christ in the slesh And that great Library of his erecting at Alexandria did never deserve that title till it had lodged those Sacred records and then it did far better then the old one of Osymanduas of which Historians tells us this was the Inscription ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã The shop of the souls Physick But this being a matter of so much concernment in order to our better understanding the original of these vast accounts of time among the Chaldaeans and Aegyptians and a subject not yet touched by any we shall a little further improve the probability of it by taking a more particular account of the time when the Scriptures were first translated and the occasion might thereby be given to these Aegyptians Chaldaeans to produce their fabulous account into the view of the world Whether the Scriptures had been ever before translated into the Greek
language though it be asserted by some antient writers of the Church is very questionable chiefly upon this account that a sufficient reason cannot be assigned of undertaking a new translation at Alexandria if there had been any extant before Especially if all those circumstances of that translation be true which are commonly received and delivered down to us with almost an unanimous consent of the persons who had greater advantages of knowing the certainty of such things then we can have at this great distance of time And therefore certainly every petty conjecture of some modern though learned men ought not to bear sway against so unanimous a tradition in a matter of fact which cannot be capable of being proved but by the testimony of former ages And it is somewhat strange that the single testimony of one Hermippus in Diogenes Laertius whose age and authority is somewhat doubtful concerning only one particular referring to Demetrius Phalcrous should be thought of force enough among persons of judgement as well as learning to infringe the credibility of the whole story delivered with so much consent not only by Christian but Iewish writers the testimony of one of which every whit as considerable as Hermippus viz. Aristobulus Iudaeus a Peripatetical Philosopher in an Epistle to Ptolomy Philometor doth plainly assert that which was so much questioned concerning Demetrius Phalereus But whatever the truth of all the particular circumstances be which I here enquire not after nor the authority of that Aristeus from whom the story is received nor whether this translation was made by Iews sent out of Iudea or by Iews residing at Alexandria it sufficeth for our purpose that this translation was made before either the Chaldaean Dynasties of Bârosus or the Aegyptian of Manetho were published to the World In order to which it is necessary to shew in what time this translation was effected and herein that channel of tradition which conveyes the truth of the thing in one certain course runs not with so even a stream concerning the exact time of it all indeed agree that it was about the time of Ptolomaeus Philadelphus but in what years of his raign is very dubious Ioseph Scaliger who hath troubled the waters so much concerning the particular circumstances of this translation yet fully agrees that it was done in the time of Ptolomaeus Philadelphus only he contends with Africanus that it should be done in the 132. Olympiad which is in the 33. year of Ptolomaeus Philadelphus but Eusebius and Ierom place it in the very beginning of his raign which I think is far more probable and that in the time when Ptolomaeus Philadelphus raigned with his Father Ptolomaeus Lagi for so it is most certain he did for two years before his Fathers death By which means the great difficulty of Scaliger concerning Demetrius Phalereus is quite taken off for Hermippus speaks nothing of Demetrius his being out of favour with Philadelphus during his Fathers life but that upon his fathers death he was banished by him and dyed in his banishment so that Demetrius might have the oversight of the Library at Alexandria and be the main instrument of promoting this translation and yet those things be after true which Hermippus speaks viz. when Ptolomaeus Lagi or Soter was now dead For it stands not to reason that during his Fathers life Philadelphus should discover his displeasure against Demetrius it being conceived upon the advice given to his Father for preserring the sons of Arsinoe to the Crown before the son of Berenice Most likely therefore it is that this translation might be begun by the means of Demetrius Phalereus in the time of Philadelphus his raigning with his Father but it may be not finished till after the death of Soter when Philadelphus raigned alone And by this now we can perfectly reconcile that difference which is among the Fathers concerning the time when this translation was made For Irenaeus attributes it to the time of Ptolomaeus Lagi Clemens Alexandrinus questions whether in the time of Lagi or Philadelphus the rest of the Chorus carry it for Philadelphus but the words of Anatolius in Eusebius cast it fully for both for there speaking of Aristobulus he saith he was one of the seventy who interpreted the Scriptures to Ptolomaeus Philadelphus and his Father and dedicated his Commentaries upon the Law to both those Kings Haec sane omnem scrupulum eximunt saith Vossius upon producing this testimony this puts it out of all doubt and to the same purpose speaks the learned Iesuite Petavius in his notes on Epiphanius Having thus far cleared the time when the Translation of the Scriptures into Greck was made we shall find our conjecture much strengthened by comparing this with the age of the fore-mentioned Historians Manetho and Berosus Manetho we have already made appear to have lived in the time of Ptolomaeus Philadelphus and that saith Vossius after the death of Soter It is evident from what remains of him in Eusebius his Chronica that he not only flourished in the time of Philadelphus but writ his history at the special command of Philadelphus as manifestly appears by the remaining Epistle of Manetho to him still extant in Eusebius This command of Philadelphus might very probably be occasioned upon the view of that account which the Holy Scriptures being then translated into Greek did give of the world and the propagation of mankind upon which we cannot imagine but so inquisitive a person as Philadelphus was would be very earnest to have his curiosity satisfied as to what the Aegyptian Priests who had boasted so much of antiquity could produce to confront with the Scriptures Whereupon the task was undertaken by this Manetho High-Priest of Heliopolis whereby those things which the Aegyptian Priests had to that time kept secret in their Cloysters were now divulged and exposed to the judgement of the learned world but what satisfaction they were able to give inquisitive minds as to the main ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã or matter enquired after may partly appear by what hath been said of Manetho already and by what shall be spoken of his Dynastyes afterwards But all this will not perswade Kircher for whatever Scaliger nay what Manetho himself says to the coutrary he with the confidence and learning of a Iesuite affirms that this Manetho is elder then Alexander the great For these are his words Frequens apud priscos historicos Dynaestiarum Aegyptiacarum fit mentio quarum tamen alium authorem non habemus nisi Manethonem Sebennytam Sacerdotem Aegyptium quem ante tempor a Alexandri quicquid dicat Scaliger in Aegypto floruisse comperio Certainly some more then ordinary evidence may be expected after so confident an affirmation but whatever that person be in other undertakings he is as unhappy a person in Philology as any that have pretended so much acquaintance with it One would think he that had been twenty years as
he tells us himself courting the Aegyptian Mysteries for compassing his Oedipus should have found some better arguments to prove an assertion of this nature then meerly the testimony of Iosephus the Hebrew book Iuchasin and some Arabick Writers not one of all which do mention the thing they are brought for viz. that Manetho was elder then Alexander All the business is they quote him as an ancient Writer but what then The Author of the Book Iuchasim was Abraham Zacuth a Iew of Salamancha who writ in the year of our Lord 1502. and this book was first printed at Constantinople 1556. Might not this man then well mention Manetho as an ancient Writer if he flourished above 1600 years before him in the time of Ptolomaeus Philadelphus And what if some Arabick Writers mention him are they of so great antiquity and credit themselves that it is an evidence Manetho lived in Alexanders time to be praised by them It would be well if Kircber and other learned men who think the world is grown to so great stupidity as to believe every thing to be a Iewel which is far fetched would first assert and vindicate the antiquity and fidelity of their Arabick Authors such as Gelaldinus Abenephi and many others before they expect we should part with our more authentick Records of History for those fabulous relations which they are so full fraught withall Were it here any part of my present business it were an easie matter so to lay open the ignorance falsity and fabulousness of those Arabians whom that Author relies so much upon that he could not be freed from a design to impose upon the world who makes use of their Testimony in matters of ancient times without a Caveat I know none fit to believe these Arabick Writers as to these things but those who have faith enough to concoct the Rabbins in matter of History Of whom Origen saith ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Who are as Grotius truly saith pessimi historiae Magistri nam ex quo patria expulsi sunt omnis apud illos historia crassis erroribus fabulis est inquinata quibus proinde nihil credendum est nisi aliunde testes accederunt And as Is. Caubason passeth this sharp but due censure upon them Rabbinis ubi de Lingna Hebraica agitur vocis alicujus proprietate vel aliquo Talmudico instituto meritò à Christianis tribui non parum nbi verò à verbis venitur ad res aut ad historiam vel rerum antiquarum veteris populi explicationem nisi falli decipi volumus nihil admodum esse illis fidei habendum Sexcentis argumentis hoc facilè probarem si id nunc agerem And in reference to their ancient rites as well as history Ioseph Scaliger hath given this verdict of them Manifesta est Iudaeorum inscitia qui cum usu veterum rituum etiam corum cognitionem amiserunt multa quae ad eorum sacra historiam pertinent longè meliùs nos teneamus quam ipsi The same which these very learned persons say of Rabbinical may with as much truth be said of these Arabick Writers in matters of ancient history which I have here inserted to shew the reason why I have thought the testimony of either of these two sorts of persons so inconsiderable in the matter of our future discourse which being historical and that of the greatest antiquity little relief is to be expected from either of them in order thereto But to return to Kircher It is freely granted that Iosephus an Author of credit and age sufficient to give his opinion in this case doth very frequently cite Manetho in his Aegyptian History particularly in his learned Books against Appion but where he doth give the least intimation of Manetho being elder then Alexander I am yet to seek But Kircher will not yet leave the matter so but undertakes to give an account of the mistake which is that there were two Manetho's besides and both Aegyptians mentioned by Suidas one a Mendesian who writ of the Preparation of the Aegyptian ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a kind of perfume used by the Aegyptian Priests The other a Diospolitan who writ some Physiological and Astronomical Treatises whose works he hears are preserved in the Duke of Florenee his Librarie and this was he saith he who lived in the times of Augustus whom many by the aequivocation of the name have confounded with the ancient Writer of the Aegyptian Dynastyes Is it possible so learned a Iesuite should discover so little judgement in so few words For first who ever asserted the Writer of the Dynastyes to have lived in the time of Augustus Yet secondly if that Manetho whom Suidas there speaks of lived in Augustus his time according to Kircher then it must necessarily follow that the Compiler of the Dynastyes did for it is evident to any one that looks into Suidas that he there speaks of the same Manetho for these are his words ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã c. Can any thing be more plain then that he here speaks of Manetho Sebennyta who was the Author of the Dynastyes though he might write other things besides of which Suidas there speaks But Kircher very wisely in translating Suidas his words leaves out ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which decides the controversie and makes it clear that he speaks of the same Manetho of whom we have been discoursing Thus it still appears that this Manetho is no elder then the time of Ptolomy Philadelphus which was the thing to be proved Now for Berosus although the Chaldeans had occasion enough given them before this time to produce their antiquities by the Iews converse with them in Babylon yet we find this Author the first who durst adventure them abroad such as they were in Greek Now that this Berosus published his history after the time mentioned I thus prove Tatianus Assyrius tells us that he writ the Chaldaick history in three books and dedicated them to Antiochus ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as it is read in the fragment of Tatianus preserved in Eusebius but it must be acknowledged that in the Paris edition of Tatianus as well as the Basil it is thus read ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã here it relates to the third from Alexander in the other to the third from Seleucus Now if we reckon the third so as to take the person from whom we reckon in for the first according to the reading in Eusebius it falls to be Antiochus called ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã according to the other reading it falls to be Antiochus Soter for Seleucus succeeded Alexander in the Kingdom of Syria Antiochus Soter Seleucus Antiochus ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Antiochus Soter But according to either of these readings our purpose is sufficiently proved For Antiochus Soter began to reign in Syria in the sixth year of Ptol. Philadelphus in Aegypt Antiochus ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã succeeded him in the 22. year of Philadelphus
real learning or truth at all in them For this though he be sharply censured by Strabo in his first Book who undertakes to vindicate the Geography of Homer from the exceptions of Eratosthenes yet himself cannot but confess that there is a âvery great mixture of Fables in all their Poets which is saith he partly to delight the people and partly to awe them For the minds of men being always desirous of novelties such things do hugely please the natural humours of weak people especially if there be something in them that is ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã very strange and wonderful it increaseth the delight in hearing it ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which draws them on to a desire of hearing more of it And by this means saith he are children first brought on to learning and all ignorant persons are kept in awe nay and the more learned themselves partly for want of reason and judgement and partly from the remainder of those impressions which these things made upon them when they were children cannot shake off that former credulity which they had as to these things By which discourse of Strabo though intended wholly by him in vindication of Poetick Fables it is plain and evident what great disservice hath been done to truth by them by reason they had no other Records to preserve their ancient history but these fabulous Writers and therefore supposing a mixture of truth and falshood together which Strabo contends for yet what way should be taken to distinguish the true from the false when they had no other certain Records and besides he himself acknowledgeth how hard a matter it is even for wise men to excuss those fabulous narrations out of their minds which were insinuated into them by all the advantages which prejudice custome and education could work upon them Granting then there may be some truth at the bottom of their fabulous narrations ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Which may be gilded over with some pleasing tales as himself compares it yet how shall those come to know that it is only gilded that never saw any pure mettal and did always believe that it was what it seemed to be Had there been any ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã or touchstone to have differenced between the one and the other there might have been some way for a separation of them but there being none such we must conclude that the fabulous Narrations of Poets in stead of making Truth more pleasant by their fictions have so adulterated it that we cannot find any credibility at all in their narrations of elder times where the truth of the story hath had no other way of conveyance but through their fictions But though Poets may be allowed their liberty for representing things with the greatest advantage to the palats of their Readers yet we may justly expect when men profess to be historical they should deliver us nothing but what upon strictest examination may prove undoubted truth Yet even this were the Greeks far from for Strabo himself confesseth of their eldest Historians ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã their first Historians both of persens and things were fabulous Diodorus particularly instanceth in their eldest Historians as Cadmus Milesius Hecataeus and Hellanicus and condemns them for fabulousness Strabo condemns Damastes Sigeensis for vanity and falshood and wonders at Eratosthenes for making use of him yet this man is of great antiquity among them and his testimony used by Authors of good credit as Dionys Halycarnassius Plutarch and others Nay Pliny professeth to follow him and so he doth Aristeus Procennesius in his Arimaspia which may render the credit of his History very suspicious with whom it was a sufficient ground of credibility to any story that he found it in some Greek Authors Strabo reckons Damastes with Euëmerus Messenius and Antiphanes Bergeus which latter was so noted a lyar that from him as Stephanus tells us ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã was used as a proverb for to speak never a word of truth Aristeus Proconnesius lived in the time of Cyrus and writ a History of the Arimaspi in three Books who seems to have been the Sir Iohn Maridevil of Greece from his Stories of the Arimaspi with one eye in their foreheads and their continual fighting with the Gryphens for gold yet the story was taken upon trust by Herodotus Pliny and many others though the experience of all who have visited those Northern Climats do sufficiently refute these follies Strabo saith of this Aristeus that he was ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã one inferiour to none for juggling which cenfure was probably occasioned by the common story of him that he could let his soul out of his body when he pleased and bring it again yet this Juggler did Celsus pitch on to confront with our blessed Saviour as Herocles did on Apollinus so much have those been to seek for reason who have fought to oppose the doctrine of faith But further what credit can we give to those Historians who have striven to confute each other and lay open one anothers falshood to the world Where was there ever any such dissonancy in the sacred History of Scripture doth the Writer of one Book discover the weakness of another do not all the parts so exactly agree that the most probable suspicion could ever fall into the heart of an Infidel is that they were all written by the same person which yet the series of times manifests to have been impossible But now if we look into the ancient Greek Historians we need no other testimony then themselves to take away their credibility The Genealogies of Hesiod are corrected by Acusiddus Acusiddus is condemned by Hellanicus Hellanicus accused of falshood by Ephorus Ephorus by Timaeus Timaeus by such who followed him as Iosephus fully shews Where must we then fix our belief upon all in common that is the ready way to believe contradictions for they condemn one another of falshood Must we believe one and reject the rest but what evidence doth that one give why he should be credited more then the rest And which is a most irrefragable argument against the Graecian history their eldest historians are ackowledged to be the most fabulous for our only recourse for deciding the controversies among the younger historians must be to the elder And here we are further to seek then ever for the first ages are confessed to be Poetical and to have no certainty of truth in them So that it is impossible to find out any undoubted certainty of ancient times among the Greek Historians which will be yet more evident when we add this that there are very few extant of those Historians who did carry the greatest name for Antiquity The highest antiquity of the Greek Historians doth not much exceed the time of Cyrus and Cambyses as Vossius hath fully demonstrated in his learned book De Historiâis Graecis and therefore I shall spare particular enquiries into their
and what was not suitable was rejected as monstrous and Anomalous so it was in their history wherein they had some fabulous hypotheses they took for granted without enquiring into the truth and certainty of them and to these they suit whatever light they gained in after times of the state of forreign Nations which hath made Truth and Antiquity wrestle so much with the corruptions which eat into them through the pride and ignorance of the Greeks Hence they have alwayes suited the History of other Nations with the account they give of their own and where nothing could serve out of their own History to give an account of the original of other Nations they who were never backward at fictions have made a founder of them suitable to their own language The truth is there is nothing in the world useful or beneficial to mankind but they have made shift to finde the Author of it among themselves If we enquire after the original of agriculture we are told of Ceres and Triptolemus if of pasturage we are told of an Arcadian Pan if of wine we presently hear of a Liber Pater if of Iron instruments then who but Vulcan if of Musick none like to Apollo If we press them then with the History of other Nations they are as well provided here if we enquire an account of Europe Asia or Lybia for the first we are told a fine story of Cadmus his sister for the second of Promethâus his Mother of that name and for the third of a daughter of Epaphus If we are yet so curious as to know the original of particular Countries then Italia must finde its name from a Calfe of Hercules because ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã in Greek will signifie some such thing Sardinia and Africa must be from Sardos and Afer two sons of Hercules but yet if these will not serve Hercules shall not want for children to people the world for we hear of Scythes Galatas Lydus some other sons of his that gave names to Scythia Lydia Galatia with the same probability that Media had its name from Medea and Spain and Lusitania from Pan and Lusus two companione of Bacchus If Persia want a founder they have one Perseus an Argive ready for it if Syria Babylonia and Arabia want reasons of their names the prodigal Greeks will give Apollo three sons Syrus Babylon and Arabs rather then they shall be heretical Acephalists This vanity of theirs was universal not confined to any place or age but as any Nation or people came into their knowledge their Gods were not so decrepit but they might Father one son more upon them rather then any Nation should be filia populi and want a Father Only the grave Athenians thought scorn to have any Father assigned them their only ambition was to be accounted Aborigines genuini terrae to be the eldest sons of their Teeming mother the earth and to have been born by the same aequivocal generation that mice and frogs are from the impregnated slime of the earth Are we not like to have a wonderfull account of antient times from those who could arrogate to themselves so much knowledge from such slender and thin accounts of the originals of people which they gave and would have the world to entertain with the greatest veneration upon their naked words Have we not indeed great reason to hearken to those who did so frequently discover their affection to Fables and manifest their ignorance when ever they venture upon the History of other Nations The truth is Herodotus himself whom Tully calls the Father of History which title he deserves at least in regard of antiquity being the eldest of the extant Greek Historians hath stood in need of his Compurgators who yet have not been able to acquit him of fabulousness but have sought to make good his credit by recrimination or by making it appear that Herodotus did not fully believe the stories he tells but took them upon trust himself and so delivers them to the world Some impute it to the ingenuity of Herodotus that he calls his books of History by the name of the Muses on purpose to tell his readers they must not look for meer History in him but a mixture of such relations which though not true might yet please and entertain his readers Though others think they were not so inscribed by himself but the names were given to them by the Greeks from the admiration his History had among them However this were this we are certain that Herodotus was not first suspected of falshood in these latter ages of the world but even among the Greeks themselves there have been found some that would undertake to make good that charge against him For so Suidas tells us of one Harpocration Aelius who writ a book on purpose to discover the falshood of Herodotus ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Plutarch his books are well known of the spight or malignity of Herodotus but the occasion of that is sufficiently known likewise because Herodotus had given no very favourable character of Plutarchs Country Strabo likewise seems to accuse Herodotus much of nugacity and mixing prodigious fables with his History but I confess observing the grounds on which Plutarch insists against Herodotus I am very prone to think that the ground of the great pique in some of the Greek writers against Herodotus was that he told too many tales out of School and had discovered too much of the Infancy of Greece and how much the Grecians borrowed of the Aegyptian superstitions which Plutarch expresly speaks of that Herodotus was too much led aside ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Although therefore Herodotus may not be much too blame in the things which the Graecians most charge him with yet those who favour him most cannot excuse his palpable mistakes in some things and ignorance in others Iosephus thinks he was deceived by the Aegyptian Priests in things relating to the state of their affairs of which Ios. Scaliger gives many accounts either saith he the persons who gave him his intelligence were ignorant themselves or else like true Egyptians they were cunning enough but imposed upon Herodotus being a stranger and unacquainted with their artifices or else he did not understand his Interpreter or was deceived by him or lastly Herodotus might have so much of a Grecian in him as to adulterate the true History with some fables of his own wherefore he rather adheres to Manetho then Herodotus as to the Aegyptian History who yet elsewhere I will not say with what constancy to himself vouchsafes him this high elogium that he is Scrinium originum Graecarum Barbararum auctor à doctis nunquam deponendus It cannot be denyed but a great deal of very useful history may be fetched out of him yet who can excuse his Ignorance when he not only denyes there is an Ocean compassing the Land but condemns the Geographers for asserting it Unless this might be
elder then Christianity among them Among the Romans was used an ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which was for the sake of the Nundinae returning every ninth day The Mexicans as Scaliger tells us reckon all by a ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a System of thirteen dayes Next to these were their Moneths which were either Lunar or Solar The Lunar were either from the Moons return to the same point of the Zodiack again called ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which was less then twenty eight dayes but this was of no use in civil computations or else from one conjunction of the Moon with the Sun to another which was called ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã or else from the first phasis of the Moon the second day after its coitus called ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã some as the Graecians reckoned their Lunar moneths from the coitus as Scaliger proves out of Vitruvius others from the phasis as some Eastern Nations did as the Iews began their observation of the New Moons from the first phasis or appearance of her after the coitus The Solar moneths were either natural such as were defined by the Suns passage from one sign of the Zodiack to another or civil whereby the moneths were equally divided into 30 dayes apiece as in the Graecian and Aegyptian year Having thus far seen of what the year consists we now proceed to shew that the ancient Nations did not observe one constant certain form of year among them but had several in use to which their accounts may be referred And because the Aegyptians are supposed to have been best skilled as to the form of the year according to that of Macrobius Anni certus modus apud solos semper Aegyptios fuit We shall particularly demonstrate the variety of years in use among them By which we shall see what great uncertainty there is in their accounts of their Dynastyes For first it is evident that the time of 30 days was among the ancient Aegyptians accounted a year for which we have the testimony of Plutarch in Numa ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã The Egyptians at first had a year consisting of one moneth and after of four And this if we believe Alexander ab Alexandro was the year most frequently in use among them So Varro in Lactantius gives an account of the great age of some men in ancient times who are supposed to have lived 1000 years Ait enim apud Aegyptios pro annis menses haberi ut non Solis per 12 signa circaitus faciat annum sed Luna quae orbem illum signiferum 30 dierum spatio illustrat It is then evident that this year of thirty days was in use among the Aegyptians the only scruple is whether it was used in their sacred accounts or no and that it was we have a pregnant testimony in Plutarch in the fore-cited place speaking of the Aegyptians great pretence to antiquity he gives this account of it ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã They reckon an infinite number of years in their accounts âecause they reckon their moneths in stead of years According to this computation it will be no difficult matter to reduce the vast accounts of the Aegyptian antiquity to some proportion and to reconcile their exorbitant Dynastyes with sobriety and truth especially as to the account given of them by Diodorus Siculus for so Diodorus gives in their accounts that the Gods and Heroes reigned in Aegypt for the space of near 18000 years and the last of them was Orus the Son of Isis From the reign of men in Aegypt he reckons about 9500 years to the time if we admit of Iacob Capellus his correction of ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã for ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã in Diodorus with his entrance into Aegypt which was in the 180 Olympiad Now as the foresaid learned Author observes Diodorus came into Aegypt A. M. 3940. V. C. 694. the mortal men then had reigned in Aegypt 9500 years which taking it for these Lunar years of 30 dayes makes of Iulian years 780. the Heroes and Gods 18000 moneths that is of Iulian years 1478 from these two summs together are gathered 2258 years which being deducted from the year of the world 3940 falls in the year of the world 1682. about which time Misraim who was the great historical O siris of Aegypt so called by a light variation of his former name might be well supposed to be born for that was in the year of Noah 630. and so Orus might be born who was the Son of Osiris about the year of the world 1778. Between whose time and Alexander the great his Conquest of Aegypt the Aegyptians as the same Diodorus tells us reckon little less then 23000 years Now according to this computation of 30 days for a year we may reconcile this to truth too for from 1778 to 3667 of the world which falls upon the 417 year of Nabonassar there is an interval of 1889 years which makes of these Lunar years of 30 days saith Cappellus 22996. and 15 days which comes very near if not altogether up to the Aegyptian Computation So when the Aegyptians according to Diodorus make no less then 10000 years distance between their Hercules and Hercules Baeotius the Son of Alcmena it must be understood of these Lunar years for granting what the Aegyptians say that Hercules Baeotius lived but one generation before the Trojan war and so his time to fall out about 2783. reckoning now backward from thence and deducting from that year of the world 10000 moneths of 30 days or Iulian years 831. and 130 days the time of the Aegyptian Hercules will fall about the first year of the world 1962. about which time we may well suppose him to live or die And according to this computation we are to understand what the Aegyptians told Herodotus that from their first King or Priest of Vulcan till the time of Sethoes in whose time Sennacherib attempted the Conquest of Aegypt that there had been passed 341 Generations and as many Kings and High-Priests and 11340 years reckoning three Generations to make up a Century But now if we understand this prodigious computation according to this form of years we may suspect the Aegyptians of an intention to deceive Herodotus and the credulous Greeks but yet not impeach them of direct falshood it being thus reconcilable to truth For according to this account 100 years makes 3000 days and a Generation 1000. so many days the Kings or Priests of Vulcan may be allowed to reign so 340 Generations of a 8000 days apiece make up 340000 days to which if we add the 200 days which Sethos had now reigned upon Sennacheribs invasion we have 340200 days which makes up of these years of 30 days apeece 11340 which is the number assigned by Herodotus Iacobus Cappellus thinks the Epocha from whence these years are to be reckoned is from A. M. 2350. when Mephres began to reign in Aegypt from whence
reason of this diversity but that they thought them not so authentick but they might cut off alter and transpose as they saw occasion which is most plain and evident in Eusebius who makes no difficulty of âutting of one whole Dynasty and dividing another into two only to reconcile the distance between Thuoris the Egyptian King and Tentamus the Assyrian Emperour and the destruction of Troy and therefore leaves out 4. Assyrian Kings and a whole Dynasty of the Egyptians to make a Synchronisme between those three But yet there hath been something very fairly offered to the world to clear the truth if not Manetho in order to his Dynastyes viz. that the subtle Egyptian to inhance the antiquity of his own Country did take implicite years for solid and place those in a succession which were cotemporary one with another This indeed is a very compendious way to advance a great sum of years with a very little charge Wherein he hath done saith Cappellus as if a Spaniard in the Indies should glory of the antiquity of the Dynastyes of Spain and should attribute to the Earles of Barcinona 337. years to the King of Arragon 498. to the King of Portugal 418. to the King of Leo 545. of Castile 800. years and yet all these Dynastyes rise from the years of our Lord 717. when the Saracens first entred Spain There are very few Nations but will go near to vie antiquity with the Egyptians if they may thus be allowed to reckon successively all those petty royalties which antiently were in most Nations as might be particularly instanced in most great Empires that they gradually rise from the subduing and incorporating of those petty royalties into which the several Nations were cantonized before And there seems to be very strong ground of suspition that some such thing was designed by Manetho from the 32. Dynasty which is of the Diospolitan Thebans for this Dynasty is said to begin from the tenth year of the 15. Dynasty of the Phaenician Pastours in the time of Saites now which is most observable he that begins this Dynasty is of the very same name with him who begins the very first Dynasty of Manetho who is Menes and so likewise his son Athothis is the same in both Which hath made many think because Menes is reckoned first not only in both these but in Diodorus Eratosthenes and others that this Menes was he who first began the Kingdom of Egypt after whose time it was divided into several Dynastyes Which makes Scaliger say illa vet ustissima regna fuerunt instar latrociniorum ubi vis non lex aut successio aut suffragia populi reges in solio regni collocabant This opinion of the coexistence of these Dynastyes is much embraced by Vossius both Father and Son and by the Father made use of to justifie Scaliger from calumniatours who made as though Scaliger did in effect overthrow the authority of the Scriptures by mentioning with some applause the Dynastyes of Manetho But to this opinion how plausible soever it seems I offer these exceptions First As to that Menes who is supposed to be the first founder of the Aegyptian Kingdom after whose death it is supposed that Aegypt was divided into all these Dynastyes I demand therefore who this Menes was was he the same with him whom the Scripture calls Misraim who was the first Planter of Egypt this is not probable for in all probability his name must be sought among the Gods and not the mortals that raigned If we suppose him to be any other after him it will be hard giving an account how he came to have the whole power of Egypt in his hands and so soon after him it should be divided For Kingdoms are ofttimes made up of those petty royalties before but it will be very hard finding instances of one persons enjoying the whole power and so many Dynastyes to arise after his decease and to continue coexistent in peace and full power so long as these several Dynastyes are supposed to do Besides is it not very strange that no Historian should mention such a former distribution of several principalities so antiently in Egypt But that which to me utterly overthrows the coexistence of these Dynastyes in Egypt is by comparing with them what we finde in Scripture of greatest antiquity concerning the Kingdom of Egypt which I cannot but wonder that none of these learned men should take notice of When the Egyptian Kingdom was first founded is not here a place to enquire but it is evident that in Abrahams time there was a Pharaoh King of Egypt whom Archbishop Usher thinks to have been Apophis not Abimelech the first King of Egypt as Constantinus Manasses reports in his Annals by a ridiculous mistake of the King of Gerar for the King of Egypt This Pharaoh was then certainly King of all the Land of Egypt which still in Scripture is called the Land of Misraim from the first planter of it and this was of very great antiquity and therefore Funccius though improbably thinks this Pharaoh to have been Osiris and Rivet thinks Misraim might have been alive till that time here then we find no Dynastyes coexisting but one Kingdom under one King If we descend somewhat lower to the times of Iacob and Ioseph the evidence is so undoubted of Aegypts being an entire Kingdom under one King that he may have just cause to suspect the âyes either of his body or his mind that distrusts it For what more evident then that Pharaoh who preferred Ioseph was King of all the Land of Aegypt Were not the seven years of famine over all the Land of Aegypt Gen. 41. 55. Was not Joseph set by Pharaoh over all the Land of Aegypt Gen. 41. 41 43 45. And did not Joseph go over all the Land of Aegypt to gather corn Gen. 41. 46. Nay did not he buy all the Land of Aegypt for Pharaoh Gen. 47. 20. Can there possibly be given any fuller evidence of an entire Kingdom then these are that Egypt was such then Afterwards we read of one King after another in Egypt for the space of nigh two hundred years during the children of Israels slavery in Egypt and was not he think we King over all Egypt in whose time the children of Israel went out thence And in all the following history of Scripture is there not mention made of Aegypt still as an entire Kingdom and of one King over it Where then is there any place for these co-temporary Dynastyes in Aegypt Nowhere that I know of but in the sancies of some learned men Indeed there is one place that seems to give some countenance to this opinion but it is in far later times then the first Dynastyes of Manetho are supposed to be in which is in Isai. 19. 2. Where God saith he would set the Aegyptians against the Aegyptians and they shall fight every one against his brother City against City and Kingdom
which account we may justly reject all those pretended successions of Kings hâre in Britain from Gomer to Brute as fabulous And it will be the less wonder it should be so in those then accounted barbarous Nations when even among those who were the Planters of knowledge and civility among others the account of their ancient times is so dark confused and uncertain As it would sufficiently appear to any that would take the pains to examine the succession of the two first Dynastyes among the Latins the first before Aeneas his coming into Italy and the second of the Aeneadae after and certainly it will be sufficient ground to question the account of times before if in the third Dynasty when the succession seems so clear and so certain an Epocha as the building of Rome to deduce their accounts from their Chronology be uncertain which I shall briefly speak to For although Porcius Cato have in Dionysius the honour of finding out the first Palilia of the City of Rome which was the Feast observed to the honour of the God Pales in the time of which the foundations of Rome were laid yet there appears no great certainty in his undertaking for therein he was after contradicted by the learned Roman Varro Dionysius tells us that Cato found by the Censors tables the exact time from the expulsion of the Kings to the time of the Cities being taken by the Gauls from which time to his own he could not miss of it from the Fasti Consulares so that it cannot be denied but that Cato might have a certain account of times from the Regifugium to the time he writ his Origines But what certainty Cato could have from the first Palilia of the City to the expulsion of Tarquin we cannot understand For the succession of Kings must needs be very uncertain unless it be demonstrated from some publick monuments or certain records or some publick actions certainly known to have fallen out precisely in such a year of their several Reigns Now none of these do occur in the Roman history in all that Interval from the Palilia to the Regifugium so that not only the whole interval but the time of every particular Kings Reign are very uncertain And therefore Varro being destitute of any demonstration of that time had recourse to L. Tarrutius Firmanus to see if by his skill in Astronomy he could certainly find out the first Palilia of Rome His answer was that he found that the City was built in the time of an Eclipse of the Sun which was in the third year of the sixth Olympiad according to which account Varro proceeded and thence arose the difference between the Palilia Catoniana and Varroniana the latter falling out in the 23 of Iphitus the other in the 24. But if we believe Ioseph Scaliger there could not be an Eclipse of the Sun at the time affirmed by Tarrutius But yet granting an Eclipse of the Sun then what certainty can we have of the succession of the several Kings afterwards without which there can be no certain computation ab Urbe Condita If then the Romans who had so great advantage of knowing times and were withall so inquisitive concerning the building of their City which was a thing of no very remote distacne could attain to no absolute certainty without it what certainty can we expect as to an account of far ancienter times either from them or others when they had no Censors tables nor Fasti Consulares to be guided by And thus much may serve to shew the great uncertainty of Heathen Chronology as to the giving an account of ancient times And yet were it only an uncertainty as to Chronology we might better bear with it for the mistake meerly in computation of times were not so dangerous any further then the credibility of the history depends on the computation as in point of antiquity if we were but certain that the persons and actions related of them were such as they are reported to be But that which adds much to the confusion and uncertainty of Heathen history is the frequency of Impostures which are more hard to be discovered in that there are no authentick histories of those times extant which hath both given occasion to variety of imposture and much hindered their discovery For the curiosity of men leading them back into a search after ancient times it makes them exceeding credulous in embracing whatever pretends to give them any conduct through those dark and obscure paths of ancient history And the world hath never been wanting of such as would be ready to abuse the simple credulity of well-meaning but less wary men but those ages have been most feracious in the production of such persons which have pretended to more Learning then they had The pretence of learning made such persons appear and the want of it made them not be discovered Thus it was not only of old among the Chaldean and Aegyptian Priests and the Graecian Poets and Historians of whom we have spoken already but even among those who might have learned more truth from the Religion they professed then to think it stood in need of their lyes For there can be no greater disparagement offered to truth then to defend it with any thing but it self nothing laying truth so open to suspicion as when falshood comes to be its advocate And a false testimony discovered doth more prejudice to a good cause then it could any wayes advantage it were it not discovered and therefore their labours have been as serviceable to the world who have discovered Impostors as those who have directly maintained truth against its open opposers those being so much more dangerous in that they appear in the disguise of truth and therefore are with more difficulty discovered Such a one was that ignis fatuus that appeared in a kind of twilight in the Christian world between the former darkness of Barbarism and the approaching light of knowledge I mean Annius Viterbiensis who like Hannibal in passing the Alps not finding a way ready to his mind sets himself to burning the woods and firing the rocks and dissolving them with vinegar to make a passage through them So Annius being beset in those snowy and gray-headed Alps of ancient history and finding no way clear for him according to his fancy he labours to burn down all certain Records to eat through the credit of undoubted Authors to make a more free passage for his own history which he deduceth suitably to Scripture from the concurrent testimony of the eldest Historians To which purpose a New Berosus Manetho Philo Metasthenes as he mistook for Megasthenes and Xenophon must put on a grave disguise and walk abroad the world with a mantle of Antiquity about their shoulders although they were nothing else but aery Phantasms covered over with the Cowl of the Monk of Viterbo For being himself somewhat more versed in the history of those elder times then generally persons were
so great uncertainty and confusion so much partiality and inconsistency with each other It remains now that I proceed to demonstrate the credibility of that account of ancient times which is reported in the Sacred Scriptures which will be the second part of our Task BOOK II. CHAP. I. The certainty of the Writings of Moses In order to the proving the truth of Scripture-history several Hypotheses laid down The first concerns the reasonableness of preserving the ancient History of the world in some certain Records from the importance of the things and the inconveniences of meer tradition or constant Revelation The second concerns the certainty that the Records under Moses his name were undoubtedly his The certainty of a matter of fact enquired into in general and proved as to this particular by universal consent and settling a Common-wealth upon his Laws The impossibility of an Imposture as to the writings of Moses demonstrated The plea's to the contrary largely answered HAving sufficiently demonstrated the want of credibility in the account of ancient times given by those Nations who have made the greatest pretence to Learning and Antiquity in the world we now proceed to evince the credibility and certainty of that account which is given us in sacred Screptures In order to which I shall premise these following Hypotheses It stands to the greatest reason that an account of things so concerning and remarkable should not be always left to the uncertainty of an oral tradition but should be timely entred into certain Records to be preserved to the memory of posterity For it being of concernment to the world in order to the establishment of belief as to future things to be fully setled in the belief that all things past were managed by Divine providence there must be some certain Records of former ages or else the mind of man will be perpetually hovering in the greatest uncertainties Especially where there is such a mutual dependence and concatenation of one thing with another as there is in all the Scripture-history For take away but any one of the main foundations of the Mosaical history all the superstructure will be exceedingly weakened if it doth not fall quite to the ground For mans obligation to obedience unto God doth necessarily suppose his original to be from him his hearkening to any proposals of favour from God doth suppose his Apostacy and fall Gods designing to shew mercy and favour to fallen man doth suppose that there must be some way whereby the Great Creator must reveal himself as to the conditions on which fallen man may expect a recovery the revealing of these conditions in such a way whereon a suspicious because guilty creature may firmly rely doth suppose so certain a recording of them as may be least liable to any suspicion of imposture or deceit For although nothing else be in its self necessary from God to man in order to his salvation but the bare revealing in a certain way the terms on which he must expect it yet considering the unbounded nature of Divine goodness respecting not only the good of some particular persons but of the whole society of mankind it stands to the greatest reason that such a revelation should be so propounded as might be with equal certainty conveyed to the community of mankind Which could not with any such evidence of credibility be done by private and particular revelations which give satisfaction only to the inward senses of the partakers of them as by a publick recording of the matters of Divine revelation by such a person who is enabled to give the world all reasonable satisfaction that what he did was not of any private design of his own head but that he was deputed to it by no less then Divine authority And therefore it stands to the highest reason that where Divine revelation is necessary for the certain requiring of assent the matter to be believed should have a certain uniform conveyance to mens minds rather then that perpetually New revelations should be required for the making known of those things which being once recorded are not lyable to so many impostures as the other way might have been under pretended Revelations For then men are not put to a continual tryal of every person pretending Divine revelation as to the evidences which he brings of Divine authority but the great matters of concernment being already recorded and attested by all rational evidence as to the truth of the things their minds therein rest satisfied without being under a continual hesitancy lest the Revelation of one should contradict another For supposing that God had left the matters of Divine revelation unrecorded at all but left them to be discovered in every age by a spirit of prophecy by such a multitude as might be sufficient to inform the world of the truth of the things We cannot but conceive that an innumerable company of croaking Enthusiasts would be continually pretending commissions from heaven by which the minds of men would be left in continual distraction because they would have no certain infallible rules given them whereby to difference the good and evil spirit from each other But now supposing God to inspire some particular persons not only to reveal but to record Divine truths then what ever evidences can be brought attesting a Divine revelation in them will likewise prove the undoubted certainty and infallibility of those writings it being impossible that persons employed by a God of truth should make it their design to impose upon the world which gives us a rational account why the wise God did not suffer the History of the world to lye still unrecorded but made choice of such a person to record it who gave abundant evidence to the world that he acted no private design but was peculiarly employed by God himself for the doing of it as will appear afterwards Besides we finde by our former discourse how lyable the most certain tradition is to be corrupted in progress of time where there are no standing records though it were at first delivered by persons of undoubted credit For we have no reason to doubt but that the tradition of the old world the flood and the consequences of it with the nature and worship of the true God were at first spread over the greatest part of the world in its first plantations yet we see how soon for want of certain conveyance all the antient tradition was corrupted and abused into the greatest Idolatry Which might be less wondered at had it been only in those parts which were furthest remote from the seat of those grand transactions but thus we finde it was even among those families who had the nearest residence to the place of them and among those persons who were not far off in a lineal descent from the persons mainly concerned in them as is most evident in the family out of which Abraham came who was himself the tenth from Noah yet of them it is said that they
served other Gods How unlikely then was it that this tradition should be afterwards preserved entire when the people God had peculiarly chosen to himself were so mixed among the Aegyptians and so prone to the Idolatries of the Nations round about them and that even after God had given them a written Law attested with the greatest miracles what would they have done then had they never been brought forth of Aegypt by such signs and wonders and had no certain records left to preserve the memory of former ages Thus we see how much it stands to the greatest reason that so memorable things should be digested into sacred records We have as great certainty that Moses was the author of the records going under his name as we can have of any matter of fact done at so great a distance of time from us We are to consider that there are two very distinct questions to be thought of concerning a Divine revelation to any person at a considerable distance of time from us and those are what evidences can be given that the matters recorded are of a true divine revelation and what evidence we have of the truth of the matter of fact that such things were recorded by such persons They who do not carefully distinguish between these two questions will soon run themselves into an inextricable labyrinth when they either seek to understand themselves or explain to others the grounds on which they believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God The first step in order to which must be the proving the undoubted certainty of the matter of fact or the truth of the History that such persons were really existent and did either do or record the things we speak of After this succeeds the other to prove not only the real existence of the things but that the persons who recorded the things were assisted by an infallible spirit then there can be no reason at all to doubt but those records are the Word of God The first of these is that which at present we enquire after the certainty of the matter of fact that the records under the name of Moses were undoubtedly his And here it will be most unreasonable for any to seek for further evidence and demonstration of it then the matter to be proved is capable of But if they should I suppose we have sufficient reason to demonstrate the folly of such a demand and that on these accounts 1. Whoever yet undertook to bring matters of fact into Mathematical demonstrations or thought he had ground to question the certainty of any thing that was not proved in a Mathematical way to him Who would ever undertake to prove that Archimedes was kild at Syracuse by any of the demonstrations he was then about or that Euclide was the undoubted Author of the Geometry under his name or do men question these things for want of such demonstrations Yet this is all we at present desire but the same liberty here which is used in any thing of a like nature 2. I demand of the person who denyes this moral certainty to be sufficient for an assent whether he doth question every thing in the world which he was not present at the doing of himself If he be peremptorily resolved to believe nothing but what he sees he is fit for nothing but a voyage to Anticyrae or to be soundly purged with Hellebore to free him from those cloudy humours that make him suspect the whole world to be an imposture But we cannot suppose any man so destitute of reason as âo question the truth of every matter of fact which he doth not see himself if he doth then firmly believe any thing there must be supposed sufficient grounds to induce him to such a belief And then what ground can there be to question the certainty of such things which have as great evidence as any of those things have which he most firmly believes and this is all we desire from him 3. Do we not see that the most concerning and weighty actions of mens lives are built on no other foundation then this moral certainty yet men do not in the least question the truth of the thing they rely upon As is most evident in all titles to estates derived from Ancestors either by donation or purchase In all trading which goes upon the moral certainty that there are such places as the Indyes or France or Spain c. In all journyings that there is such a place as that I am going to and this is the way thither for these we have but this moral certainty for the contrary to both these are possible and the affirmatives are indemonstrable In eating and drinking there is a possibility of being poisoned by every bit of meat or drop of drink do we therefore continually doubt whether we shall be so or no Chiefly this is seen in all natural affection and piety in Children towards Parents which undoubtedly suppose the truth of that which it was impossible they could be witnesses of themselves viz. their coming out of their Mothers wombs And doth any one think this sufficient ground to question his mother because the contrary is impossible to be demonstrated to him In short then either we must destroy all Historical faith out of the world and believe nothing though never so much attested but what we see our selves or else we must acknowledge that a moral certainty is a sufficient foundation for an undoubted assent not such a one cui non potest subesse falsum but such a one cui non subest dubium i. e. an assent undoubted though not infallible By which we see what little reason the Aâheist on one side can have to question the truth of the Scriptures to the History of it and what little ground the Papists on the other side have to make a pretence of the necessity of infallibility as to the proposal of such things where moral certainty is sufficient that is to the matter of fâct Which I now come to prove as to the subject in hand viz. that the writings of Moses are undoubtedly his which I prove by a twofold argument 1. An universal consent of persons who were best able to know the truth of the things in question 2. The setling of a Commonwealth upon the Laws delivered by Moses 1. The universal Consent of persons most capable of judging in the Case in hand I know nothing the most scrupulous and inquisitive mind can possibly desire in order to satisfaction concerning any matter of fact beyond an universal Consent of such persons who have a greater capacity of knowing the truth of it then we can have And those are all such persons who have lived nearest those times when the things were done and have best understood the affairs of the times when the things were pretended to be done Can we possibly conceive that among the people of the Iews who were so exceedingly prone to transgress the Law
a Crocodile for impudence and all to express this venerable Apothegm O ye that come into the world and that go out of it God hates impudence And therefore certainly this kind of Learning deserves the highest form among the difficiles Nugae and all these Hieroglyphicks put together will make but one good one and that should be for Labour lost There is yet one part of Learning more among them which the Aegyptians are esteemed for which is the Political and civil part of it which may better be called wisdom then most of the fore-going two things speak much the wisdom of a Nation good Laws and a prudent management of them their Laws are highly commended by Strabo and Diodorus and it is none of the least commendations of them that Solon and Lycurgus borrowed so many of their constitutions from them and for the prudent management of their government as the continuance of their state so long in peace and quietness is an invincible demonstration of it so the report given of them in Scripture adds a further testimony to it for therein the King of Aegypt is called the Son of the wise as well as the son of ancient Kings and his counsellors are called wise counsellors of Pharaoh and the wise men whereby a more then ordinary prudence and policy must be understood Can we now imagine such a person as Moses was bred up in all the ingenucus literature of Aegypt conversant among their wisest persons in Pharaohs Court having thereby all advantages to improve himself and to understand the utmost of all that they knew should not be able to pass a judgement between a meer prâtence and imposture and real and important Tâuths Can we think that one who had interest in so great a Court all advantages of raising himself therein should willingly forsake all the pleasures and delights at present all his hopes and advantages for the future were he not fully perswaded of the certain and undoubted truth of all those things which are recorded in his books Is it possible a man of ordinary wisdom should venture himself upon so hazardous unlikely and dangerous employment âs that was Moses undertook which could have no probability of success but only upon the belief that that God who appeared unto him was greater then all the Gods of Aegypt and could carry on his own design by his own power maugre all the opposition which the Princes of the world could make against it And what possible ground can we have to think that such a person who did verily believe the truth of what God revealed unto him should dare to write any otherwise then as it was revealed unto him If there had been any thing repugnant to common reason in the history of the Creation the fall of man the universal deluge the propagation of the world by the sons of Noah the history of the Patriarchs had not Moses rational faculties as well as we nay had he them not far better improved then any of ours are and was not he then able to judge what was suitable to reason and what not and can we think he would then deliver any thing inconsistent with reason or undoubted tradition then when the Aegyptian Priests might so readily and plainly have triumphed over him by discovering the falshood of what he wrote Thus we see that Moses was as highly qualified as any of the acutest Heathen Philosophers could be for discerning truth from falshood nay in all probability he far excelled the most renowned of the Graecian Philosophers in that very kind of learning wherewith they made so great noise in the world which was originally Aegyptian as is evident in the whole series of the Graecian Philosphers who went age after age to Aegypt to get some scraps of that learning there which Moses could not have but full meals of because of his high place great interest and power in Aegypt And must those hungry Philosophers then become the only Masters of our reason and their dictates be received as the sânse and voice of nature which they either received from uncertain tradition or else delivered in opposition to it that they might be more taken notice of in the world Must an ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã be confronted with Thus saith the Lord and a few pitiful symbols vye authority with divine commands and Ex nihilo nihil fit be sooner believed then In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth What irrefragable evidence of reason is that so confident a presumption built upon when it can signifie nothing without this hypothesis that there is nothing but matter in the world and let this first be proved and we will never stick to grant the other I may confidently say the great gullery of the world hath been taking philosophical dictates for the standard of reason and unproved hypotheses for certain foundations for our discourse to rely upon And the seeking to reconcile the mysteries of our faith to these hath been that whith hath almost destroyed it and turned our Religion into a meer philosophical speculation But of this elsewhere We see then that insisting meerly on the accomplishments and rational perfections of the persons who speak we have more reason to yield credit to Moses in his history then to any Philosophers in their speculations And that which in the next place speaks Moses to be a person of wisdom and judgement and ability to finde out truth was his age and experience when he delivered these things to the world He vented no crude and indigested conceptions no sudden and temerarious fancies the usual issues of teeming and juvenile wits he lived long enough to have experience to try and judgement to distinguish a meer outside and varnish from what was solid and substantial We cannot then have the least ground of suspition that Moses was any wayes unfit to discern truth from falshood and therefore was capable of judging the one from the other But though persons be never so highly accomplisht for parts learning and experience yet if they want due information of the certainty of the things they deliver they may be still decâiving themselves and if they preserve it for posterity be guilty of deceiving others Let us now therefore see whether Moses had not as great advantages for understanding the truth of his History as he had judgement to discern it And concerning all those things contained in the four last books of his to his own death it was impossible any should have greater then himself writing nothing but what he was pars magna himself of what he saw and heard and did and can any testimony be desired greater then his whose actions they were or who was present at the doing of them and that not in any private way but in the most publick capacity For although private persons may be present at great actions yet they may be guilty of misrepresenting them for want of understanding all circumstances precedent and
Now if we prove that Moses had no interest to deceive in his History and had all rational evidence of Divine revelation in his Laws we shall abundantly evince the undoubted fidelity of Moses in every thing recorded by him We begin then with his fidelity as an Historian and it being contrary to the common interest of the world to deceive and be deceived we have no reason to entertain any suspitions of the veracity of any person where we cannot discern some pecâliar interest that might have a stronger biass upon him then the common interest of the world For it is otherwise in morals then in naturals for in naturals we see that every thing will leave its proper interest to preserve the common interest of nature but in morals there is nothing more common then deserting the common interest of mankind to set up a peculiar interest against it It being the truest description of a Politician that he is one who makes himself the centre and the whole world his circumference that he regards not how much the whole world is abused if any advantage doth accrue to himself by it Where we see it then the design of any person to advance himself or his posterity or to set up the credit of the Nation whose History he writes we may have just cause to suspect his partiality because we then finde a sufficient inducement for such a one to leave the common road of truth and to fall into the paths of deceit But we have not the least ground to suspect any such partiality in the History of Moses for nothing is more clear then that he was free from the ambitious design of advancing himself and his posterity who notwithstanding the great honour he enjoyed himself was content to leave his posterity in the meanest sort of attendance upon the Tabernacle And as little have we ground to think he intended to flatter that Nation which he so lively describes that one would think he had rather an interest to set forth the frowardness unbelief unthankfulness and disobedience of a Nation towards a Gracious God then any wayes to inhance their reputation in the world or to ingratiate himself with them by writing this History of them Nay and he sets forth so exactly the lesser failings and grosser enormities of all the Ancestours of this Nation whose acts he records that any impartial reader will soon acquit him of a design of flattery when after he hath recorded those faults he seeks not to extenuate them or bring any excuse or pretence to palliate them So that any observing reader may easily take notice that he was carried on by a higher design then the common people of Historians are and that his drift and scope was to exalt the goodness and favour of God towards a rebellious and obstinate people Of which there can be no greater nor more lively demonstration then the History of all the transactions of the Iewish Nation from their coming forth of Aegypt to their utter ruine and desolation And Moses tells them as from God himself it was neither for their number nor their goodness that God set his Love upon them but he loved them because he loved them i. e. no other account was to be given of his gracious dealing with them but the freeness of his own bonnty and the exuberancy of his goodness towards them Nay have we not cause to admire the ingenuity as well as veracity of this excellent personage who not only layes so notorious a blot upon the stock of his own family Levi recording so punctually the inhumanity and cruelty of him and Simeon in their dealings with the Shechemites but likewise inserts that curse which was left upon their memory for it by their own Father at his decease And that he might not leave the least suspition of partiality behind him he hath not done as the statuary did who engraved his own name so artificially in the statue of Iupiter that one should continue as long as the other but what the other intended for the praise of his skill Moses hath done for his ingenuity that he hath so interwoven the History of his own failings and disobedience with those of the Nation that his spots are like to continue as long as the whole web of his History is like to do Had it been the least part of his design to have his memory preserved with a superstitious veneration among the Iews how easie had it been for him to have left out any thing that might in the least entrench upon his reputation but we finde him very secure and careless in that particular nay on the other side very studious and industrious in depressing the honour and deserts of men and advancing the power and goodness of God And all this he doth not in an affected strain of Rhetorick whose proper work is impetrare fidem mendacio and as Tully somewhere confesseth to make things seem otherwise then they are but with that innate simplicity and plainness and yet withall with that Imperatoria brevit as that Majesty and authority that it is thereby evident he sought not to court acceptance but to demand belief Nor had any such pittiful design of pleasing his Readers with some affected phrases but thought that Truth it self had presence enough with it to command the submission of our understandings to it Especially when all these were delivered by such a one who came sufficiently armed with all motives of credibility and inducements to assent by that evidence which he gave that he was no pretender to divine revelation but was really imployed as a peculiar instrument of State under the God and Ruler of the whole world Which if it be made clear then all our further doubts must presently cease and all impertinent disputes be silenced when the supream Majesty appears impowring any person to dictate to the world the Laws they must be governed by For if any thing be repugnant to our rational faculties that is that God should dictate any thing but what is most certainly true or that the Governor of the world should prescribe any Laws but such as were most just and reasonable If we suppose a God we cannot question veracity to be one of his chiefest Attributes and that it is impossible the God of truth should imploy any to reveal any thing as from him but what was undoubtedly true So that it were an argument of the most gross and unreasonable incredulity to distrust the certainty of any thing which comes to us with sufficient evidence of divine revelation because thereby we shew our distrust of the veracity of God himself All that we can desire then is only reasonable satisfactisn concerning the evidence of Divine revelation in the person whose words we are to credit and this our Gracious God hath been so far from denying men that he hath given all rational evidence of the truth of it For it implying no incongruity at all to any notions of
they might be delivered from the Tyranny of the Roman Power The Heathens as appears by Celsus and others thought it very strange that the Son of God should appear in the world with so little grandeur and have no greater Train then twelve such obscure persons as the Apostles were For saith Celsus ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã As the Sun which inlightens all other things dâth first discover himself so it was fitting the Son of God should do when he appeared to the world And so we say he did to all such whose minds were not blinded through obstinacy and willfull ignorance For although this Sun of righteousness was pleased for the better carrying on his design in the world to wrap up himself in a cloud yet his glory could not be confined within it but did break through that dark vail of his humane nature and did discover its self in a most clear and convincing manner His appearances indeed were not like those upon Mount Sinai because his design was not to amuse men with the glory of his Majesty and to terrifie them from Idolatry which was a great reason of those dreadful phaenomena at the delivery of the Law but he came to draw all men to him by the power and energy of his Grace and therefore afforded them all rational convictions in order to it And therefore the quality of our Saviours miracles was considerable as well as the greatness of them The intent of them all was to do good and thereby to bring the world off from its sin and folly to the embracing of that holy doctrine which he came to publish to the world Now that such a power of miracles in our Saviour had the greatest subserviency to the giving full and convincing evidence that he was the person he declared himself to be and that his doctrine was thereby so clearly attested that it was nothing but obstinacy which could withhold assent will appear by these following Hypotheses which I lay down in order to the proving it Where the truth of a doctrine depends not on the evidence of the things themselves but on the authority of him that reveals it there the only way to prove the doctrine to be true is to prove the Testimony of him that revealed it to be infallible Several things are necessary to be proved for the clearing this proposition 1. That it is not repugnant to reason that a doctrine should be true which depends not upon the evidence of the thing its self By evidence of the thing I understand so clear and distinct a perception of it that every one who hath the use of his rational faculties cannot but upon the first apprehension of the terms yeild a certain assent to it as that the whole is greater then a part that if we take away equal things from equal the remainder must be equal Now we are to observe that as to all these common notices of humane nature which carry such evidence with them the certainty of them lyes in the proposition as it is an act of the mind abstracted from the things themselves for these do not suppose the existence of the things but whether there be any such things in the world or no as whole or parts the understanding is assured that the Idea of the whole carryes more in its representation then that of a part does This is the great reason of the certainty and evidence of Mathematical truths not as some imagine because men have no interest or design in those things and therefore they never question them but because they proceed not upon sensible but abstracted matter which is not lyable to so many doubts as the other is for that a Triangle hath three Angles no man questions but whether such sensible parts of matter make a Triangle may be very questionable Now that the truth of beings or the certainty of existence of things cannot be so certain as Mathematical demonstrations appears from hence because the manner of conveyance of these things to my mind cannot be so clear and certain as in purely intellectual operations abstracted from existent matter For the highest evidences of the existence of things must be either the judgement of sense or clear and distinct perception of the mind now proceeding in a meer natural way there can be no infallible certainty in either of these For the perception of the mind in reference to the existence of things being caused so much through those Idea's or Phantasmes which are conveyed to the understanding through the impressions of sense if these may be demonstrated to be fallacious I may well question the certainty of that which I am certain I have been deceived by supposing then I should question the truth of every thing which is conveyed in an uncertain way to my mind I may soon out-go even Pyrrho himself in real Scepticism Neither can I conceive how clear and distinct perception of any thing though not coming through the senses doth necessarily infer the existence of the thing for it only implyes a non-repugnancy of it to our natural faculties and consequently the bare possibility of it For otherwise it were impossible for us to have a clear perception of any thing any longer then it exists nay then we know it to exist for existence or non-existence is all one to the understanding while it is not assured of either And it is withall evident that things imaginary may clearly affect the mind as well as real for I may have as real and distinct perception of a Phoenix in my mind as of a Partridge doth it therefore follow that the one is really existent as well as the other and it will be a very hard matter to assign a certain difference between imagination and pure intellection in such things which though not actually existent yet imply no repugnancy at all to the faculties of mens minds It is evident then that there cannot be so great certainty of the existence of things as there may be of Mathematical demonstrations And if that principle be supposed as the foundation of all Physical certainty as to the being of things viz. that there is a God who being infinitely good will not suffer the minds of men to be deceived in those things which they have a clear and distinct perception of without which supposition we cannot be assured of the certainty of any operations of the mind because we cannot know but we were so made that we might be then most deceived when we thought our selves most sure If this principle I say be supposed as the foundation of all certain knowledge then from it I infer many things which are very much advantagious to our certainty in matters of faith That the foundation of all certainty lies in the necessary existence of a being absolutely perfect So that unless I know that there is a God I cannot be assured that I know any thing in a certain manner and if I know there is a
else can be a sure foundation for a Divine faith but what is a Testimony of God himself A Testimony may be known to be Divine and infallible though God himself do not speak in an immediate way By being known I do not mean the firm perswasion of a mind inlightned by the Spirit of God but that there are sufficient evidences ex parte rei to convince men of it which are not wilfully blind and obstinate i. e. that the ground of unbelief in any cannot be imputed to the defect of sufficient motives to faith but to their own perversness and prejudice in not discerning them Now that God may reveal and declare his mind to the world not in an immediate way but by some instruments he may make use of to that end is not only evident from the great suitableness of such a way to the conditions of the persons he speaks to but from the general perswasion of the world concerning the possibility of Inspiration The Iews are so far from denying this that it is the very foundation of their religion as well as ours God discovering the most of his will to them by the Prophets or by persons Divinely inspired And the general consent of all other Nations that there is such a principle as Divination in the world doth make it evident that it carryes no repugnancy at all to natural light supposing that there is a God that he should reveal his mind by some particular persons unto the world For which purpose the Testimony of Tully in the entrance of his books de Divinatione is very considerable Vetus opinio est jam usque ab Heroicis ducta temporibus eáque populi Romani omnium gentium firmata consensu versari quandam inter homines divinationem quam Graeci ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã appellant i. e. praesensionem scientiam rerum futurarum and soon after adds gentem quidem nullam video neque tam humanam at que doctam neque tam immanem atque barbaram quae non significari futura et à quibusdam intelligi praedicique posse censeat He makes it appear to be an universal sentiment of all Nations in the world and instanceth particularly in the Assyrians Aegyptians Cilicians Pisidians Pamphilians Grecians Romans Etrurians and others It is true indeed he after mentions some Philosophers who denyed it but they were most part the followers of Epicurus who denyed any providence and therefore might well take away divination but if Xenophanes Colophonius had any followers who asserted the one and denyed the other as Tully seems to intimate that he was alone in that perswasion yet we may probably suppose the reason of their rejecting it might be the impostures which went under the name of Divination among them which are excellently discovered by that Prince of Roman Philosophers as well as Orators in his second book of Divination but it is apparent by the same Author that the generality of Philosophers consented with the people in this perswasion as the followers of those three great sects of Socrates Pythagoras and Aristotle were all approvers of it but of all persons the Stoicks were the most zealous contenders for it especially Chrysippus Diogenes Babylonius Antipater and Possidonius some indeed rejected some wayes of Divination yet embraced others as Dicaearchus and Cratippus who rejected all but dreams and extasies but in the general we find these two principles went together among them the existence of a Deity and the certainty of Divination so that from Divination they proved a Deity and from a Deity Divination Si sunt genera divinandi vera esse Deos vicissimque si Dii sint esse qui divinent as Quintus Cicero there speaks and at last thus triumphs in the multitude of his witnesses An dum bestiae loquantur expectamus hominum consentiânte auctoritate contenti non simus It may not be amiss to produce the chief argument on which the Stoicks insisted to prove the necessity of Divination supposing the existence of a Deity If there be Gods say they and they do not reveal to men things to come it either is because they do not love them or because they do not know themselves what shall come to pass or they think it is of no concernment to men to know future things or that it doth not become their Majesty to reveal them or that they cannot reveal them to men if they would but neither is it true that they do not love men for the Gods are of a bountiful nature and friends to mankind neither can they be ignorant of future things because they are appointed and decreed by them neither is it of no concernment to men to know future things for that makes them more cautious if they know them neither is it repugnant to their Majesty to reveal them for nothing is more noble then bounty and doing good and they must needs know these things therefore they may make them known to others and if they do make them known there must be some way whereby to know that they do so or else they signifie them to no purpose If now instead of the knowledge of future contingencies and the multitude of their Gods they had insisted on the discovery and revelation by the true God of those wayes which may lead men to eternal happiness that argument had been strong and convincing which as it stands is Sophistical and fallacious So that it is very plain that not only a possibility of Divination was acknowledged by those who wanted Divine revelation but that this divination did not arise from meer natural causes but from an afflatus Divinus and a concitatio quaedam animi as they there speak which imports nothing short of Divine inspiration Nay the opinion of this was so common among them that they thought any extraordinary persons had something of Divine Enthusiasm in them as Tully elsewhere tells us Nemo vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu Divino unquam fuit Although then these Heathens were greatly mistaken as to those things they took for a Divine afflatus and Divination yet we cannot conceive so general a sense should be imprinted on the minds of men of such a thing as that was were it not a thing highly consonant to principles of reason that God should communicate his mind to the world by the inspiration of some persons And therefore I conceive that Cicero and his brother Quintus who manage that excellent dispute of Divination between them have divided the truth between them too For on the one side Quintus evidently proves the possibility of the thing the consequence of it upon the acknowledgement of a Deity and the general consent of mankind in the owning of it and on the other side Tully himself excellently layes open the vanity folly and uncertainty not only of the common wayes of Divination but of the oracles which were in such great esteem among the Heathens And although Tully doth so sharply and
of the spirit upon the soul it cheerfully embraceth that Truth which is revealed and cordially yields up its self in obedience to it This is the Divine faith which the Scripture acquaints us with and not such a one as meerly believes the truth of a Divine Testimony and as to the production of this faith I acknowledge meer rational evidence to be insufficient because they proceed in 2â very different ways the one is to satisfie mens minds of the truth of the doctrine the other is to bring them effectually to adhere unto it The asserting of the one therefore doth no more tend to destroy the other then the saying that a Telescope will help us to discover very much of the heavenly bodies doth imply that a blind man may see them if he makes but use of them Although therefore the natural man cannot savingly apprehend the things of God yet there may be so much rational evidence going along with Divine revelation that supposing reason to be pure and not corrupted and steeped in sense as now it is it would discover spiritual evidence to be the most real and convincing evidence Thus far we have proved that where there is any infallible Testimony there is sufficient rational evidence going along with it to make it appear that it is from God CHAP. IX The rational evidence of the truth of Christian Religion from Miracles The possibility of miracles appears from God and providence the evidence of a Divine Testimony by them God alone can really alter the course of nature The Devils power of working miracles considered Of Simon Magus Apollonius The cures in the Temple of Aesculapius at Rome c. God never works miracles but for some particular end The particular reasons of the miracles of Christ. The repealing the Law of Moses which had been setled by miracles Why Christ checked the Pharisees for demanding a sign when himself appeals to his miracles The power of Christs miracles on many who did not throughly believe Christs miracles made it evident that he was the Messias because the predictions were fulfilled in him Why John Baptist wrought no miracles Christs miracles necessary for the overthrow of the Devils Kingdom Of the Daemoniacks and Lunaticks in the Gospel and in the Primitivâ Church The power of the name of Christ over them largely proved by several Testimonies The evidence thence of a Divine power in Christ. Of counterfeit dispossessions Of miracles wrought among Infidels Of the future state of the Church The necessity of the miracles of Christ as to the propagation of Christian Religion that proved from the condition of the publishers and the success of the Doctrine The Apostles knew the hazard of their imployment before they entred on it The boldness and resolution of the Apostles notwithstanding this compared with heathen Philosophers No motive could carry the Apostles through their imployment but the truth of their Doctrine not seeking the honour profit or pleasure of the world The Apostles evidence of the truth of their doctrine lay in being eye-witnesses of our Saviours miracles and resurrection That attested by themselves their sufficiency thence for preaching the Gospel Of the nature of the doctrine of the Gospel contrariety of it to natural inclinations Strange success of it notwithstanding it came not with humane power No Christian Emperour till the Gospel universally preached The weakness and simplicity of the instruments which preached the Gospel From all which the great evidence of the power of miracles is proved OF all rational evidences which tend to confirm the truth of a Divine Testimony there can be none greater then a power of working miracles for confirmation that the Testimony which is revealed is infallible The possibility of a power of miracles cannot be questiond by any who assert a Deity and a Providence for by the same power that things were either at first produced or are still conserved which is equivalent to the other the course of nature may be altered and things caused which are beyond the power of inferiour causes For though that be an immutable Law of nature as to Physical beings that every thing remains in the course and order wherein it was set at the Creation yet that only holds till the same power which set it in that order shall otherwise dispose of it granting then the possibility of miracles the subject of this Hypothesis is that a power of miracles is the clearest evidence of a Divine Testimony which will appear from these following considerations God alone can really alter the course of nature I speak not of such things which are apt only to raise admiration in us because of our unacquaintedness with the causes of them or manner of their production which are thence called wonders much less of meer juggles and impostures whereby the eyes of men are deceived but I speak of such things as are in themselves either contrary to or above the course of nature i. e. that order which is established in the universe The Devil no question may and doth often deceive the world and may by the subtilty and agility of his nature perform such things as may amuse the minds of men and sometimes put them to it to find a difference between them and real miracles if they only make their sânses judges of them And such kind of wonders though they are but spaâingly done and with a kind of secrecy as though they were consulting with Catiline about the burning Rome yet the Devil would have some especially when Ignorance and Superstition are Ascendents to keep up his interest in the world Or else when he is like to be dispossessed and thrown out of all he then tryes his utmost to keep as many to him as may be thus when the Spirit of God appeared in the miracles of our Saviour and his Apostles and the Primitive Church he then conjured up all the infernal powers to do something parallel to keep possession of his Idolatrous Temples as long as he could Thus we find Simon Magus dogging the Apostles as it were at the heels that by his Magick he might stagger the faith of people concerning the miracles wrought by the Apostles after him Apollonius appeared upon the Stage but his wonders are such pittifull things compared with those wrought by Christ or his Apostles that it could be nothing but malice in Hierocles to mention him in competition with Christ. But those things which seem a great deal more considerable then either of these were the cure of a blind man by Vespasian in Egypt mentioned by Tacitus and Suetonius wherein there was a palpable imitation of our Saviours curing the blind man in the Gospel for the man told Vespasian restituturum oculos si inspuisset that he should receive his sight by his spittle so Spartianus tells us of a woman that was cured of her blindness by kissing the knees of the Emperour Adrian and Boxhornius hath produced an old Fable in the Temple of
ignes Theophylact is of opinion that the Iews in the time of our Saviour supposed that the souls of dead men became Daemons and thence we read in Scripture of the Daemoniacks among the Tombs but it is far more probable which Grotius conceives that the Iews were of opinion that the souls of dead men did hover up and down about their bodies and that these were so long under the Devils power which many of the Iews to this day believe and make use of the instance of the Pythonisse raising Samuel on which account the Devils to favour an opinion so advantagious to their interest might appear with greater terror and fury about their burying places as we see they did in those possessed persons But on whatever account it was we finde it evident that about the time of our Saviours appearance and some time after the truly ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã were very frequent whether it were that the Devil by such frequent possessions of persons and making them do such strange things might thereby endeavour to invalidate the evidence of our Saviours miracles from whence it is probable the Pharisees raised their calumny that Christ did miracles by Belzebub because they saw so many strange appearances caused by possessed persons or whether it were through the admirable providence of God which might give Satan the greater liberty at that time on purpose to heighten the glory of our Saviour in dispossessing of him and thereby to give the highest rational evidence that his power was of God which tended so much to the destruction of the Kingdom of Satan And hence the Primitive Christians did so much triumph and as it were insult over the Devil where ever they found him making him to remove his lodgings from possessed persons by a writ of ejection from the name of Christ. Thence Origen rationally concludes that Christ had his power given him from above because at his very name the Devils forsook the bodies which they had possessed ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã And he elsewhere tells us that even the meanest sort of Christians without any ceremony but meerly by their prayers did ordinarily eject the Devil out of mens bodies ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Ordinary Christians saith he most commonly do this the grace of Christ by its word thereby discovering the contemptibleness and infirmity of the Devils that in order to their ejection they did not so much as want any learned or experienced Christian. And for this they appeal to the Heathens themselves as appears not only by the challenge of Tertullian already mentioned but by the Testimony of almost all of them who have writ against the Heathens in vindication of the Christian religion Thence Minutius Felix Haec omnia sciunt plerique Pars vestrum ipsos daemonas de semetipsis confiteri quoties à nobis torment is verborum orationis incendiis de coâporibus exiguntur Ipse Saturnus Serapis et Iupiter et quiequid daemonum colitis victi dolore quod sunt eloquuntur nec utique in turpitudinem sui nonnullis praesertim vestrum assistentibâs mentiuntur Ipsis testibus eos esse Daemonas de se verum confitentibus credite adjuratienim per Deum verum et solum inviti miseri corporibus inhorrescunt et vel exiliunt statim vel evanesount gradatim prout fides patientis adjuvat aut gratia curantis aspirat Can we now think the Devil should not only forsake his Tyranny over the bodyes of men but let go so advantagious a pillar of his tyranny over the consciences of men in Idolatroius worship as the concealing himself was had he not been forced to it by a power far greater then his own So Cyprian ad Demetrianum appeals to him being the Proconsul of Africa about the same thing who had written sharply against the Christians for speaking of the Devils whom they worshipped in their Idols O si audire eos velles et videre quando à nobis adjurantur et torquentur Spiritualibus flagris et verborum tormentis de obsessis corporibus ejiciuntur quando ejulantes et gementes voce humana et potestate divina flagella et verbera sentientes venturum judicium confitentur veni et cognosce vera esse quae dicimus and a little after videbis sub manu nostra stare vinctos et tremere captivos quos tu suspicis et veneraris ut Dominos Did ever any of the Heathen Magicians of which there were good store extort such things from the Devils as the Christians did meerly by their prayers and invocations of the name of God and Christ did they ever make them confess to be what they were not only in possessed bodyes but in their Temples too that was beyond the power of their Ephesian letters or any of their Magical incantations Did the Devils ever dread so much the name of Socrates or Aristides as they did that of God and of Christ Of which Lactantius thus speaks Quo audito tremunt exclamant et urise verberarique testantur et interrogati qui sint quando venerint quando in hominem irrepserint confitentur sic extorti et excruciati virtate divininuminis exulant propter haec verbera et minas sanctos et justos viros semper oderunt And even Apollo himself at the name of Christ trembled as much as ever the Pythian Prophetess did in her greatest furies so Prudentius tells us Torquetur Apollo Nomine percussus Christi nec fulmina verbi Ferre potest agitant miserum tot verbera linguae Quot laudata Dei resonant miracula Christi To these we may add what Firmicus saith to the same purpose Ecce Daemon est quem colis cum Dei et Christi ejus nomen audierit contremiseit et ut interrogantibus nob is respondeat trepidantia verba vix se colligit adhaerens homini laceratur uritur vapulat et statim de commissis sceleribus confitetur By which Testimonies it appears what power over Satan when he was in his Kingdom the Christians by the power of Christ had not as though the bare name of Christ had so great an efficacy in the ejection of Devils as Origen seemâ to be of opinion in a discourse about the efficacy of names unworthy of so great a Philosopher but that God might manifest to the world the truth that was contained in that name he did give a power to such as made use of it of working miracles by it And thence we read in Scripture that some who were not throughly Christians but yet professed the truth of the Gospel and that what they did was for the honour of Christ had a power of casting out Devils and doing many wonderful things through his name By these and many other testimonies which might be produced out of the Primitive Church we finde an exact accomplishment of our Saviours promise to his Disciples when he took his leave of them And these signs shall follow
them that believe In my name shall they cast out Devils c. This power then in the Primitive Church had a twofold argument in it both as it was a manifestation of the truth of the predictions of our Saviour and as it was an evidence of the Divine power of Christ when his name so long after his ascension had so great a command over all the infernal spirits and that so evidently that at that time when the Christians did as it were Tyrannize over Satan so in his own territories yet then the greatest of his Magicians had no power to hurt the bodyes of the Christians which is a thing Origen takes much notice of For when Celsus saith from Diogenes Aegyptius that Magick could only hurt ignorant and wicked men and had no power over Philosophers Origen replies first that Philosophy was no such charm against the power of Magick as appears by Maeragenes who writ the story of Apollonius Tyaneus the famous Magician and Philosopher who therein mentions how Euphrates and an Epicurean ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã no vulgar Philosophers were catched by the Magick of Apollonius and although Philostratus disowns this History of Maeragenes as fabulous yet he that thinks Philostratus for that to be of any greater credit is much deceived of whom Lud. Vives gives this true character that he doth magna Homeri mendacia majoribus mendaciis corrigere mend one hole and make three but saith Origen as to the Christians this is undoubtedly true ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã This saith he we are most certain of and have found it by experience true that those who according to the principles of Christianity do worship God over all through Iesus and do live according to the Gospel being constant in their solemn prayers night and day are not obnoxious to the power of any Magick or Devils whatsoever Now then if the Devil who had then so much power over others had none upon the true followers of Christ and if in stead of that they had so great a commanding power over the Devil even in things which tended most to his disadvantage not only dislodging him out of bodies âât out of his Idolatrous Temples what can be more evident then that this power which was so efficacious for the overthrowing the Kingdom of Satan must needs be far greater then the power of Satan is For it is an undoubted Maxime in natural reason that whatever is put out of its former place by force and violence is extruded by something stronger then its self for if the force on either side were equal there could be no disposses sing of either if any thing then be cast out of its former possession unwillingly it is an undenyable proof there was some power greater then his who was dispossessed Now we cannot conceive if there be such malignant spirits as by many undeniable proofs it is evident there are that they should willingly quit their possessions to such a doctrine which tends to the unavoydable ruine of their interest in the world if then the power of this doctrine hath overthrown the Devils Kingdom in the world whereever it hath been truly entertained it must necessarily follow that this power is far above the power of any damned spirits Now what folly and madness was it in the Heathens to worship those for Gods which they could not but see if they would open their eyes were under so great slavery to a power above them which could make them confess what was most to their disadvantage in the presence of their great adorers Neither ought the many counterfeits and impostures which have been in the world in this kind since the establishment of Christian Religion among the advancers of particular interests and designs make us suspect the truth of those things which were done in the first Ages of the Church of Christ. For first it stands to the greatest reason that the strongest arguments for the truth of a Religion ought to be fetched from the ages of its first appearance in the world if then the evidence be undoubted as to those first times we ought to embrace our Religion as true whatever the impostures have been among those who have apparently gone aside from that purity and simplicity of the Gospel which had so great power Then secondly if all that hath been done in this kind of ejecting Devils where Christianity is owned be acknowledged for impostures one of these two things must be supposed as the ground of it either that there was no such thing as a real possession by the Devil or else there was no such thing as a dispossessing him If the first then hereby will be seen a confirmation of our former argument that where Christianity is owned by the power of that the Devil is more curbed and restrained then where it is not or else is much over-run with ignorance and superstition Of the latter the ages of the Christian Church from the 10. Century to the beginning of the 16. current are a clear evidence Of the first all those who have been conversant in the places where Paganism or gross Idolatry do yet reign will bring in their creditable testimonies how tyrannical the power of the Devil is yet among them If it be not so then where careful endeavours have been used for retriving the ancient pârity of Christian doctrine and worship we ought to impute it to the power of him who is stronger then Satan who whereever he comes to dwell doth dispossess him of his former habitations If the second then be entertained as the ground of concluding all things as impostures which are accounted dispossessions of Satan viz. that he never is really dispossessed then it must either be said that where he is once seized there is no possibility of ejecting him which is to say that the Devil hath an absolute and infinite power and that there is no power greater then his which is to own him for God or else that God suffers him to tyrannize where and how he will which is contrary to divine providence and the care God takes of the world and of the good of mankind or else lastly that those persons who pretend to do it are not such persons who are armed so much with the power of Christ nor possessed with such a due spirit of the Gospel which hath command over these infernal spirits And this in the cases pretended by the great Iuglers and Impostors of the Christian world the Popish Priests have been so notorious that none of their own party of any great faith or credit would stand to vouch them And we have this impregnable argument against all such Impostures that the matters which they by such actions would give an evidence to being so vastly different from if not in some things diametrically opposite to the first delivery and design of the Christian faith it is inconsistent with the way used for the confirmation of Christian Religion in the first publishing of
it to attest the truth of such things by any real miracles For so it would invalidate the great force of the evidences of the truth of Christianity if the same argument should be used for the proving of that which in the judgement of any impartial person was not delivered when the truth of the doctriâe of Christ was confirmed by so many and uncontrouled miracles But hereby we see what unconceivable prejudice hath been done to the true primitive doctrine of the Gospel and what stumbling-blocks have been laid in the way of considerative persons to keep them from embracing the truly Christian faith by those who would be thought the infallible directors of men in it by making use of the broad-seal of Heaven set only to the truth of the Scriptures to confirm their unwritten and superstitious ways of worship For if I once see that which I looked on as an undoubted evidence of divine power brought to attest any thing directly contrary to divine revelation I must either conclude that God may contradict himself by sealing both parts of a contradiction which is both blasphemous and impossible or that that society of men which own such things is not at all tender of the honour of Christain doctrine but seeks to set up an interest contrary to it and matters not what disadvantage is done to the grounds of Râligion by such unworthy pretences and which of these two is more rational and true let every ones conscience judge And therefore it is much the interest of the Christian world to have all such frauds and impostures discovered which do so much disservice to the Christian faith and are such secret fomenters of Atheism and Infidelity But how far that promise of our Saviour that they which believe in his name shall cast out Devils and do many miracles may extend even in these last ages of the world to such generous and primitive-spirited Christians who out of a great and deep sense of the truth of Christianity and tenderness to the souls of men should go among Heathens and Infidels to convert them only to Christ and not to a secular interest under pretence of an infallible head is not here a place fully to enquire I confess I cannot see any reason why God may not yet for the conviction of Infidels employ such a power of miracles although there be not such necessity of it as there was in the first propagation of the Gospel there being some evidences of the power of Christianity now which were not so clear then as the overthrowing the Kingdom of Satan in the world the prevailing of Christianity notwithstanding force used against it the recovâry of it from amidst all the corruptions which were mixed with it the consent of those parties in the common foundations of Christianity which yet disagreâ froâ each other with great bitternâss of spirit though I say it be not of that necessity now when the Scriptures are convâyed to us in a certain uninterrupted manner yet God may please out of his abundant provision for the satisfaction of the minds of men concerning the truth of Christian doctrine to employ good men to do something which may manifest the power of Christ to be above the Dâvils whom they worship And therefore I should far sooner believe the relation of the miracles of Xaverius and his Brethren employed in the conversion of Infidels then Lipsius his Virgo Hallensis and Asprecollis could it but be made evident to me that the design of those persons had more of Christianity then Popery in it that is that they went more upon a design to bring the souls of the Infidels to heaven then to enlarge the authority and jurisdiction of the Roman Church But whatever the truth of those miracles or the design of those persons were we have certain and undoubted evidence of the truth of those miracles whereby Christianity was first propagated and the Kingdom of Satan overthrown in the world Christ thereby making it appear that his power was greater then the Devils who had possession because he overcame him took from him all his armour wherein he trusted and divided his spoils i. e. dispossâssed him of mens bodies and his Idolatrous Temples silenced his Oracles nonplust his Magicians and at last when Christianity had overcome by suffering wrested the worldly power and Empire out of the Devils hands and employed it against himself Neither may we think because since that time the Devil hath got some ground in the world again by the large spread of Mahometism the general corruptions in the Christian world that therefore the other was no argument of divine power because the truth of Christianity is not tyed to any particular places because such a falling away hath been foretold in Scripture and therefore the truth of them is proved by it and because God himself hath threatned that those who will not receive the truth in the love of it shall be given up to strong de'usions Doth not this then in stead of abating the strength of the argument confirm it more and that nothing is fallen out in the Christian world but what was foretold by those whom God employed in the converting of it But we are neither without some fair hopes even from that divine revelation which was sealed by uncontrouled evidence that there may be yet a time to come when Christ will recover his Churches to their pristine purity and simplicity but withall I think we are not to measure the future felicity of the Church by outward splendor and greatness which too many so strongly fancy but by a recovery of that true spirit of Christianity which breathed in the first ages of the Church whatever the outward condition of the Church may be For if worldly greatness and ease and riches were the first impairers of the purity of Christian Religion it is hard to conceive how the restoring of the Church of Christ to its true glory can be by the advancing of that which gives so great an occasion to pride and sensuality which are so contrary to the design of Christian Religion unless we suppose men free from those corruptions which continual experience still tells the world the Rulers as well as members of the Christian society are subject to Neither may that be wonderd at when such uneveness of parts is now discovered in the great Luminaries of the world and the Sun himself is found to have his maculae as though the Sun had a purple feaver or as Kiroher expresseth it Ipse Phoebus qui rerum omnium in universo naturae Theatro aspectabilium longè pulcherrimus omnium opinione est habitus hoc seculo tandem fumosa facie ac infecto vultu maculis prodiit diceres eum variolis laborare senescentem I speak not this as though an outward flourishing condition of the Church were inconsistent with its purity for then the way to refine it were to throw it into the flames of persecution but that
the advancement of the flourishing condition of the Church is not meerly by outward pomp and grandeur and that the purity of the Church is not inconsistent with a state of outward difficulties which the experience oâ the Primitive Church gives an irrefragable demonstration of Thus much may serve to shew the necessity of a power of miracles conjoyned with the Christian Doctrine to manifest the truth of it by overthrowing the Kingdom of that great Antichrist the Devil who had usurped so much Tyranny over the world The last reason why a power of miracles was so necessary for confirming the truth of the Gospel is because the Gospel was to be propagated over the world without any other rational evidence then was contained in the miracles wrought for the confirmation of it Now the admirable success which this doctrine found in the world considering all the circumstances of it doth make it clear what certainty there was that the miracles which were wrought were true and they were certain evidences that the doctrine attested by them was from God Now this will appear from these two things That no rational account can be given why the Apostles should undertake to publish such a doctrine unless they had been undoubtedly certain that the Doctrine was true and they had sufficient evidence to perswade others to beleeve it That no satisfactory account can be given considering the nature of the doctrine of Christ and the manner of its propagation why it should meet with so great acceptance in the world had there not been such convincing evidence as might fully perswade men of the truth of it I begin with the first from the publishers of this doctrine in the world All that I here require by way of a Postulatum or supposition are onlythese two things which no man right in his wits I suppose will deny 1. That men are so far rational agents that they will not set upon any work of moment and difficulty without sufficient grounds inducing them to it and by so much the greater the work is the more sure and stedfast had the grounds need to be which they proceed upon 2. That the Apostles or first Publishers of the Christian doctrine were not men distracted or bereft of their wits but acted by principles of common sense reason and understanding as other men in the world do Which if any one should be so far beside his wits as to question if he have but patience and understanding enough to read and consider those admirable writings of theirs which are conveyed to us by as certain uninterrupted a Tradition as any thing in the world hath been and by that time he will see cause to alter his judgement and to say that they are not mad but speak the words of the greatest truth and soberness These things supposed I now proceed to the proving of the thing in hand which will be done by these three things First That the Apostles could not but know how hâzardous an employment the preaching of the Gospel would be to them Secondly that no motive can be conceived sufficient for them to undertake such an employment but the infallible truth of the doctrine which they preached Thirdly that the greatest assurance they had themselves of the truth of their Doctrine was by being eye-witnesses of the miracles of Christ. First That the Apostles could not but understand the hazard of their employment notwithstanding which they cheerfully undertook it That men armed with no external power nor cried up for their wit and learning and carrying a doctrine with them so contraây to the general inclinations of the world having nothing in it to recommend it to mankind but the Truth of it should go about to perswade the world to part with the Religion they owned and was setled by their laws and to embrace such a religion as called them off from all the things they loved in this world and to prepare themselves by mortification self-denial for another world is a thing to humane reason incredible unless we suppose them acted by a higher spirit then mankind is ordinarily acted by For what is there so desirable in continual reproaches contumelies what delight is there in racks and prisons what agreeableness in flames and martyrdoms to make men undergo some nay all of these rather then disown that doctrine which they came to publish Yet these did the Apostles cheerfully undergo in order to the conversion of the world to the truth of that doctrine which they delivered to it And not only so but though they did foresee them they were not discouraged from this undertaking by it I confess when men are upon hopes of profit and interest in the world engaged upon a design which they promise themselves impunity in having power on their side though afterwards things should fall out contrary to their expectation such persons may die in such a cause because they must and some may carry it out with more resolution partly through an innate fortitude of spirit heightened with the advantages of Religion or an Enthusiastick temper But it is hard to conceive that such persons would have undertaken so hazardous an employment if beforehand they had foreseen what they must have undergone for it But now the Apostles did foreknow that bonds and imprisonment nay death its self must be undergone in a violent manner for the sake of the doctrine which they preached yet not withstanding all this they go boldly and with resolution on with their work and give not over because of any hardships and persecutions they met withall One of the chiesest of them S. Peter and as forward as any in Preaching the Gospel had the very manner of his death foretold him by Christ himself before his Ascension yet soon after we find him preaching Christ in the midst of those who had crucified him and telling them to their faces the greatness of their sin in it and appealing to the miracles which Christ had done among them and bidding them repent and believe in him whom they had crucified if ever they would be saved And this he did not only among the people who gave their consent to the crucifying of Christ but soon after being conventedâogether âogether with Iohn before the Court of Sanbedrin probably the very same which not long before had sentenced Christ to death for a miracle wrought by them with what incredible boldness doth he to their faces tell them of their murdering Christ and withall that there was no other way to salvation but by him whom they had crucified Be it known unto you all saith Peter to the Sanhedrin and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Iesus Christ whom ye have crucified whom God raised from the dead even by him doth this man stand here before you whole Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved What
an heroickfreedom of spirit appears in these words what magnanimity and courage was there now in that person who durst in the face of this Court tell them of their murder and that there was no salvation but by him whom they had crucified Well might they wonder at the boldness of the men who feared not the same death which they had so lately brought their Lord and Master to Neither was this singly the case of Peter and Iohn but all the rest of the Apostles undertook their work with the same resolution and preparation of Spirit to under go the greatest hardship in the world sor the sake of the truths they Preached And accordingly as far as Ecclesiastical history can ascertain us of it they did all but Iohn and that to make good the prediction of Christ suffer violent deaths by the hands of those who persecuted them meerly for their doctrine And which is most observable when Christ designed them first of all for this work he told them before hand of reproaches persecutions all manner of hardships nay of death its self which they must undergo for his sake All that he gave them by way of encouragement was that they could only kill the body and not the soul and therefore that they should fear him only who could destroy both body and soul in hell all the support they had was an expectation in another world and that animated them to go through all the hardships of this Where do we ever read of any such boldness and courage in the most knowing Philosâphers of the Heathens with what saintness and misgiving of mind doth Socrates speak in his famous discourse suppoâed to be made by him before his death how uncertainly doth he speak of a state of immortality and yet in all probability Plato set it forth with all advantages imaginable Where do we finde that ever any of the great friends of Socrates who were present at his death as Phaedo Cebes Crito and Simmias durst enter the Areopagus and condemn them there for the murther of Socrates though this would be far short of what the Apostles did why were they not so charitable as to inform the world better of those grand truths of the being of God and immortality of souls if at least they were fully convinced of them themselves Why did not Plato at least speak out and tell the world the truth and not disguise his âiscourses under feigned names the better to avoid accusation and the fate of Socrates how doth he mince his excellent matter and playes as it were at Bo-peep with his readers sometimes appearing and then pulling in his horns again It may not be an improbable conjecture that the death of Socrates was the foundation of the Academy I mean of that cautelous doctrine of withholding assent and being both pro and con sometimes of this side and sometimes of that for Socrates his death had made all his friends very fearful of being too dogmatical And Plato himself had too much riches and withall too much of a Courtier in him to hazard the dear prison of his soul viz. his body meerly for an aethereall vehicle He had rather let his soul flutter up and down in a terrestrial matter or the cage it was pânt up in then hazard too violent an opening of it by the hands of the Areopagus And the great Roman Orator among the rest of Plato's sentiments had learnt this too for although in his discourses he hath many times sufficiently laid open the folly of the Heathen worship and Theology yet he knows how to bring himself off safe enough with the people and will be sure to be dogmatical only in this that nothing is to be innovated in the religion of a Common-wealth and that the customs of our Ancestors are inviolably to be observed Which principles had they been true as they were safe for the persons who spake them the Christian religion had never gained any entertainment in the world for where ever it came it met with this potent prejudice that it was looked on as an innovation and therefore was shrewdly suspected by the Governours of Common-wealths and the Preachers of it punished as factious and seditious persons which was all the pretext the wise Politicians of the world had for their cruel and inhumane persecutions of such multitudes of peaceable and innocent Christians Now when these things were foretold by the Apostles themselves before their going abroad so plainly that with the same saith they did believe the doctrine they Preached to be true they must believe that all these things should come to pass what courage and magnanimity of spirit was it in them thus to encounter dangers and as it were court the slames Nay and before the time was come that they must dye to seal the truth of their doctrine their whole life was a continual peregrination wherein they were as so many Iobs in pilgrimage encounterd with perills and dangers on every side of which one of the most painful and succesful S. Paul hath given in such a large inventory of his perils that the very reading of them were enough to undo a poor Epicurean Philosopher and at once to spoil him of the two pillars of his happiness the quietness of his mind and ease of his body Thus we see what a hazardous imployment that was which the Apostles went upon and that it was such as they very well understood the diââiculty of before they set upon it Secondly We cannot find out any rational motive which could carry them through so hazardous an employment but the full convictions of their minds of the undoubted truth and certainty of the doctrine which they delivered We find before that no vulgar motives in the world could carry them upon that design which they went upon Could they be led by ambition and vain glory who met with such reproaches where ever they went and not only persecutions of the tongue but the sharper ones of the hands too we never read of any but the Primitive Christians who were ambitious of being Martyrs and thought long till they were in the flames which made Arrius Antoninus being Proconsul of Asia when Christians in multitudes beset his tribunal and thronged in to be condemned say to them ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã O miserable people had not ye wayes enough to end your lives at hâme but ye must croud for an execution This was a higher ambition by far then any of those mancipia gloriae those Chamaeleons that lived on the breath of applause the Heathen Philosophers ever reached to who were as Tertullian expresseth it homines gloriae eloquentiae solius libidinosi unsatiable thirsters after the honour and eloquence of the world but the Spirit of a Christian did soare too high to quarry on so mean a prây When the more sober heathens had taken a stricter notice of the carriages and lives of the Preachers of the Gospel and all
more blind and wilfull Heathens derided them as such but who were the more infatuated let any sober person judge they who slighted and rejected a doctrine of so great concernment which came attested with so much resolution and courage in the professors of it or they who were so far perswaded of the truth of it that they would rather die than deny it dicimus palam dicimus et vobis torquentibus lacerati et cruenti vociferamur Deum colimus per Christum They were not ashamed to believe in the blood of Christ even when their own blood ran down besore their eyes and confess Christ with their mouths when their bodies were upon the rack Certainly then there were some very powerfull and convincing arguments which buoyed up the spirits of true Christians in that deluge of sufferings which they were to swim through it must be a strong and well grounded faith which would hold out under so great tryals and they could not be to seek for the most perswasive motives to faith who were so ready to give an account to others of the hope that was in them and to perswade all other persons to the embracing of it With what face and confidence otherwise could they perswade men to embrace a doctrine so dangerous as that was had there not been motives sufficient to bear up against the weight of susferings and arguments perswasive to convince them of the undoubted certainty of that doctrine which they encouraged them to believe Now that which appears to have been the main ground of satisfaction to the Primitive Christians as to the truth and certainty of the doctrine of Christ was this that the doctrine of the Gospel was at first delivered to the world by those persons who were themselves eye-witnesses of all the miracles which our Saviour wrought in confirmation of the truth of what he spake They were such persons who had been themselves present not only to hear most of our Saviours admirable discourses when he was in the world but to see all those glorious things which were done by him to make it appear that he was immediately sent from God Let us now appeal to our own faculties and examine a little what rational evidence could possibly be desired that the doctrine of the Gospel was true which God did not afford to the world What could the persons who were the auditors of our Saviour desire more as an evidence that he came from God then his doing such things which were certainly above any created power either humane or Diabolical and therefore must needs be Divine What could other persons desire more who were not present at the doing of these miracles but that the report of them should be conveyed to them in an undoubted manner by those persons who were eye-witnesses of them and made it appear to the world they were far from any intention of deceiving it Now this makes the Apostles themselves in their own writings though they were divinely inspired appeal to the rational evidence of the truth of the things in that they were delivered by them who were eye-witnesses of them There St. Peter speaks thus to the dispersed Iews ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã For we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but were eye-witnesses of his Majesty The power and coming of Christ which the Apostle speaks of was not as some improbably conceive either his general coming to judgement upon the world or his particular coming upon the Nation of the Iews but by an Hendyades by his power and coming is meant his powerful appearance in the world whereby he mightily discovered himself to be the Son of God Now this saith the Apostle was no ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã not like the Heathen Mythology concerning the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã of their Gods among them which were so frequently believed among them that Dionysins Halycarnassaeus condemns the Epicureans because they did deride ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the appearances of their Gods in the world now saith the Apostle assure your selves this is no such appearance of a God on earth as that among the Heathens was for saith he we our selves who declare these things were ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã we fully understood this ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã this great mystery of godliness God manifest in the flesh for we saw his ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã that great majesty which attended him in all which he spake or did we saw all those ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the great things of God which were manifest in him all those mirâculous operations which were wrought by him Therefore as this was a great confirmation of the faith of the Apostles themselves that they saw all these things so we see it was of great concernment to the world in order to their belief that the Gospel was no cunningly devised fable in that it was delivered by such who were ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã eye-witnesses of what they declared To the same purpose St. Iohn speaks ad conciliandam fidem to make it appear how true what they delivered was in the entrance of his Epistle That which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life for the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and shew unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you We see what great force and weight the Apostle layes upon this that they delivered nothing but what they had seen and heard as they heard the doctrine of Christ so they saw the miracles which he wrought in confirmation of it St. Luke likewise in the beginning of his Gospel declares that he intended to write nothing but what he had perfect understanding of from such persons who had been ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã eye-witnesses and instruments themselves in part of what was written for that is meant by ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and those things which were written he saith were ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã things which are abundantly proved to be true for being matters of âact there could be no stronger proof of them then by such who were eye-witnesses of what they spake And this we find the Apostles themselves very cautious about in the choice of a new Apostle in the room of Iudas Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Iesus went in and out among us beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day that he was taken from us must one be ordained to be a witness of his resurrection For because Christ was mightily declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead as that which
in his hands the ârint of the nails now our Saviour condeseending so far as to satisfie the incredulity of Thomas hath made it thereby evident that the body which our Saviour rose from the grave with was the same individual body which before was crucified and buried in the Sepulchre And we sind all the Apostles together upon our Saviours appearance to them after his resurrection so far from being credulous in embracing a phantasm instead of Christ that they suspâcted that it was either a meer phantasm or an evil spirit which appeared among them upon which it is said they were terrified and affrighted and supposed they had seen a spirit Which our Saviour could not beat them off from but by appealing to the judgement of their senses Handle me and see for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have and afterwards more fully to convince them he did eat in the midst of them Now the more suspitious and incâedulous the Apostles themselves at first were the greater evidence is it how far they were from any design of abusing the world in what they after preached unto it and what strong conviction there was in the thing its self which was able to satisfie such scrupulous and suspicious persons 2. When many witnesses concurr in the same Testimony Nothing can disparage more the truth of a testimony then the counter witness of such who were present at the same actions but when all the witnesses fully agree not only in the substance but in all material circumstances of the story what ground or reason can there be to suspect a forgery or design in it especially when the persons cannot by any fears or threatnings be brought to vary from each other in it Thus it is in our present case we find no real dissent at all mentioned either as to the birth miracles life death or resurrection of Iesus Christ all the witnesses attest the same things though writing in different places and upon different occasions no alteration in any circumstance of the story out of any design of pleasing or gratifying any persons by it Most of our Saviours miracles not only his Apostles but the people and his very enemies were witnesses of whose posterity to this day dare not deny the truth of such strange works which were wrought by him And for his resurrection it would be very strange that five hundred persons should all agree in the same thing and that no torments or death could bring any of them to deny the truth of it had there not been the greatest certainty in it There can be no reason to suspect such a testimony which is given by eye-witnesses but either from questiâning their knowledge of the things they speak of or their fiâelity in reporting them Now there is not the least ground to doubt either of these in reference to those persons who gave testimony to the world concerning the person and actions of our blessed Saviour For first They were such as were intimately conversant both with the person and actions of Iesus Christ whom he had chosen and trained up for that very end that they might be sufficiently qualified to acquaint the world with the truth of things concerning himself after his resurrection from the dead And accordingly they followed him up and down wheresoever he went they were with him in his solitudes and retirements and had thereby occasion to observe all his actions and to take notice of the unspotted innocency of his life Some of his Disciples were with him in his transfiguration others in his agony and bloody sweat they heard the expressions which came from his mouth in all which he discovered a wonderful submission to the will of God and a great readiness of mind to suffer for the good of the world Now therefore the first thing cannot at all be questioned their means of knowing the truth of what they spake Neither secondly is there any reasân to suspect their fidelity in reporting what they knew For 1. The truth of this doctrine wrought so far upon them that they parted with all their worldly subsistence for the sake of it Although their riches were not great yet their way of subsistence in the world was necessary they left their houses their wives and children and all for Christ and that not to gain any higher preferments in this world which had they done it would have rendred their design suspicious to the curious and inquisitive world but they let go at least a quiet and easie life for one most troublesom and dangerous So that it is not how much they parted withall but how freely they did it and with what chearfulness they underwent disgraces persecutions nay death its self for the sake of the Gospel Now can it be imagined that ever men were so prodigal of their ease and lives as to throw both of them away upon a thing which themselves were not fully assured of the truth of It had been the highest folly imaginable to have deceived themselves in a thing of so great moment to them as the truth of the doctrine which they preached was because all their hopes and happiness depended upon the truth of that doctrine which they preached And as Tertullian observes non fas est ulli de suâ religione mentiri for saith he he that sayes he worships any thing be sides what he doth he denyes what he doth worship and transfers his worship upon another and thereby doth not worship that which he thus denyes Besides what probability is there men should lye for the sake of that Religion which tells them that those which do so shall not receive the reward which is promised to those who cordially adhere unto it Nay they declared themselves to be the most miserable of all persons if their hopes were only in this present life Can we now think that any who had the common reason of men would part with all the contentments of this world and expose themselves to continual hazards and at last undergo death its self for the sake of something which was meerly the fiction of their own brains What should make them so sedulous and industrious in preaching such things that they could say necessity was laid upon them yea wo was unto them if they preached not the Gospel when yet they saw so many woes attending them in the preaching of it had there not been some more powerful attractive in the beauty and excellency of the doctrine which they preached then any could be in the ease and tranquillity of this present world Thus we see the fidâlity of the Apostles manifested in such a way as no other witnesses were ever yet willing to hazard theirs And therefore Origen deservedly condemns Celsus of a ridiculous impertinency when he would parallel the relations of Herodotus and Pindarus concerning Aristeus Proconnesius with those of the Apostles concerning Christ For faith he did either of those two
venture their lives upon the truth of what they writ concerning him as the Apostles did to attest the truth of what they preached concerning our Lord and Saviour Iesus Christ 2. The fidelity of the Apostles is evident in their manner of reporting the things which they deliver For if ever there may be any thing gathered from the manner of expression or the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã concerning the particular temper and disposition of the person from whom it comes we may certainly read the greatest fidelity in the Apostles from the peculiar manner of their expressing themselves to the world Which they do 1. With the greatest impartiality not declaring only what was glorious and admirable to the world but what they knew would be accounted foolishness by it They who had sought only to have been admired for the rare discoveries which they brought to the world would be sure to conceal any thing which might be accounted ridiculous but the Apostles fixed themselves most on what was most contemptible in the eyes of the world and what they were most mocked and derided for that they delighted most in the preaching of which was the Cross of Christ. Paul was so much in Love with this which was a stumbling block to the Iews and foolishness to the Greeks that he valued the knowledge of nothing else in comparison of the knowledge of Christ and him crucified Nay he elsewhere saith God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of Christ. What now should be the reason that they should rejoyce in that most which was most despicable to the world had not they seen far âreater truth and excellency in it then in the most sublime speculations concerning God or the souls of men in the School of Plato or any other heathen Philosophers That all men should be bound in order to their salvation to believe in one who was crucified at Hierusalem was a strange doctrine to the unbelieving world but if the Apostles had but endeavoured to have suited their doctrine to the School of Plato what rare persons might they have been accounted among the Heathen Philosophers Had they only in general terms discoursed of the Benignity of the Divine nature and the manifestations of Divine goodness in the world and that in order to the bringing of the souls of men to a nearer participation of the Divine nature the perfect Idea of true goodness and the express image of the person of God and the resplendency of his glory had vailed himself in humane nature and had everywhere scattered such beams of light and goodness as warmed and invigorated the frozen spirits of men with higher sentiments of God and themselves and raised them up above the faeculency of this terrestrial matter to breath in a freer air and converse with more noble objects and by degrees to fit the souls of men for those more pure illapses of real goodness which might alwayes satisfie the souls desires and yet alwayes keep them up till the soul should be sunning its self to all eternity under the immediate beams of Light and Love And that after this Incarnate Deity had spread abroad the wings of his Love for a while upon this lower world till by his gentle heat and incubation he had quickned the more plyable world to some degree of a Divine life he then retreated himself back again into the superiour world and put off that vail by which he made himself known to those who are here confined to the prisons of their bodies Thus I say had the Apostles minded applause among the admired Philosophers of the Heathens how easie had it been for them to have made some considerable additions to their highest speculations and have left out any thing which might seem so mean and contemptible as the death of the Son of God! But this they were so far from that the main thing which they preached to the world was the vanity of humane wisdom without Christ and the necessity of all mens believing in that Iesus who was crucified at Hierusalem The Apostles indeed discover very much infinitely more then ever the most lofty Pl tonist could do concerning the goodness and Love of God to mankind but that wherein they manifested the Love of God to the world was that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life And that herein was the Love of God manifested that while we were yet sinners Christ dyed for us And that this was the greatest truth and worthy of all acceptation that Iesus Christ came into the world to save sinners They never dreamt of any divine goodness which should make men happy without Christ No it was their design to perswade the world that all the communications of Gods goodness to the world were wholly in and through Iesus Christ and it is impossible that any should think otherwise unless Plato knew more of the mind of God then our blessed Saviour and Plotinus then Saint Paul Can we think now that the Apostles should hazard the reputation of their own wits so much as they did to the world and be accounted bablers and fools and madmen for preaching the way of salvation to be only by a person crucified between two thieves at Hierusalem had they not been convinced not only of the truth but importance of it and that it concerned men as much to believe it as it did to avoid eternal misery Did Saint Paul preach ever the less the words of truth and soberness because he was told to his face that his Learning had made him mad But if he was besides himself it was for Christ and what wonder was it if the Love of Christ in the Apostle should make him willing to lose his reputation for him seeing Christ made himself of no reputation that he might be in a capacity to do us good We see the Apostles were not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ because they knew it was the power of God to salvation and therefore neither in their preaching or their writings would they omit any of those passages concerning our Saviours death which might be accounted the most dishonourable to his person Which is certainly as great an evidence of their sidelity as can be expected which makes Origen say that the Disciples of Christ writ all things ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã with a great deal of candour and love of truth ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã not concealing from the world those passages of the life of Christ which would be accounted most foolish and ridiculous 2. With the greatest plainness and simplicity of speech Such whose design is to impose upon the minds of men with some cunningly devised fables love as much ambiguity as ever Apollo did in his most winding oracles of whom it is said Ambage nexâ Delphico mos est Dco Arcana tegere Servius tells us that Iupiter Ammon was therefore pictured with Rams-horns because his answers
had as many turnings and windings as they had But the horns which Moses was wont to be pictured with did only note light and perspicuity from the ambiguity of ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which notes the sending forth of rayes of light like a horn and yet Moses himself was vailed in comparison of the openness and plainness of speech which was in the Apostles Impostors cast a mist of many dark and cloudy words before them but when they are once brought into the open light their vizard falls off and their deformity appears Such persons delight in soaring quite out of the apprehensions of those who follow them and never think themselves better recompenced for their pains then when they are most admired and least understood But never was Christianity more dishonoured then when men brought it from its native simplicity and plainness into a company of cloudy and insignificant expressions which are so far from making men better understand the truth of it that it was certainly the Devils design by such obscure terms to make way for a mysterie to be advanced but it was of iniquity and soon after we see the effect of it in another oracle set up at Rome instead of Delphos and all the pretence of it was the obscurity supposed in Scripture What! darkness come by the rising of the Sun Or is the Sun at last grown so beggarly that he is fain to borrow light of the earth Must the Sâripture be beholding to the Church for its clearness and Christ himselâ not speak intelligibly unless the Popâ be his Interpreter Did Christ reveal to the world the Way to salvation and yet leave men to seâk which was it till a Guide never heard of in the Scripture come to direct them in the Way to it What strange witnesses were the Apostles if they did noâ speak the truth with plainness How had men been to sââk as âo the truth of Christianity if the Apostles had not declared the dâctrine of the Gospel with all evidence and perspicuity Whom must we believe in this case the Apostles or the Roman oracle The Apostles they tell us they speak with all plainness of speech and for that end purposely lay aside all excâllency of words and humane wisdom that men might not be to seek for their mâaning in a matter of so great moment that the Gospel was hid to none but such as are lost and whose eyes are blinded by the god of this world that the doctrinâ revealed by them is a light to direct us in our way to heaven and a rule to walk by and it is a strange property of light to be obscure and of a rule to be crooked But it is not only evident from the Apostles own affirmations that they laid aside all affected obscurity ambiguous expressions and Philosophical terms whereby the world might have been to seek for what they were to believe but it is likewise clear from the very nature of the doctrine they preached and the design of their preaching of it What need Rhetorick in plain truths or affected phrases in giving evidence How incongruous would obscure expressions have been to the design of saving souls by the foolishness of preaching For if they had industriously spoken in their preaching above the capacities of those they spake to they could never have converted a soul without a miracle for the ordinary way of conversion must be by the understanding and how could that work upon the understanding which was so much above it But saith the Apostle we preach not our selves but Christ Iesus the Lord and our selves your servants for Iesus sake If they had sought themselves or their own credit and reputation there might have been some reason that they should have used the way of the Sophists among the Greeks and by declamatory speeches to have inhanceed their esteem among the vâlgar But the Apostles disowned and rejected all these vulgar artifices of mean and low-spirited men they laid aside all those enticing words ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã of the way of the Heathen Sophists and declared the Tâstimony of God with spiritual evidence they handled not the word of God deceitfully but by manifestation of the truth commended themselves to every mans consâience in the sight of God Now what could be so suiteable to such a design as the greatest plainness and faithfulness in what they spake We find in the testimony of the Apostles ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as Origen speaks nothing that is spurious or counterfeit nothing savouring of the cunning craftiness of such as lie in wait to deceive and saith he it is impossible to think that men never bred up in the Sophistry of the Greâks nor experienced in the Rhetorical insinuations used among them could ever be able so suddenly to perswade the world to embrace that which had been a figment of their own brains The truth is the Apostles speak like men very confident of the truth of what they speak and not like such who were fain to fetch in the help of all their Topicks to find out some probable arguments to make men believe that which it is probable they did not believe themselves which was most commonly the case of the great Orators among the Heathens We find no pedantick flourishes no slattering insinuations no affected cadencyes no such great care of the rising and falling of words in the several sentences which make up so great a part of that which was accounted eloquence in the Apostles times These things were too mean a prey for the spirits of the Apostles to quarry upon every thing in them was grave and serious every word had its due weight every sentence brim-full of spiritual matter their whole discourse most becoming the Majesty and Authority of that spirit which they spake by And therein was seen a great part of the infinite wisdom of God in the choice he made of the persons who were to propagate the Doctrine of Christ in the world that they were not such who by reason of their great repute and fame in the world might easily draw whole multitudes to imbrace their dictates but that there might not be the least foundation for an implicit faith they were of so mean rank and condition in the world that in all probability their names had never been hard of had not their doctrine made them famous To this purpose Origen excellently speaks ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã I am of opinion saith he that Iesus did purposely make use of such preachers of his doctrine that there might be no place for suspicion that they came instructed with the arts of Sophistry but that it be clearly manifest to all that would consider it that there was nothing of design in those who discovered so much simplicity in their writings and that they had a more divine power which was more efficacious then the greatest volubility of expressions or ornaments of speech or the artifices which were used in the
then these were Had there been any ground of suspicion concerning the design of Christ why could not the Iews prevail with Iudas to discover it as well as to betray his person Iudas had done but a good work if Christ had been such an impostor as the Iews blasphemously said he was what made Iudas then so little satisfied with his work that he grew weary of his life upon it and threw himself away in the most horrid despair No person certainly had been so fit to have been produced as a witness against Christ as Iudas who had been so long with him and had heard his speeches and observed his miracles but he had not patience enough to stay after that horrid fact to be a witness against him nay he was the greatest witness at that time for him when he who had betrayed him came to the Sanhedrim when consulting about his death and told them that he had sinned in betraying innocent blood What possible evidence could have been given more in behalf of our Saviour then that was when a person so covetous as to betray his Master for thirty pieces of silver was so weary of his bargain that he comes and throws back the money and declares the person innocent whom he had betrayed And this person too was such a one as knew our Saviour far better then any of the witnesses whom afterwards they suborned against him who yet contradicted each other and at last could produce nothing which in the judgement of the Heathen Governour could make him judge Christ worthy of death 3. The Apostles were freer from design then any counter-witness at that time could be we have already proved the Apostles could not possibly have any other motive to affirm what they did but full conviction of the truth of what they spake but now if any among the Iews at that time had asserted any thing contrary to the Apostles we have a clear account of it and what motive might induce them to it viz. the preserving of their honour and reputation with the people the upholding their traditions besides their open and declared enmity against Christ without any sufficient reason at all for it now who would believe the testimony of the Scribes and Pharisees who had so great authority among the people which they were like to lose if Christs doctrine were true before that of the Apostles who parted with all for the sake of Christ and ventured themselves wholly upon the truth of our Saviours doctrine 4. None ever did so much to attest the negative as the Apostles did to prove their fidelity as to the affirmative Had sufficient counter-witness been timely produced we cannot think the Apostles would have run so many continual hazards in Preaching the things which related to the person and actions of Christ. Did ever any lay down their lives to undeceive the world if the Apostles were guilty of abusing it 5. The number of such persons had been inconsiderable in comparison of those who were so fully perswaded of the truth of those things which concern our Saviour who were all ready as most of them did to seal the truth of them with their lives Whence should so many men grow so suddenly confident of the truth of such things which were contrary to their former perswasions interest education had they not been delivered in such a way that they were assured of the undoubted truth of them which brings me to the last proposition which is Matters of fact being first believed on the account of eye-witnesses and received with an universal and uncontrouled assent by all such persons who have thought themselves concerned in knowing the truth of them do yeild a sufficient foundation for a firm assent to be built upon I take it for granted that there is sufficient foundation for a firm assent where there can be no reason given to question the evidence which that there is not in this present case will appear from these following considerations 1. That the multitudes of those persons who did believe these things had liberty and opportunity to be satisfied of the truth of them before they believed them Therefore no reason or motive can be assigned on which they should be induced to believe these things but the undoubted evidence of truth which went along with them I confess in Mahumetisme a very great number of persons have for some centuries of years continued in the belief of the doctrine of Mahomet but then withall there is a sufficient account to be given of that viz. the power of the sword which keeps them in aw and strictly forbids all the followers of Mahomet to dispute their religion at all or compare it with any other Therefore I can no more wonder at this then I do to see so great a part of the world under the Tyranny of the greât Turk Neither on the other side do I wonder that such a multitude of those professing Christianity should together with it believe a great number of erroneous doctrines and live in the practice of many gross superstitions because I consider what a strange prevalency education hath upon softer spirits and more easie intellectuals and what an aw an Inquisition bears upon timerous and irresolved persons But now when a great multitude of persons sober and inquisitive shall contrary to the principles of their education and without fear of any humane force which they beforehand see will persecute them and after diligent enquiry made into the grounds on which they believe for sake all their former perswasions and resolvedly adhere to the truth of the doctrine propounded to them though it cost them their lives if this give us not reason to think this doctrine true we must believe mankind to be the most miserable unhappy creatures in the world that will with so much resolution part with all advantages of this life for the sake of one to come if that be not undoubtedly certain and the doctrine proposing it infallibly true It is an observable circumstance in the propagation of Christian Religion that though God made choice at first of persons generally of mean rank and condition in the world to be Preachers of the Gospel God thereby making it appear that our faith did not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God and therefore chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong yet soon afâer the Gospel was preached abroad in the world we finde persons of great place and reputation of great parts and abilities engaged in the profession of the Christian faith In the History of the Acts we read of Sergius a Proconsul of Dionysius the Areopagite converted to the faith and in the following ages of the Church many persons of great esteem for their excellent learning and abilities such was Iustin Martyr one who before he became a Christian was conversant with all sects of Philosophers Stoicks Peripateticks Pythagoreans and at last was a professed Platonist till he
was converted from Plato to Christ and then found that true which he speaks of in his Dialogue with Trypho that after all his enquiries into Philosophy speaking of the doctrine of Christ ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã I found this at last to be the only sure and profitable Philosophy And when Trypho after derides him as a man of very easie faith who would leave the doctrine of Plato for that of Christ for it seems by him the Iews then had a more favourable opinion of the state of Platonists then Christians Iustin is so far from being moved with such reproaches that he tells him he would undertake to demonstrate to him ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã that the Christians did not give credit to empty fables and unprovable assertions but to such a doctrine as was full of a Divine spirit and power and flourished with grace The proving of which is the subject of that discourse At Alexandria we meet with a succession of excellent persons all which were not only embracers themselves but defenders of the Christian faith for setting aside there Abilius Iustus Cerdo Eumenes Marcus Celadion Agrippinus Iulianus Demetrius and others who flourished about the second Century I shall only fix on those persons who were famous enquirers after truth and noted for excellency in Heathen learning yet these persons after all their inquiries found nothing to fix on but the Christian faith and valued no other discovery of truth in comparison with that Such was Pantaenus who as Eusebius tells us was an excellent Stoick before he became a Christian and was after so eminent a one that in imitation of the Apostles he wenâ into India to convert the inhabitants to the Christian faith and at his return was made Rector of the School at Alexandria which as the same author tells us was much frequented by such who were ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã well skild in humane as well as Divine learning How excellent Pantaenus was in humane learning may appear in that Origen and Hierome both make his example their plea for the studying of it After him succeeded Clemens Alexandrinus Pantaenus his Schollar a person of great depth of learning and exquisitly skild in all Heathen Antiquities as appears by his remaining writings The Learning of Origen is sufficiently known which was in such great reputation in his own time that not only Christians but Philosophers flocked to his Lectures at Alexandria as Eusebius tells us wherein he read the Mathematicks and other parts of Philosophy as well as the Scriptures and the same author informs us that the Philosophers did dedicate their books to him and sometimes chose him as arbitrator between them in matters of dispute and Porphyrie himself in his books against the Christians vouchsafed a high encomium of Origen for his excellent learning In Origens time Heraclas a Presbyter of Alexandria for five years together frequented the Schools of the Philosophers and put on the Philosophick pallium ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and was very conversant in the books of the Grecian Learning Besides these we read of Pierius and Achillas two Presbyters of Alexandria who were ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as Nicephorus Callistus speaks persons well skild in the Grecian learning and Philosophy If from Alexandria we go to Caesarea there we not only meet with a School of learning among the Christians but with persons very eminent in all kinds of learning such were the famous Pamphilus and Eusebius so great an admirer of him that ever since he is called Eusebius Pamphili At Antioch was ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as Nicephorus speaks a person versed in all kind of ingenuous literature Anatclius Bishop of Laodicea one versed in Geometry Astronomy and all kind of Philosophy as well as in the doctrine of Christ. Thus we see how in those early dayes of the Greek Church what excellent persons many of those were who were zealous Professors of Christianity and concerning those of the Latin Church I shall only mention that speech of St. Austin who was himself an instance of the same nature and a star of the first magnitude among them Nonne aspicimus quanto auro argento vâste sâffarcinatus exierit de Aegypto Cyprianâs Doctor suavissimus Martyr beatissimus quanto Lactantius quanto Victorinus Optatus Hilarius ut de vivis taceam quanto innumerabiles Graeci quod prior ipse fidelissimus Dei servus Moses fecerat de quo Scriptum est quod eruditus fuerit omni sapientia Aegyptiorum To whose catalogue of learned persons among the Latin Christians Tertullian Arnobius and several others may be deservedly added But as St. Austin there well observes though the Israclites went rich out of Aegypt yet it was their eating the Passover which saved them from destruction so though these were accomplished with those perfections and riches of the soul the ornaments of learning yet it was their eating the true Passover which was Christ by their adhering to his doctrine was that which would be of more advantage to them then all their accomplishments would be Now then since in the first ages of the Christian Church we find not only innumerable multitudes of persons of great integrity and sobriety in their lives embracing the doctrine of Christ but so many persons that were curious enquirers after the truth of things we can certainly have no reason to distrust such a Testimony which was received in so unanimous a manner by persons as able to judge of the truth of things and as fearful of being deceived in reference to them as any now in the world can be 2. As this testimony was received by persons inâuisitive after the truth of things so the doctrine conveyed by it was a matter of the highest moment in the world and therefore we cannot conceive but persons ordinarily inquisitive about other things would be more then ordinarily so about this because their eternal welfare and happiness did depend upon it All persons that are truly religious must at least be allowed to be persons very inquisitive after the state and condition of their souls when they shall be dislodged from their bodyes And if we do but grant this can we in any reason think that such a multitude of persons in so many ages should continue venturing their souls upon a Testimony which they had no assurance of the truth of And that none of all these persons though men otherwise rational and judicious should be able to discover the falsity of that doctrine they went upon if at least any upon consideration of it can imagine it to be so It is not reconcileable with the general presumption of humane nature concerning Divine providence and the care God takes of the welfare of men to suffer so many persons who sincerely desire to serve God in the way which is most pleasing to him to go on in such a continual delusion and never have it at all discovered to them If all then who
have believed the doctrine of Christ to be the only way to salvation have been deceived either we must deny altogether a Divine Providence or say the Devil hath more power to deceive men then God to direct them which is worse then the former or else assert that there are no such things at all as either God or Devils but that all things come to pass by chance and fortune and if so it is still more inexplicable why such multitudes of rational and serious men and the most inquisitive part of the world as to such things should all be so possessed with the truth and certainty of these things and the more profane wicked and ignorant any persons are the more prone they are to mock and deride them If such men then see more into truth and reason then the sober and judicious part of mankind let us bid adieu to humanity and adore the brutes since we admire their judgement most who come the nearest to them 3. The multitude of these persons thus consenting in this Testimony could have no other engagement to this consent but only their firm perswasion of the truth of the doctrine conveyed by it because those who unanimously agree in this thing are such persons whose other designs and interests in this world differ as much as any mens do If it had been only a consent of Iews there might have been some probable pretence to have suspected a matter of interest in it but as to this thing we find the Iews divided among themselves about it and the stiffest denyers of the truth of it do yet inviolably preserve those sacred records among them from which the truth of the doctrine of Christ may be undoubtedly proved Had the Christian Religion been enforced upon the world by the Roman Emperours at the time of its first promulgation there would have been some suspicion of particular design in it but it came with no other strength but the evidence of its own truth yet it found sudden and strange entertainment among persons of all Nations and degrees of men In a short time it had eaten into the heart of the Roman Empire and made so large a spread therein that it made Tertullian say Hesterni sumus vestra omnia implevimus urbes insulas castella municipia conciliabula castraipsa tribus decurias palatium senatum forum sola vobis relinquimus Templa We have but newly appeared saith he yet we have filled all places with our company but only your Temples and before speaking of the Heathens Obsessam vociferantur civitatem in agris in castellis in insulis Christianos omnem sexum aetatem conditionem etiam dignitatem transgredi ad hoc nomen quasi detrimento moerent All sorts and conditions of men in all places were suddenly become Christians What common tye could there be now to unite all these persons together if we set aside the undoubted truth and certainty of the doctrine of Christ which was first preached to them by such who were eye-witnesses of Christs actions and had left sacred records behind them containing the substance of the doctrine of Christ and those admirable instructions which were their only certain guides in the way to heaven 4. Because many persons do joyn in this consent with true Christians who yet could heartily with that the doctrine of Christianity were not true Such are all those persons who are sensual in their lives and walk not according to the rules of the Gospel yet dare not question or deny the truth of it Such who could heartily wish there were no future state nor judgement to come that they might indulge themselves in this world without fear of another yet their consciences are so far convinced of and awed by the truth of these things that they raise many perplexities and anxieties in their minds which they would most willingly be rid of which they can never throughly be till instead of having the name of Christians they come to live the life of Christians and become experimentally acquainted with the truth and power of Religion And withall we find that the more men have been acquainted with the practice of Christianity the greater evidence they have had of the truth of it and been more fully and rationally perswaded of it To such I grant there are such powerful evidences of the truth of the doctrine of Christ by the effectual workings of the Spirit of God upon their souls that all other arguments as to their own satisfaction may fall short of these As to which those verses of the Poet Dante 's rendred into Latine by F. S. are very pertinent and significant for when he had introduced the Apostle Peter asking him what it was which his faith was founded on he answers Deinde exivit ex luce profundâ Quae illic splendebat pretiosa gemma Super quam omnis virtus fundatur i. e. That God was pleased by immediate revelation of himself to discover that divine truth to the world whereon our faith doth stand as on its sure foundation but when the Apostle goes on to enquire how he knew this came at first from God his answer to that is larga pluvia Spiritûs Sancti quae est diffusa Super veteres super novas membranas Est syllogismus ille qui eam mihi conclusit Adâò acutè ut prae illâ demonstratione Omnis demonstratio alia mihi videatur obtusa i. e. That the Spirit of God doth so fully discover its self both in the Old and New Testament that all other arguments are but dull and heavy if compared with this It is true they are so to a truly inlightened conscience which discovers so much beauty and glory in the Scriptures that they ravish the soul although it be unable to give so full an account of this unto others who want the eyes to see that beauty with which a heart truly gracious hath We see ordinarily in the world that the attraction of beauty is an unaccountable thing and one may discern that which ravisheth him which another looks on as mean and ordinary and why may it not be much more thus in divine objects which want spiritual eyes to discover them Therefore I grant that good men enjoy that satisfaction to their own Consciences as to the truth of the Doctrine of Christ which others cannot attain to but yet I say that such do likewise see the most strong rational and convincing evidence which doth induce them to believe which evidence is then most convincing when it is seconded by the peculiar energy of the Spirit of God upon the souls of true Believers But yet we see that the power and force of the truth of these things may be so great even upon such minds which are not yet moulded into the fashion of true goodness that it may awe with its light and clearness where it doth not soften and alter by its heat and influence Now whence can it be that such
convictions should stick so fast in the minds of those who would fain pull out those pierâing arrows but that there is a greater power in them then they are mnsters of and they cannot stand against the force whereby they come upon them nor find any salve to cure the wounds which are made within them but by those weapons which were the causes of them And therefore when wicked persons under conflicts of conscience cannot ease themselves by direct Atheism or finding reasons to cast off such convictions by discerning any invalidity in the Testimony whereon the truth of these things depends it is a certain argument that there is abundant truth in that Testimony when men would fain perswade themselves to believe the contrary and yet cannot 5. The truth of this consent appears from the unanimity of it among those persons who have yet strangely differed from each other in many controversies in Religion We see thereby this unanimity is no forced or designed thing because we see the persons agreeing in this do very much disagree from each other in other things And the same grounds and reasons whereon they disagree as to other things would have held as to these too were there not greater evidence of the certainty of these things then of those they fall out about It hath not yet become a question among those who differ so much about the sense of Scripture whether the Scripture its self be the Word of God although the very accounts on which we are to believe it to be so hath been the subject of no mean Controversies All the divided parts of the Christian world do yet fully agree in the matters of fact viz. that there was such a person as Iesus Christ and that he did many great miracles that he dyed on the Cross at Jerusalem and rose again from the dead now these contain the great foundations of Christian faith and therefore the multitude of other controversies in the world ought to be so far from weakning our faith as to the truth of the doctrine of Christ which men of weak judgements and Atheistical spirits preâend that it ought to be a strong confirmation of it when we see persons which so peevishly quarrel with each other about some inferiour and less weighty parts of Religion do yet unanimously consent in the principal foundations of Christian faith and such whereon the necessity of faith and obedience as the way to salvation doth more immediately depend And this may be one great reason why the infinitely wise God may suffer such lamentable contentions and divisions to be in the Christian world that thereby inquisitive persons may see that if Religion had been a meer design of some few politick persons the quarrelsom world where it is not held in by force would never have consented so long in the owning such common principles which all the other controversies are built upon And although it be continually seen that in divided parties one is apt to run from any thing which is received by the other and men generally think they can never run far enough from them whose errours they have discovered that yet this principle hath not carryed any considerable party of the Christian world out of their indignation against those great corruptions which have crept into the world under a pretence of Religion to the disowning the foundation of Christian Faith must be âartly imputed to the signal hand of divine providence and partly to those strong âvidences which there are of the truth of that Testimony which conveyes to uâ the foundations of Christian Faith Thus we see now how great and uncontrouled this consent is as to the matters of fact delivered down from the eye-witnesses of them concerning the actions and miracles of our blessed Saviour which are contained in the Scriptures as authentical records of them and what a sure foundation there is for a firm assent to the truth of the things from so universal and uninterrupted a tradition Thus far we have now manifested the necessity of the miracles of Christ in order to the propagation of Christianity in the world from the consideration of the persons who were to propagate it in the world the next thing we are to considâr is the admirable success which the Gospel met with in the world upon its being preached to it Of whâch no rational account can be given unless the actions and miracles of our Saviour were most undoubtedly true That the Gospel of Christ had very strange and wonderful success upon its first preaching hath been partly discovered already and is withall so plain from the long continuance of it in these European parts that none any wayes conversant in the history of former ages can have any ground to question it But that this strange and admirable success of the doctrine of Christ should be an evidence of the Truth of it and the miracles wrought in confirmation of it will appear from these two considerations 1. That the doctrine its self was so directly contrary to the general inclinations of the world 2. That the propagation of it was so much opposed by all worldly power 1. That the doctrine its self was so opposite to the general inclinations of the world The doctrine may be considered either as to its credenda or matters of faith or as to its agenda or matters of life and practice both these were contrary to the inclinations of the world the former seemed hard and incredible the latter harsh and impossible 1. The matters of faith which were to be believed by the world were not such things which we may imagine the vulgar sort of men would be very forward to run after nor very greedy to imbrace 1. Because contrary to the principles of their education and the Religion they were brought up in the generality of mankind is very tenacious of those principles and prejudices which are sucked in in the time of Infancy There are some Religions one would think it were impossible that any rational men should believe them but only on this account because they are bred up under them It is a very great advantage any Religion hath against another that it comes to speak first and thereby insinuates such an apprehension of its self to the mind that it is very hard removing it afterwards The understanding seems to be of the nature of those things which are communis juris and therefore primi sunt possidentis when an opinion hath once got possession of the mind it usually keeps out whatever comes to disturb it Now we cannot otherwise conceive but all those persons who had been bred up under Paganism and the most gross Idolatry must needs have a very potent prejudice against such a doctrine which was wholly irreconcileable with that Religion which they had been devoted to Now the stronger the prejudice is which is conveyed into mens minds by the force of education the greater strength and power must there needs be in
who contend for the corruptions crept into the Christian Church who make use of the same pretences for them viz. that they were delivered down from the Fathers tantaque est auctoritas vetustatis ut inquirere in eam scelus esse dicatur who are we who will see further then Antiquity But it is no wonder if Antiquity be accompanied with dimness of sight and so it was undoubtedly as to the Pagan world and as to the Christian too when such a mixture of Heathenism came into it And the very same arguments by which the pleaders for Christianity did justifie the truth of their religion notwithstanding this pretended antiquity will with equal force hold for a reformation of such inveterate abuses which under a pretence of antiquity have crept into the Christian Church Nullus pudor est ad meliora transire saith Ambrose in his answer to Symmachus what shame is it to grow better Quid facies saith Lactantius majores ne potius an rationem sequeris Sirationem mavis discedere te necesse est ab institutis auctoritate majorum quoniam id solum rectum est quod ratio praescribit Sin autem âietas majores sequi suadet sateris igitur stultos illos esse qui excogitatis contra rationem religionibus servierint te ineptum qui id colas quod falsum esse conviceris Where reason and meer authority of forefathers stand in competition he is more a child then a man that knows not on which side to give his suffrage But with the greatest strength and clearest reason Arnobius speaks in this case Itaque cum nobis intenditis aversionem à religione priorum causam convenit ut inspiciat is non sactum nec quid reliquerimus opponere sed secuti quid simus potissimum contueri When you charge us saith he that we are revolted from the religion of our forefathers you ought not presently to condemn the fact but to examine the reasons of it neither ought you so much to look at what we have left as what it is we have embraced Nam simutare sententiam culpa est ulla vel crimen i veteribus institutis in alias res novas voluntatesque migrare criminatio ista vos spectat qui totics vitam consuetudinem que mutastis qui in mores alios atque alios ritus priorum condemnatione transistis If meer departing from the religion of our ancestors be the great sault all those who own themselves to be Christians were themselves guilty of it when they revolted from Heathenism If it be here said that the case is different because there was sufficient reason for it which there is not as to the corruptions of the Christian Church if so then all the dispute is taken off from the matter of fact or the revolt to the causes inducing to it and if the Protestant be not able as to the causes of our separation from Rome to manifest that they were sufficient let him then be triumphed over by the Romanist and not before I affert then and that with much assurance of mind that the principles of the Reformation are justifiable upon the same grounds of reason which the embracing Christianity was when men of Heathens became Christians and that the arguments made use of by the Romanists against our separation from them are such as would have justified a Pagan Philosopher in not embracing Christianity For if it be unlawful for any party of men to divide from others in a matter of religion which pretends antiquity and universality it had been unlawful for a Philosopher to have deserted Paganism as well as for a Protestânt to depart from Rome For according to the principles of the Romanists the judgement in the cause of the separation and of the truth of religion lies in that party from which we depart if we do now but apply this to the old Roman Senate or Emperors in the case of Christian religion and dividing from Heathen worship we shall quickly see how easie a matter it will be to make Christianity its self a Schism and the doctrine of Christ the greatest here sie But as strong as those pretences were then or have been since the power of the doctrine of Christ hath been so great as to conquer them and thereby to manifest that it was of God when such potent prejudices were not able to withstand it Of which Antiquity is the first 2. The large and universal spread of Pagan religion when Christianity came into the world there was never so great Catholicism as in Heathen worship when the Apostles first appeared in the Gentile world Inde adeo per universa imperia provincias oppida videmus singulos sacrorum ritus gentiles babere Dcos colere municipes saith Caecilius in Minutius Felix The great charge against the Christians was Novellism that they brought in a strange and unheard of religion The common Question was Where was your religion before Iesus of Nazareth as it hath been since Where was your religion before Luther and the same answer which served then will stand unmovable now there where no other religion is in the Word of God For this was the weapon whereby the Primitive Christians defended themselves against the assaults of Paganism and the evidences they brought that the doctrine preached by them and contained in the Scriptures was originally from God were the only means of overthrowing Paganism notwithstanding its pretended universality 3. Settlement by Laws of Heathen worship This was so much pretended and pleaded for that as far as we can finde by the history of the Primitive Church the pretence on which the Christians suffered was sedition and opposing the established Laws The Christians were reckoned inter illicitas factiones as appears by Tertullian among unlawful corporations the Politicians and Statesmen were all for preserving the Laws they troubled not themselves much about any religion but only that which was settled by Law they sought to uphold because the acting contrary to it might bring some disturbance to the civil state There were several Laws which the Christians were then brought under and condemned for the breach of 1. The Law against hetaeriae or conventicles as they were pleased frequently to stile the meeting of Christians together thence the places where the Christians assembled for worship were commonly called Conventicula it a appellabant loca saith Heraldus ubi congregabantur Christiani oraturi verbi divini interpretationem accepturi ac sacras Synaxes habituri but Elmenhorstius more shortly Conventicula loca sunt ubi Christiani Congregati orare consucverunt The places where the Christians did meet and pray together were called Conventicles in Basiâica Siciunini ubi ritus Christiani est conventiculum saith Ammianus Marccllinus cur immaniter conventicula dirui saith Arnobius qui universum populum cum ipso pariter conventiculo concremavit as Lactantius likewise speaks Now the reason of the name was
eorum qui eam non putamus in manibus esse plumbatis The accusation for treason lay in their refusing to supplicate the Idols for the Emperors welfare 2. Because they would not swear by the Emperors Genius Thence Saturnius said to the Martyr Tantum jura per genium Caesaris nostri if he would but swear by the Genius of Caesar he should be saved Yet though they refused to swear by the Emperours genius they did not refuse to testifie their Allegiance and to swear by the Emperors safety Sed juramus saith Tertullian Sicut non per genios Caesarum it ae per salutem corum quae est augustior omnibus geniis 3. Because they would not worship the Emperours as Gods which was then grown a common custom Non enim Deum Imperatorem dicam vel quia mentirinescio vel quia illum deridere non audeo vel quia necipse se Deum volet dici si homo sit as the same Author speaks Nay the primitive Christians were very scrupulous of calling the Emperours Dominus hoc enim Dei est cognomen because the name Lord was an attribute of Gods and applied as his name to him in Scripture The reason of this Scrupulosity was not from any question they made of the Soveraignty of Princes or their obligation to obedience to them which they are very free in the acknowledgement of but from a jealousie and just suspicion that something of Divine honour might be implyed in it when the adoration of Princes was grown a custom Therefore Tertullian to prevent misunderstandings saith Dicam plane Imperatorem Dominum sed more Communi sed quando non cogor ut Dominum Dei vice dicam They refused not the name in a common sense but as it implyed Divine honour 4. Because they would not observe the publick festivals of the Emperors in the way that others did which it seems were observed with abundance of looseness and debauchery by all sorts of persons and as Tertullian smartly sayes malorum morum licentia piet as erit occasio luxuriae religio deputabitur Debauchery is accounted a piece of loyalty and intemperance a part of religion Which made the Christians rather hazard the reputation of their loyalty then bear a part in so much rudeness as was then used and thence they abhorred all the solemn spectacles of the Romans nihil est nobis saith the same author dictu visu auditu cum insania Circi cum impudicitia Theatri cum atrocitate arenae cum Xysti vanitate They had nothing to do either with the madness of the Cirque or the immodesty of the Theatre or the cruelty of the Amphitheatre or the vanity of the publick wrestlings We see then what a hard Province the Christians had when so many Laws were laid as birdlime in their way to catch them that it was impossible for them to profess themselves Christians and not run into a Praemunire by their Laws And therefore it cannot be conceived that many out of affectation of novelty should then declare themselves Christians when so great hazards were run upon the professing of it Few soft-spirited men and lovers of their own ease but would have found some fine distinctions and nice evasions to have reconciled themselves to the publick Laws by such things which the Primitive Christians so unaenimously refused when tending to prophaness or Idolatry And from this discourse we cannot but conclude with the Apostle Paul that the weapons whereby the Apâstles and Primitive Christians encountered the Heathen world were not fleshly or weak but exceeding strong and powerfull in that they obtained so great a conquest over the imaginations and carnal reasonings of men which were their strong holds they secured themselves in as to make them readily to forsake their Heathen worship and become chearful servants to Christ. Thus we see the power of the doctrine of Christ which prevailed over the principles of education though backt with pretended antiquity universality and establishment by civil Laws But this will further appear if we consider that not only the matters of faith were contrary to the principles of education but because many of them seemed incredible to mens natural reason that we cannot think persons would be over forward to believe such things Every one being so ready to take any advantage against a religion which did so little flatter corrupt nature either as to its power or capacity in so much that those who preached this doctrine declared openly to the world that such persons who would judge of the Christian doctrine by such principles which meer natural reason did proceed upon such one I suppose it is whom the Apostle calls ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã one that owned nothing but natural reason whereby to judge of Divine truths could not entertain matters of faith or of Divine revelation because such things would seem but folly to him that owned no higher principle then Philosophy or that did not believe any Divine inspiration neither can such a one know them because a Divine revelation is the only way to come to a through understanding of them and a person who doth not believe such a Divine revelation it is impossible he should be a competent judge of the truth of the doctrine of Christ. So that the only ground of receiving the doctrine of the Gospel is upon a Divine revelation that God himself by his Son and his Apostles hath revealed these deep mysteries to the world on which account it is we are bound to receive them although they go beyond our reach and comprehension But we see generally in the Heathen world how few of those did believe the doctrine of Christ in comparison who were the great admirers of the Philosophy and way of learning which was then cryed up the reason was because Christianity not only contained far deeper mysteries then any they were acquainted with but delivered them in such a way of authority commanding them to believe the doctrine they preached on the account of the Divine authority of the revealers of it Such a way of proposal of doctrines to the world the Philosophy of the Greeks was unacquainted with which on that account they derided as not being suited to the exact method which their sciences proceeded in No doubt had the Apostles come among the Greeks ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã with a great deal of pomp and ostentation and had fed mens curiositiâs with vain and unnecessary speculations they might have had as many followers among the Greeks for their sakes as Christ had among the Iews for the sake of the loaves But the matters of the Gospel being more of inward worth and moment then of outward pomp and shew the vain and empty Greeks presently finde a quarrel with the manner of proposing them that they came not in a way of clear demonstrâtion but stood so much upon faith as soon as it were delivered Thence Celsus and Galen think they have
of Rambam or R. Moses Maimon It is said that the King of Persia desired of him a sign and he told him that he should cut off his head and he would rise again which he cunningly desired to avoid being tormented which the King was resolved to try and accordingly executed him but I suppose his resurrection and Mahomets will be both in a day although Maimonides tells us some of the Iews are yet such fools as to expect his resurrection Several other Impostors Maimonides mentions in his Epistle de Australi regione One who pretended to be the Messias because he cured himself of the leprosie in a night several others he mentions in Spain France and other parts and the issue of them all was only a further aggravation of the miseries and captivities of the poor Iews who were so credulous in following Impostors and yet such strange Infidels where there were plain and undoubted miracles to perswade them to believe in our blessed Saviour as the true Messias We freely grant then that many pretended miracles may be done in the world to deceive men with but doth it hence follow that either there are no true miracles done in the world or that there are no certain rules to distinguish the one from the other But as Origen yet further replyes to Celsus as a Woolf doth very much resemble a dog yet they are not of the same kind nor a turtle Dove and a Pigeon so that which is produced by a divine power is not of the same nature with that which is produced by Magick but as he argues Is it possible that there should be only deceits in the world and magical operations and can there be no true miracles at all wrought Is humane nature only capable of Impostures or can none work miracles but Devils Where there is a worse there may be a better and so from the impostures counterfeits we may inferr that there are true miracles wrought by a divine power otherwise it were all one as to say there are counterfeits but no Iewels or there are Sophisms and Paralogisms but no lâgitimate demonstrations if then there be such deceits there are true miraclâs too all the business is ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã strictly and severely to examine the pretânders to do them and that from the life and manners of those that do them and from the effâcts and consequents of them whethâr they do good or hurt in the world whâther thây correct mens manners or bring men to goodness holinâss and truth and on this account we are neither to reject all miracles nor embrace all pretânces but carefully and prudently examine the rational evidences whereby those which are true and divine may be known from such which are counterfeit and Diabolical And this now leads us to the main subjâct of this Chapter viz. What rules we have to âroceed by in judging miracles to be true or false which may be these following True Divine miracles are wrought in confirmation of some Divine Tâstimony Because we have manifested by all the precedent discourse that the intention of miracles is to seal some divine revelation Therefore if God should work miracles when no divine Tâstimony is to be confirmed God would set the broad Seal of heaven to a blank If it be said no because it will witness to us now the truth of that Testimony which was delivered so many ages since I answer 1. The truth of that Testimony was sufficiently sealed at the time of the delivery of it and is conveyed down in a certain way to us Is it not sufficient that the Chartâr of a Corporation had the Princes broad Seal in the time of the giving of it but that every succâssion of men in that Corporation must have a new broad Seal or else they ought to question their Patent What ground can there be for that when the original Seal and Patent is preserved and is certainly conveyed down from age to age So I say it is as to us Gods Grand Charter of Grace and Mercy to the world through Iesus Christ was sealed by divine miracles at the delivery of it to the world the original Patent viz. the Scriptures wherein this Charter is contained is conveyed in a most certain manner to us to this Patent the Seal is annexed and in it are contained those undoubted miracles which were wrought in confirmation of it so that a new sealing of this Patent is wholly needless unless we had some cause of suspicion that the original Patent it self were lost or the first sealing was not true If the lattâr then Christian Religion is not true if the miracles wrought for confirmation of it were false because the truth of it depends so much on the verity and Divinity of the miracles which were then wrought If the first be suspected viz. the certain conveyance of the Patent viz. the Scriptures some certain grounds of such a suspicion must be discovered in a matter of so great moment especially when the great and many Societies of the Christian world do all consent unanimously in the contrary Nay it is impossible that any rational man can concâive that the Patent which we now rely upon is supposititious or corrupted in any of those things which are of concernment to the Christian world and that on these accounts 1. From the watchfulness of Divine providânce for the good of mankind Can we conceive that there is a God who rules and takes care of the world and who to manifest his signal Love to mankind should not only grant a Patent of Mercy to the world by his son Christ and then sealed it by divine miracles and in order to the certain conveyance of it to the world caused it by persons imployed by himself to be recordâd in a language fittest for its dispersing up and down the world all which I here suppose Can we I say conceive that this God should so far have cast off his care of the world and the good of mankind which was the original ground of the Grant it self as to suffer any wicked men or malignant spirits to corrupt or alter any of those Terms in it on which mens eternal salvation depends much less wholly to suppress and destroy it and to send forth one that is counterfeit and supposititious instead of it and which should not be discovered by the Christians of that age wherein that corrupt Copy was set forth nor by any of the most learned and inquisitive Christians ever since They who can give any the least entertainment to so wild absurd and irrational an imagination are so far from reason that they are in good disposition to Atheism and next to the suspecting the Scriptures to be corrupted they may rationally suspâct there is no such thing as a God and providence in the world or that the world is governed by a spirit most malignant and envious of the good of mankind Which is a suspicion only becoming those Heathens among
whom it was very frequent who worshipped the devils instead of Gods 2. Because of the general dispersion of Copies in the world upon the first publishing of them We cannot otherwise coâceive but that records containing so weighty and important things would be transcribed by all those Churches which believed the truth of the things contained in them We see how far curiosity will carry men as to the care of transcribing antient MSS. of old Authors which contain only some history of things past that are of no great concernment to us Can we then imagine those who ventured estates and lives upon the truth of the things revealed in Scripture would not be very careful to preserve the authentick instrument whereby they are revealed in a certain way to the whole world And besides this for a long time the originals themselves of the Apostolical writings were preserved in the Church which makes Tertullian in his time appeal to them Age jam qui voles curiositatem melius exercere in negotio salutis tuae percurre Ecclesias Apostolicas apud quasipsae adhuc cathedrae Apostolorum suis locis praesidentur apud quas ipsae authenticae corum literae recitantur sonantes vocem representantes faciem uniuscujusque Now how was it possible that in that time the Scriptures could be corrupted when in some of the Churches the original writings of the Apostles were preserved in a continual succession of persons from the Apostles themselves and from these originals so many Copies were transcribed as were conveyed almost all the world over through the large spread of the Christian Churches at that time and therefore it is impossible to conceive that a Copy should be corrupted in one Church when it would so speedily be discovered by another especially considering these three circumstances 1. The innumerable multitude of Copies wh ch would speedily be taken both considering the moment of the thing and the easiness of doing it God probably for that very end not loading the world with Pandâcts and Codes of his Laws but contriving the whole instrument of mans salvation in so narrow a compass that it might be easily preserved and transcribed by such who were passionate admirers of the Scriptures 2. The great number of learned and inquisitive men who soon sprung up in the Christian Church whose great care was to explain and vindicate the sacred Scriptures can we then think that all these Watch-men should be asleep together when the âvil one came to sow his Tares which it is most unreasonable to imagine when in the writings of all these learned men which were very many and voluminous so much of the Scripture was inserted that had there been corruption in the Copies themselves yet comparing them with those writings the corruptions would be soon discovered 3. The great venâration which all Christians had of the Scripture that they placed the hopes of their eternal happiness upon the truth of the things contained in the Scriptures Can we then think these would suffer any material alteration to creep into these records without their observing and discovering it Can we now think when all persons are so exceeding careful of their Deeds and the Records whereon their estates depend that the Christians who valued not this world in comparison of that to come should suffer the Magna Charta of that to be lost corrupted or imbezzeled away Especially considering what care and industry was used by many primitive Christians to compare Copies together as is evident in Pantaenus who brought the Hebrew Copy of Matthew out of the Indies to Alexandria as Eusebius tells us in Pamphilus and the Library he errected at Caesarâa but especially in Origens admirable Hexapla which were mainly intended for this end 3. It is impossible to conceive a corruption of the copy of the Scriptures because of the great differences which were all along the several ages of the Church between those who acknowledged the Scriptures to be Divine So that if one party of them had foisted in or taken out any thing another party was ready to take notice of it and would be sure to tell the world of it And this might be one great reason why God in his wise providence might permit such an increase of heresies in the Infancy of the Church viz. that thereby Christians might be forced to stand upon their guard and to have a special eye to the Scriptures which were alwayes the great eye-sores of hereticks And from this great wariness of the Church it was that some of the Epistles were so long abroad before they found general entertainment in all the Churches of Christ because in those Epistles which were doubted for some tâme there were some passages which seemed to favour some of the heresies then abroad but when upon severe enquiry they are found to be what they pretended they were received in all the Christian Churches 4. Because of the agreement between the Old Tâstament and the New the Prophesies of the Old Testament appear with their full accomplishment in the New which we have so that it is impossible to think the New should be corrupted unless the old were too which is most unreasonable to imagine when the Iews who have been the great conservators of the Old Testament have been all along the most inveterate enemies of the Christians So that we cannot at all conceive it possible that any material corruptions or alterations should creep into the Scriptures much less that the true copy should be lost and a new one forged Supposing then that we have the same authentick records preserved and handed down to us by the care of all Christian Churches which were written in the first ages of the Church of Christ what necessity can we imagine that God should work new miracles to confirm that dâctrine which is conveyed down in a certain uninterrupted way to us as being seâled by miracles undoubtedly Divine in the first promulgation and penning of it And this is the first reason why the truth of the Scriptures need not now be sealed by new miracles 2. Another may be because God in the Scripture hath appointed other things to continue in his Church to be as seals to his people of the truth of the things contained in Scriptures Such are outwardly the Sacraments of the Gospel baptism and the Lords Supper which are set apart to be as seals to confirm the truth of the Covenant on Gods part towards us in reference to the great promises contained in it in reference to pardon of sin and the ground of our acceptance with God by Iesus Christ and inwardly God hath promised his Spirit to be as a witness within them that by its working and strengthning grace in the hearts of believers it may confirm to them the truth of the records of Scripture when they finde the counter part of them written in their hearts by the singer of the Spirit of God It cannot then be with any reason at all supposed
pimple any the most trivial thing with a word speaking or the touch of the hand Upon this Arnobius challengeth the most famous of all the Heathen Magicians Zoroastres Armenius Pamphilus Apollonius Damigero Dardanus Velus Iulianus and Baebulus or any other renowned Magician to give power to any one to make the dumb to speak the deaf to hear the blind to see or bring life into a dead body Or if this be too hard with all their Magical rites and incantations but to do that quod à rusticis Christianis jussienibus factitatum est nudis which ordinary Christians do by their meer words So great a difference was there between the highest that could be done by Magick and the least that was done by the Name and Power of Christ. Where miracles are truly Divine God makes it evident to all impartial judgements that the things do exceed all created power For which purpose we are to observe that though impostures and delusions may go far the power of Magicians further when God permits them yet when God works miracles to confirm a Divine Testimony he makes it evident that his power doth infinitely exceed them all This is most conspicuous in the case of Moses and our blessed Saviour First Moses he began to do some miracles in the presence of Pharaoh and the Aegyptians turning his rod into a Serpent but we do not finde Pharaoh at all amazed at it but sends presently for the Magicians to do the same who did it whether really or only in appearance is not material to our purpose but Aarons rod swallowed up theirs The next time the waters are turned into blood by Moses the Magicians they do so too After this Moses brings up Frogs upon the Land so do the Magicians So that here now is a plain and open contest in the presence of Pharaoh and his people between Moses and the Magicians and they try for victory over each other so that if Moses do no more then they they would look upon him but as a Magician but if Moses do that which by the acknowledgement of these Magicians themselves could be only by Divine Power then it is demonstrably evident that his power was as far above the power of Magick as God is above the Devil Accordingly we finde it in the very next miracle in turning the dust into Ciniphes which we render lice the Magicians are non-plust and give out saying in plain terms This is the finger of God And what greater acknowledgement can there be of Divine Power then the confession of those who seemed to contest with it and to imitate it as much as possible After this we finde not the Magicians offering to contest with Moses and in the plague of boyles we particularly read that they could not stand before Moses Thus we see in the case of Moses how evident it was that there was a power above all power of Magick which did appear in Moses And so likewise in the case of our blessed Saviour for although Simon Magus Apollonius or others might do some small things or make some great shew and noise by what they did yet none of them ever came near the doing things of the same kind which our Saviour did curing the born blind restoring the dead to life after four dayes and so as to live a considerable time after or in the manner he did them with a word a touch with that frequency and openness before his greatest enemies as well as followers and in such an uncontrouled manner that neither Iews or Heathens ever questioned the truth of them And after all these when he was laid in the grave after his crucifixion exactly according to his own prediction he rose again the third day appeared frequently among his Disciples for forty dayes together After which in their presence he ascended up to heaven and soon after made good his promise to them by sending his holy Spirit upon them by which they spake with tongues wrought miracles went up and down Preaching the Gospel of Christ with great boldness chearfulness and constancy and after undergoing a great deal of hardship in it they sealed the truth of all they spake with their blood laying down their lives to give witness to it Thus abundantly to the satisfaction of the minds of all good men hath God given the highest rational evidence of the truth of the doctrine which he hath revealed to the world And thus I have finished the second part of my task which concerned the rational evidence of the truth of Divine Revelation from the persons who were imployed to deliver Gods mind to the world And therein have I hope made it evident that both Moses and the Prophets our Saviour and his Apostles did come with sufficient rational evidence to convince the world that they were persons immediately sent from God BOOK III. CHAP. I. Of the Being of God The Principles of all Religion lie in the Being of God and immortality of the soul from them the necessity of a particular Divine revelation rationally deduced the method laid down for proving the Divine authority of the Scriptures Why Moses doth not prove the Being of God but suppose it The notion of a Deity very consonant to reason Of the nature of Idea's and particularly of the Idea of God How we can form an Idea of an infinite Being How far such an Idea argues existence The great unreasonableness of Atheism demonstrated Of the Hypotheses of the Aristotelian and Epicurean Atheists The Atheists pretences examined and refuted Of the nature of the arguments whereby we prove there is a God Of universal consent and the evidence of that to prove a Deity and immortality of souls Of necessity of existence implyed in the notion of God and how far that proves the Being of God The order of the world and usefulness of the parts of it and especially of mans body an argument of a Deity Some higher principle proved to be in the world then matter and motion The nature of the soul and possibility of its subsisting after death Strange appearances in nature not solvable by the power of imagination HAving in the precedent book largely given a rational account of the grounds of our faith as to the persons whom God imployes to reveal his mind to the world if we can now make it appear that those sacred records which we embrace as Divinely inspired contain in them nothing unworthy of so great a name or unbecoming persons sent from God to deliver there will be nothing wanting to justifie our Religion in point of reason to be true and of revelation to be Divine For the Scriptures themselves coming to us in the name of God we are bound to believe them to be such as they pretend to be unless we have ground to question the general foundations of all religion as uncertain or this particular way of religion as not suitable to those general foundations The foundations of all
is to say he is no God Which was the reason that Tully said Epicurus did only nomine poncre re tollere Deos because such a notion of God is repugnant to natural light So that if this Idea doth wholly abstract from corporeal phantasms it thereby appears that there is a higher faculty in mans soul then meer imagination and it is hardly conceivable whence a faculty which thus extends its self to an infinite object should come but from an infinite Being especially if we consider 2. That the understanding in forming this Idea of God doth not by distinct acts first collect one perfection and then another and at last unite these together but the simplicity and unity of all these perfections is as necessarily conceived as any of them Granting then that the understanding by the observing of several perfections in the world might be able to abstract these severally from each being wherein they were yet whence should the Idea of the unity and inseparability of all these perfections come The mind may it is true knit some things together in fictitious Idea's but then those are so far from unity with each other that in themselves they speak mutual repugnancy to one another which makes them proper entia rationis but these several perfections are so far from speaking repugnancy to each other that the unity and inseparability of them is as necessary to the forming of this Idea as any other perfection whatsoever So that from hence it appears that the consideration of the perfections which are in the creatures is only an occasion given to the mind to help it in its Idea of God and not that the Idea its self depends upon those perfections as the causes of it as in the clearest Mathematical truths the manner of demonstration may be necessary to help the understanding to its clearer assent though the things in themselves be undoubtedly true For all minds are not equally capable of the same truths some are of quicker apprehension then others are now although to slower apprehensions a more particular way of demonstrating things be necessary yet the truths in themselves are equal though they have not equal evidence to several persons 3. It appears that this is no meer fictitious Idea from the uniformity of it in all persons who have freed themselves from the entanglements of corporeal phantasms Those we call entia rationis we find by experienee in our minds that they are formed ad placitum we may imagine them as many wayes as we please but we see it is quite otherwise in this Idea of God for in those attributes or perfections which by the light of nature we attribute to God there is an uniform consent in all those who have devested their minds of corporeal phantasms in their conceptions of God For while men have agreed that the object of their Idea is a being absolutely perfect there hath been no dissent in the perfections which have been attributed to it none have questioned but infinite wisdom goodness and power joyned with necessity of existence have been all implyed in this Idea So that it is scarce pâssible to instance in any one Idea no not of those things which are most obvious to our senses wherein there hath been so great an uniformity of mens conceptions as in this Idea of God And the most gross corporeal Idea of the most sensible matter hath been more lyable to heats and disputes among Philosophers then this Idea of a being Infinite and purely spiritual Which strongly proves my present proposition that this Idea of God is very consonant to natural light for it is hardly conceivable that there should be so universal a consent of minds in this Idea were it not a natural result from the free use of our reason and faculties And that which adds further weight tâ this argument is that although Infinity be so necessarily implyed in this Idea of God yet men do not attribute all kind of Infinite things to God for there being conceivable Infinite number Infinite longitude as well as infinite power and knowledge our minds readily attribute the latter to God and as readily abstract the other from his nature which is an argument this Idea is not fictitious but argues reality in the thing correspondent to our conception of it So much may suffice to clear the first proposition viz. that the notion of a God is very suitable to the faculties of mens souls and to that light of nature which they proceed by in forming the conceptions of things Those who deny that there is a God do assert other things on far less evidence of reason and must by their own principles deny some things which are apparently true One would expect that such persons who are apt to condemn the whole world of folly in believing the truth of Religion and would fain be admired as men of a deeper reach and greater wit and sagacity then others would when they have exploded a Deity at least give us some more rational and consistent account of things then we can give that there is a God But on the contrary we find the reasons on which they reject a Deity so lamentably weak and so easily retorted upon themselves and the hypotheses they substitute instead of a Deity so precarious obscure and uncertain that we need no other argument to evince the reasonableness of Religion then from the manifest folly as well as impiety of those who oppose it Which we shall make evident by these two things 1. That while they deny a Deity they assert other things on far less reason 2. That by those principles on which they deny a Deity they must deny some things which are apparently true 1. That they assert some things on far less reason then we do that there is a God For if there be not an infinitely powerful God who produced the world out of nothing it must necessarily follow according to the different principles of the Aristotelian and Epicurean Atheists that either the world was as it is from all eternity or else that it was at first made by the fortuitous concourse of Atoms Now I appeal to the reason of any person who hath the free use of it Whether either of these two Hypotheses urged with the same or greater difficulties c. be not far more weakly proved then the existence of a Deity is or the production of the world by him 1. They run themselves into the same difficulties which they would avoid in the belief of a Deity and nothing can be a greater evidence of an intangled mind then this is To deny a thing because of some difficulty in it and instead of it to assert another thing which is chargeable with the very same difficulty in a higher degree Thus when they reject a Deity because they cannot understand what infinity means both these Hypotheses are lyable to the same intricacy in apprehending the nature of something Infinite For according to the Epicureans
its self A common and universal effect must flow from some common and universal cause So the Stoick argues in Tully If there were no God non tam stabilis opinio permaneret nec confirmaretur diuturnitate remporis nec una cum seculis aetatibusque hominum inveterare potuisset It is strange to think that mankind in so many ages of the world should not grow wise enough to rid its self of so troublesom an opinion as that was of the Being of God had it not been true We see in all the alterations of the world other vain opinions have been detected refuted and shaken off if this had been such how comes it to remain the same in all ages and Nations of the world Opinionum commenta delet dies naturae judicia confirmat It is a great discredit to Time to make it like a river in that sense that it bears up only lighter things when matters of greatest weight are sunk to the bottom and past recovery This may pass for a handsom allusion as to the opinions and writings of particular persons but cannot be understood of such things which are founded on the universal consent of the world for these common notions of humane nature are so suited to the temper of the world that they pass down the strong current of Time with the same facility that a well built ship though of good burden doth furrow the Ocean So that if we must adhere to the Allegory it is easily replyed that it is not the weight of things which makes them sink but the unsuitableness of their superficies to that of the water so we see a small piece of wood will sink when a stately ship is born up so such things which have not that agreeableness in them to the dictates of nature may soon be lost but such as lye so even upon the superficies of the soul will still float above the water and never be lost in the swiftest current of Time Thus we assert this universal consent of mankind as to the existence of a Deity to be a thing so consonant to our natural reason that as long as there are men in the world it will continue But now it is hardly conceivable according to the Principles of Epicurus how mankind should universally agree in some common sentiments much less how it should have such an anticipation as himself grants of the Being of God For if the soul be nothing else but some more active and vigorous particles of matter as Diogenes Laertius tells us that his opinion was that the soul was nothing else but a Systeme ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã of the most smooth and round atoms if so it is very hard apprehending how any such things as anticipations or commctions can be lodged in the soul For if our souls be nothing else but some small sphaericall corpuscles which move up and down the body as the Epicurean Philosophy supposeth then all our knowledge and perception must depend on motion which motion must be by the impression of external objects which Lucretius acknowledgeth and contends for Invenies primis à sensibus esse creatam Notitiam veri If then our knowledge of truth comes in by our senses and sensation doth wholly depend upon the impression of outward objects what becomes of all common notions and of the Prolepsis of a Deity unless we suppose the knowledge of a Deity came in by sense which Epicurus himself denyes when he attributes to the Deity not corpus but quasi corpus as Tully tells us and therefore he is not a proper object of sense So that it is impossible there should be any such thing as a natural notion which may be the ground of universal consent among men according to the doctrine of Epicurus And therefore it stands to all reason in the world that if our senses be the only competent Iudges of truth men should differ about nothing more then such things which cannot be tryed by the judgement of sense Such as the notion of a God is for where should men be more uncertain in their judgements then in such thing which they have no rule at all to go by in the judging of but we are so far from finding it so that men are nothing so much agreed about the objects of sense as they are about the existence of a Deity and therefore we see this universal consent of mankind concerning a God cannot be salved by the principles of those who deny it according to which no account at all can be given of any such things as universal or common notions Neither can this universal consent of mankind be enervated with any greater probability by those Atheists who assert the eternity of the world and resolve this consent wholly into meer tradition such as the Fables of Poets were conveyed in from one to another For I demand concerning this tradition Whether ever it had any beginning or no If it had no beginning it could be no tradition for that must run up to some persons from whom it first came again if it had no beginning it was necessary that it should alwayes be on the same accounts on which they make the world eternal And if it be necessary it must be antecedent to any free act of mans will which tradition supposeth and so some false opinion would be found to be as necessary as the worlds being eternal and by consequence the worlds being eternal may be a necessary false opinion but if any false opinion be once granted necessary it then follows that our faculties are not true and that nature is a necessary cause of some notorious falsity which is the highest impeachment the Atheist could have laid upon his only adored nature which must then have done that which Aristotle was ashamed to think ever nature should be guilty of which is something in vain for to what purpose should man have rational faculties if he be under an unavoidable necessity of being deceived If then it be granted that this tradition had once a beginning either it began with humane nature or humane nature did exist long before it if it began with mankind then mankind had a beginning and so the world was not eternal if mankind did exist before this tradition I then enquire in what time and by what means came this tradition first to be embraced if it doth not supppse the existence of a Deity Can any age be mentioned in history wherein this tradition was not universally received and which is most to our purpose the further we go back in history the fuller the world was of Deities if we believe the Heathen histories but however no age can be instanced in wherein this tradition began first to be believed in the world we can trace the Poetick Fables to their true original by the testimonies of those who believed them we know the particular Authors of them and what course they took in divulging of them we find great
diversities among themselves in the meaning of them and many nations that never heard of them But all things are quite otherwise in this tradition we have none to fix on as the first Authors of it if the world were eternal and the belief of a Deity fabulous we cannot understand by what artifice a fabulous tradition could come to be so universally received in the world that no Nation of old could be instanced in by the inquisitive Philosophers but however rude and barbarous it was yet it owned a Deity How could such a tradition be spread so far but either by force or fraud it could not be by force because embraced by an unanimous consent where no force at all hath been used and hath been so rooted in the very natures of those people who have been most tender of their liberties that they have resented no indignity so highly as any affronts they conceived to be offered to their gods Nay and where any persons would seem to quit the belief of a Deity we find what force and violence they have used to their own reason and conscience to bring themselves to Atheisme which they could not subdue their minds to any longer then the will could command the understanding which when it gained but a little liberty to examine it self or view the world or was alarumed with thunder earth-quakes or violent sickness did bring back again the sense of a Deity with greater force and power then they had endeavoured to shake it off with Now had this tradition come by force into the world there would have been a secret exultation of mind to be freed from it as we see nature rejoyceth to shake off every thing which is violent and to settle every thing according to its due order It is only fraud then which can be with any reason imagined in this case and how unreasonable it is to imagine it here will appear to any one who doth consider how extreamly jealous the world is of being imposed upon by the subtilty of such who are thought to be the greatest Polititians For the very opinion of their subtilty makes men apt to suspect a design in every thing they speak or do so that nothing doth more generally hinder the entertaining of any motion so much among vulgar people as that it comes from a person reputed very politick So that the most politick way of gaining upon the apprehensions of the vulgar is by taking upon one the greatest appearance of simplicity and integrity and this now could not be done by such Polititians which we now speak of but by accommodating themselves to such things in the people which were so consonant to their natures that they could suspect no design at all in the matters propounded to them And thus I assert it to have been in the present case in all those Politick Governours who at first brought the world into both civil and Religious Societies after they were grown rude and barbarous for as it had been impossible to have brought them into civil Societies unless there had been supposed an inclination to Society in them so it had been equally impossible to have brought them to embrace any particular way of Religion unless there had been a natural propensity to Religion implanted in them and founded in the general belief of the existence of a Deity And therefore we never find any of the antient founders of Common-wealths go about to perswade the people that there was a God but this they supposed and made their advantage of it the better to draw the people on to embrace that way of worship which they delivered to them as most suitable to their own design And this is plainly evident in the vast difference of designs and interests which were carried on in the Heathen world upon this general apprehension of a Deity How came the world to be so easily abused into Religions of all shapes and fashions had not there been a natural inclination in mens souls to Religion and an Indeleble Idea of a Deity on the minds of men Were then this propensity groundless and this Idea fictitious it were the greatest slurr imaginable which could be cast upon nature that when the instincts of irrational agents argue something real in them only man the most noble being of the visible world must be fatally carryed to the belief of that which never was Which yet hath so great a force and awe upon man that nothing creates so great anxieties in his life as this doth nothing layes him more open to the designs of any who have an intent to abuse him But yet further these Politicians who first abused the world in telling them there was a God did they themselves believe there was a God or no If they did then they had no such end as abusing the world into such a belief If they did not upon what accounts did they believe there was none when the people were so ready to believe there was one Was that as certain a tradition before that there was no God as afterwards they made it to be that there was If so then all those people whom they perswaded to believe there was a God did before all believe there was none and how can it possibly enter into the reason of any man to think that people who had been brought up in the belief that there was no God at all nor any state after this life should all unanimously quit the principles of education which tended so much to their ease and pleasure here to believe there was a God and another life and thereby to fill themselves full of fears and disquietments meerly because their Rulers told them so Again if these Rulers themselves were so wise as not to believe a Deity can we imagine there ever was such an age of the world vvherein it fell out so happily that only the Rulers vvere wise and all the subjects fools But it may be it vvill be said that all who were wise themselves did not believe a Deity but yet consented to the practice of Religion because it was so useful for the Government of mankind but can it be thought that all these wise men vvhich vve must suppose of several ranks and degrees for Philosophers are not alvvayes States-men nor States-men Philosophers should so readily concurr in such a thing which tended most to the Interest of the Prince and to the abuse of the world Would none of them be ready to assert the truth though it were but to make a party of their own and discover to the people that it was only the ambition and design of their Governours which sought to bring the people to slavery by the belief of such things which were contrary to the tradition of their fore-fathers and would make their lives if they believed them continually troublesom and unquiet Or if we could suppose things should hit thus in one Nation what is this to the whole world which the Atheist here supposeth eternal
their souls compounded of who first fancied themselves to be immaterial What strange agitations of matter were those which first made men think of an eternal state which thoughts have ever since so stuck upon these little sphaerical bodyes that they could never yet disburden themselves of them Whence come such amazing fears such dreadful apprehensions such sinking thoughts of their future condition in minds that would fain ease themselves by believing that death would put a period both to soul and body whence on the other side come such encouraging hopes such confident expectations such comfortable prepossessions of their future state in the souls of good men when their bodyes are nearest to the grave Seneca who was somewhat dubious sometimes as to the future condition of the soul yet could tell his dear Lucilius with what pleasure he could think of it and could elsewhere say of the soul Eâ hoc habet argumentum divinitatis suae quod illum divina delectant nec ut alienis interest sed ut suis the soul had that mark of Divinity in it that it was most pleased with Divine speculations and conversed with them as with matters which nearly concerned it And when it hath once viewed the dimensions of the heavens contemnit domicilii prioris angustias it was ashamed of the cottage it dwelt in nay were it not for these speculations non fuerat operae prâtium nasci it had not been worth while for the soul to have been in the body and as he goes on detrahe hoc inaestimabile bonum non est vita tanti ut sudem ut aestuem Could there be now so great an Epicurisme in contemplation were the soul of man of Epicurus his mould a meer complexion of Atoms would dull and heavy matter ever have delighted to have searched so much into the causes of things to have gone over the world in its speculations and found more sweetness in knowledge then the little Epicure the Bee tasts in his choicest flowers Epicurus his own Philosophy is a demonstration against himself if his soul had not been of a purer nature then he fancied he would never have made his study of Philosophy a part of his Epicurisme Had his soul been such Atoms as he fancied when his brain had been well heated at his study those more vivid and spirituous particles like the spirits of wine had been in danger of evaporation and leaving the more lumpish matter to compleat his work Of all persons I most admire that Philosophers who make so much use of their understandings should so ungratefully requite them and serve them like old horses when they have made them do all the service they could turn them into the high-wayes and let them dye in a ditch But yet all Philosophers have not been so unthankful some have understood the worth of their souls and asserted it if they have not used too high i. e. Platonical expressions of it making it a particle not of matter but of the Divine nature its self a little Deity in a Cottage that stayes here a while and returns to that upper region from whence it came As Manilius speaks An dubium est habitare Deum sub pectore nostro In coelum que redire animas caelóque venire And while the soul is here in its cage it is continually fluttering up and down and delighting to look out now at this part and then at another to take a view by degrees of the whole Universe as the same Poet goes on Quid mirum noscere mundum Si possunt homines quibus est mundus in ip sis Exemplumque Dei quisque est in imagine parvâ The soul hath nothing more delightful to it then knowledge and no knowledge so pleasing and satisfactory as of him whose image and superscription it bears who makes himself most known to such as enquire after him Seque ipsum inculcat offert Ut bene cognosci possit I conclude this with that of Seneca in that excellent Preface to his natural questions O quam contempta res est homo nisi supra humana se erexerit What a pittiful thing is man were it not that his soul was apt to soar above these earthly things And by this aptness to soar so high above these terrene objects and to converse with so much freedome with spiritual Beings as well as abstracted notions we may certainly infer that our rational souls are of a far more noble and refined nature then that more feculent principle of imagination which alwayes converses in faece Romuli and can go no further then our senses carry it And thus I have made good the first proof that there is something above matter and motion in the world which is from that immaterial Being which is in man The next evidence which we have of a Being above matter and motion is from the extraordinary effâcts which have been in nature I speak not now meerly of such things which by their natures and effects are manifested to proceed from some Beings which bear ill-will to mankind multitudes of which are related by men Philosophical and inquisitive with such enumerations of circumstances and particular evidences that they are not meer impostures that one may on the same grounds question any matter of fact which himself did not see as such relations which are delivered by persons without interest or design and such as were able to judge of the truth of circumstances such are both ancient and modern Philosophers Physitians Statesmen and others Neither shall I insist on such prodigies which ofttimes presage revolutions in states if we believe Machiavel himself who in a whole chapter designedly proves it and professeth himself utterly to seek for the causes of them unless they may be attributed to some spiâits and Intelligences in the air which give the world notice of such things to come But those things which I suppose have the most clear and undoubted evidence of true and undoubted miracles the matters of fact being affirmed by eye-witnesses who sealed the truth of them with their lives are those recorded in the Holy Scriptures which there are only two wayes to evade either by questioning the truth of the things which I suppose in the precedent book we have proved with as much rational evidence as any thing of that nature is capable of or else that the things therein recorded might be salved without a Deity For which only two wayes have been excogitated by Atheistical spirits either attributing them to the power and influence of the Stars the foundations of which fond and absurd opinion have been taken away by those many writers who have rationally consuted the whole art of judicial Astrology or else that they are done by the meer power of imagination which is the way of Avicenna and some other Arabick writers which is so wilde an effect of the power of imagination that nothing doth so much demonstrate the irregular motions of it as such
an opinion doth and is sufficiently derided and refuted by Pomponatius himself Now then it being an acknowledged principle in nature that every thing continues in the course it is in till something more powerful put it out if then such things have been in the world which have been real alterations of the course of nature as the Suns standing still in the time of Joshua then there must be something above matter and motion and consequently that there is a God CHAP. II. Of the Origine of the Universe The necessity of the belief of the creation of the world in order to the truth of Religion Of the several Hypotheses of the Philosophers who contradict Moses with a particular examination of them The ancient tradition of the world consonant to Moses proved from the Ionick Philosophy of Thales and the Italick of Pythagoras The Pythagorick Cabbala rather Aegyptian then Mosaick Of the fluid matter which was the material principle of the universe Of the Hypothesis of the eternity of the world asserted by Ocellus Lucanus and Aristotle The weakness of the foundations on which that opinion is built Of the manner of forming principles of Philosophy The possibility of creation proved No arguing from the present state of the world against its beginning shewed from Maimonides The Platonists arguments from the goodness of God for the eternity of the world answered Of the Stoical Hypothesis of the eternity of matter whether reconcilable with the text of Moses Of the opinions of Plato and Pythagoras concerning the praeexistence of matter to the formation of the world The contradiction of the eternity of matter to the nature and attributes of God Of the Atomical Hypothesis of the Origine of the Universe The World could not be produced by a casual concourse of Atoms proved from the nature and motion of Epicurus his Atoms and the Phaenomena of the Universe especially the production and nature of Animals Of the Cartesian Hypothesis that it cannot salve the Origine of the Universe without a Deity giving motion to matter THE foundations of religion being thus established in the Being of God and the immortality of the soul we now come to erect our super structure upon them by asserting the undoubted truth and certainty of that account of the world which is given us in the writings of Moses Which beginning with the world its self leads us to a particular consideration of the Origine of the Universe the right understanding of which hath very great influence upon our belief of all that follows in the Word of God For although we should assert with Epicurus the Being of a Deity if yet with him we add that the world was made by a casual concourse of Atoms all that part of Religion which lies in obedience to the Will of God is unavoidably destroyed All that is left is only a kind of Veneration of a Bâing more excellent then our own which reacheth not to the government of mens lives and so will have no force at all upon the generality of the world who are only allured by hopes or awed by fears to that which of their choice they would be glad to be freed from Besides what expressions of gratitude can be left to God for his goodness if he interpose not in the affairs of the world what dependence can there be on divine goodness if it be not at all manifested in the world what apprehensions can we have of Gods infinite Wisdom and Power if neither of them are discernable in the Being of the world And as the opinion of Epicurus destroys Religion so doth that of Aristotle which attributes eternity to the Universe and a necessary emanation of it from the first cause as light comes from the Sun for if so as Maimonides well observes the whole Religion of Moses is overthrown all his miracles are but impostures all the hopes which are grounded on the Promises of God are vain and fruitless For if the world did of necessity exist then God is no free agent and if so then all instituted Religion is to no purpose nor can there be any expectation of reward or fear of punishment from him who hath nothing else to do in the world but to set the great wheele of the Heavens going So much is it our concernment to enquire into the true Original of the world and on what evidence of reason those opinions are built which are so contrary to that account given of it in the very entrance of the Bâoks of Moses Wherein we read the true Origine of the world to have been by a production of it by the omnipotent Will and Word of God This being then the plain assertion of Moses we come to compare it in point of reason with all those several Hypotheses which are repugnant to it which have been embraced in several ages by the Philosophers of greatest esteem in the world Which may be reduced to these four 1. Such as suppose the world to have existed as it is from all eternity 2. Such as attribute the formation of the world as it is to God but withall assert the praeexistence and eternity of matter 3. Such as deny any eternity to the world but assert the Origine of it to have been by a casual concourse of Atoms 4. Such as endeavâur to explain the Origine of the Universe and all appearances of nature meerly by the Mechanical Laws of the motion of matter I begin with those who asserted the eternity of the world as it is among whom Aristotle hath born the greatest name who seems to have arrogated this opinion to himself for when he enquires into the judgment of the Philosophers who had writ-before him he sayes of them ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã all the Philosophers asserted that the world was made though some one way some another And were this true which Aristotle-saith it would be the strongest prejudice against his opinion for if the world had been eternal how should it come to pass that the eldest Philosophers should so readily and unanimously embrace that opinion which asserted the production of the world Was it not a strong presumption of the Novity of the Universe that all Nations to whom the Philosophers resorted had memorials left among them of the first Origine of things And from hence it is observable that when the humour of Philosophizing began to take the Greeks about the XL. Olympiad when we may suppose Thales to flourish the beginning of the world was no matter of dispute but taking that for granted the enquiry was out of what material principle the Universe was formed of which Thales thus delivers his opinion in Tully aquam dixit esse initium rerum Deum autem eam mentem quae ex aqua cuncta fingeret wherein he plainly distinguisheth the efficient from the material cause of the world The prime efficient was God the material principle water It is a matter of some enquiry whether the first
Plato in his Timaeus come very near whose Philosophy was for substance the same with the Pythagorean when he had before ascribed the production of the world to the goodness of God which goodness of his did incline him to make all other things like himself ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã For the most excellent Being cannot but produce the most excellent effects And as to the material principle out of which the world was made there appears no great difference between the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã of Thales and the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã of Plato and Pythagoras for Plato when he tells us what a kind of thing the material principle was he describes it thus ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which as Chalcidius renders it is motis importuno fluctuans neque unquam quiescens it was a visible corporeal thing ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which was never at rest but in continual disorderly motion and agitation which is a full explication I suppose of what Thales meant by his water which is the same with that ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã or mixture of mud and water together which others speak of as the Principle of the Universe as Orphius in Athenagoras and the Scholiast on Apollonius cited by Grotius and others Which we have the more reason to believe because the successors of Thales Anaximander and Anaxagoras express themselves to that purpose Anaximander called the Sea ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the remainder of the Primitive moisture and Anaxagoras sayes before the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã or God set things in their order ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã all things were at first confused together which must needs make that which Chalcidius tells us Numenius attributes to Pythagoras which his translator calls Sylvam fludiam or fluid matter Which is the same likewise with the Phaenicians ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which as appears by Eusebius some call ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã others ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã some mud or slime others the putrefaction of watery mixtures which they say was ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the seedplot of the Creation and the Generation of things Thus we see how Thales with the Phaenicians from whom he was derived as Laertius tells us and Pythagoras with the Aegyptians and others concur with Moses not only in the production of the world but in the manner of it wherein is expressed a fluid matter which was the material principle out of which the world was formed when we are told that the earth was without form and void and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters i. e. that all at first was but fluid matter for P. Fagius from R. Kimchi renders ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã by ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which fluid matter was agitated and moved by the Divine spirit or the vis plastica mundi so Chrysostom calls it ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and so Drusirts and P. Fagius explain ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã by motion or agitation And herein we have likewise the consent of those forâ-named excellent Philosophers who attribute the Origine of particular things in the world to this agitation or motion of the fluid matter For Chalcidius speaking not only of Thales Pythagoras Plato but of Anaximenes Heraclitus and others sayes thus of them omnesigitur hi in motu positam rerum originem censuërunt they all agreed in this that the Origine of things was to be ascribed to the motion of the parts of matter So the Phaenicians called this motion of the particles of matter ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a dark and blustering wind And how suitable this explication of the Origine of things from the motion of fluid matter is to the history of nature appears by those many experiments by which mixt bodyes are shewed to spring from no other material principle then the particles of fluid matter Of which you may read a discourle of that ingenious and learned Gentleman Mr. Boyle in his Sceptical Chymist Only thus much may here suffice to have made it appear that all those Philosophers who were most inquisitive after the ancient and genuine tradition of the world concerning the first beginning of things did not only concur with Moses in the main thing that its beginning was from God but in the particular circumstances of it as to the fluid matter and the motion thereof Concerning which I may yet add if it be material the Testimony of Homer in Plutarch ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã And in Chalcidius Inque eadem sententia Homerus esse invenitur cum Oceanum Thetim dicat parentes esse geniturae cumque jusjurandum Deorum constituat aquam quam quidem ipse appellat Stygem antiquitati tribuens reverentiam jure jaranao nihil constituens reverentius To which purpose likewise Aristotle speaks in his Metaphysicks that the reason why Styx was made the oath of the Gods was because water was supposed to be the material principle of Things which he saith was ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a most ancient tradition concerning the Origine of the Universe And tells us before that some were of opinion ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã that the most ancient and remote persons and first writers of Theology held this opinion of water being the first material principle of things Having thus made it appear what a consent there was between the ancient tradition of the world and the writings of Moses concerning the Origine of the world I now come to consider upon what pretence of reason this tradition came to be contradicted and the eternity of the world asserted For which we are to consider that the difference of the former Philosophers of the Ionick sect after the time of Thales as to the material principle of the world one substituting air another fire instead of water rendred the tradition its self suspected among other Philosophers especially when the humour of innovating in Philosophy was got among them and they thought they did nothing unless they contradicted their Masters thence came that multiplicity of Sects presently among them and that Philosophy which at first went much on the original tradition of the world was turned into disputes and altercations which helped as much to the finding out of Truth as the fighting of two Cocks on a dunghil doth the finding out the Iewel that lyes there For which scraping and searching into the natures of things had been far more proper then contentions wranglings with each other but by means of this litigious humour Philosophy from being a design grew to be a meer Art and he was accounted the best Philosopher not that searched further into the bowels of nature but that dressed and tricked up the notions he had in the best posture of defence against all who came to oppose him From hence those opinions were most plausible not which were most true but which were most defensible and which like Des-Cartes his second element had all the Angles cut
wise and free who dispenseth this goodness of his in such a way and manner as is best pleasing to himself though ever agreeable to his Nature As God is infinitely good in himself so whatever he doth is suitable to this nature of his but the particular determinations of the acts of Gods beneficence belong to the Will of God as he is a most free and Independent Agent so that goodness as it imports the necessary rectitude of the Divine Nature implyes a perfection inseparable from the true Idea of God but as it is taken for the expressions of Divine bounty to somewhat without as the object of it it is not implyed in our conception of God as to his nature but belongs to the free determinations of his Will We cannot then neither ought we to determine any thing concerning the particular ways of Gods bounty towards the whole universe or any part of it any further then God himself hath declared it to us Now we see the world exists we have cause to adore that goodness of God which not only gave a Being to the Universe but continually upholds it and plentifully provides for all the Creatures which he hath made in it Which the Heathen was so sensible of that the Stoick in Tully taking notice of the abundant provision which is made in the world not only for mans necessity but for delight and ornament cryes out ut interdum Pronaea nostra Epicurea esse videatur Gods providence doth abundantly exceed mans necessity We see then from this discourse how unsafe and unsatisfactory that I may not say bold and presumptuous those arguments are which are drawn from a general consideration of the Divine nature and Goodness without regard had to the determinations of his Will as to the existence of things in the world It cannot certainly then be an argument of any great force with any candid enquirers after Truth and Reason which hath been lately pleaded in the behalf of that Pythagorean hypothesis of the praeexistence of souls viz. That if it be good for mens souls to be at all the sooner they are the better but we are most certain that the Wisdom and Goodness of God will do that which is best and therefore if they can enjoy themselves before they come into these terrestrial bodies it being better for them to enjoy themselves then not they must be before they come into these bodies Wherefore the praeexistence of souls is a necessary result of the Wisdom and Goodness of God who can no more fail to do that which is best then he can to understand it I now seriously enquire of such who love reason above Plato and Pythagoras whether if the eternity of the world were put into the argument instead of the Praeexistence of souls this argument would not hold as strongly for that as it doth for Praeexistence and if I am bound to believe Praeexistence on this ground I be not likewise bound to believe at least the souls of men eternal if not the Universe But how reconcileable the eternity of the world is to the Pythagorick Cabbala of the Creation I am yet to understand But if this Argument doth not at all infer the eternity of the world as we have shewed it doth not much less doth it praeexistence of souls We have thus far considered the first hypothesis which is repugnant to Moses concerning the Origine of the Universe which is that which asserts the eternity of the world as it is we come now to the second which attributes the Formation of the world as it is to God as the efficient cause but attributes eternity to the matter out of which the world was framed I am not ignorant that some who would be taken for the Masters of reason are so far from conceiving this Hypothesis to be repugnant to the text of Moses that they conceive it to be the genuine sense of it viz. that there was a praeexistent matter out of which God formed the World But I would willingly understand how Moses would have expressed that matter its self was created supposing it had been his intention to have spoken it for although the word ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã may not of its self imply necessarily the production of things out of nothing i. e. out of no praeexistent matter yet it is acknowledged by all that no word used by the Iews is more proper to that then ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã is and P. Fagius cites it from R. Nachmani that the Hebrew Language hath no other word to signifie such a production out of nothing but ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã It is therefore a very weak manner of arguing that because ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã is sometimes used for no more then ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã therefore the world was created out of praeexistent matter all that can rationally be inferd is that from the meer force and importance of that word the contrary cannot be collected but if other places of Scripture compared and the evidence of reason do make it clear that there could be no praeexistent matter which was uncreated then it will necessarily follow that creation must be taken in its proper sense And in this sense it is evident that not only Iews and Christians but even the Heathens themselves understood Moses as is plain by Galen where he compares the opinion of Moses with that of Epicurus and ingenuously confesseth that of Moses which attributed the production of things to God to be far more rational and probable then that of Epicurus which assigned the Origine of things to a meer casual concourse of Atoms But withal adds that he must dissent from both and sides with Moses as to the Origine of such things as depend on Generation but asserts the praeexistence of matter and withall that Gods power could not extendits self beyond the capacity of the matter which it wrought upon Atque id est saith he in quo ratio nostra ac Platonis tum aliorum qui apud Graecos de rerum natura recte conscripserunt à Mose dissidet How true these words are will appear afterwards Chaleidius in his Commentaries on Plato's Timaeus where he speaks of the Origine of ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which in him is still translated sylva and enquires into the different opinions of all Philosophers about it takes it for granted that according to Moses this ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã had its production from God Hebraei sylvam generatam esse confitentur quorum sapientissimus Moyses non humana facundia sed divina ut ferunt inspiratione vegetatus in eo libro qui de genitura mundi censetur ab exordio sic est profatus juxta interpretationem LXX prudentium Initio Deus fecit coelum terram Terra autem erat invisibilis incompta Ut vero ait Aquila Caput rerum condidit Deus coelum terram terra porro inanis erat nihil vel nt Symachus Ab exordio condidit
unavoidable on the Stoical Hypothesis of Gods being corporeal and confined to the world as his proper place And so much for this second Hypothesis concerning the Origine of the Universe which supposeth the eternity of matter as coexisting with God I come now to that which makes most noise in the world which is the Atomical or Epicurean Hypothesis but will appear to be as irrational as either of the foregoing as far as it concerns the giving an account of the Origine of the Universe For otherwise supposing a Deity which produced the world and put it into the order it is now in and supremely governs all things in the world that many of the Phaenomena of the Universe are far more intelligibly explained by matter and motion then by substantial forms and real qualities few free and unprejudiced minds do now scruple But because these little particles of matter may give a tolerable account of many appearances of nature that therefore there should be nothing else but matter and motion in the world and that the Origine of the Universe should be from no wiser principle then the casual concourse of these Atoms is one of the evidences of the proneness of mens minds to be intoxicated with those opinions they are once in love with When they are not content to allow an Hypothesis its due place and subserviency to God and providence but think these Atoms have no force at all in them unless they can extrude a Deity quite out of the world For it is most evident that it was not so much the truth as the serviceableness of this Hypothesis which hath given it entertainment among men of Atheistical spirits Epicurus himself in his Epistle to Pythocles urgeth that as a considerable circumstance in his opinion that he brought no God down upon the stage to put things in order ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which his Paraphrast Lucretius hath thus rendered Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam Naturam rerum If this opinion then be true the history of the Creation quite falls to the ground on which account we are obliged more particularly to consider the reason of it The Hypothesis then of Epicurus is that before the world was brought into that form and order it is now in there was an infinite empty space in which were an innumerable company of solid particles or Atoms of different sizes and shapes which by their weight were in continual motion and that by the various occursions of these all the bodies of the Universe were framed into that order they now are in Which is fully expressed by Dionysius in Eusebius and very agreeably to the sense of Epicurus in his Epistles to Herodotus and Pythocles and to what Plutarch reports of the sense of Epicurus though he names him not if at least that book be his which Muretus denyes the words of Dionysius are these concerning the Epicureans ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã So that according to this opinion all the account we have of the Origine of the world is from this general Rendes-vous of Atoms in this infinite space in which after many encounters and facings about they fell into their several troops and made up that ordered Battalia which now the world is the Scheme of It was not imprudently done of Epicurus to make the worlds infinite as well as his space and Atoms for by the same reason that his Atoms would make one world they might make a thousand and who would spare for worlds when he might make them so easily Lucretius gives us in so exact an account of the several courses the Atoms took up in disposing themselves into bodyes as though he had been Muster-Master-General at that great Rendes-vous for thus he speaks of his Atoms Quae quia multimodis multis mutata per omne Ex Infinito vexantur percita plagis Omne genus motus caetus experiundo Tandem deveniunt in taleis disposituras Qualibus haec rebus consistit summa creata And more particularly afterwards Sed quia multa modis multis primordia rerum Ex infinito jam tempore percita plagis Ponderibusque suis consuërunt concita ferri Omnimodisque coire atque omnia pertentare Quaecunque inter se possunt congressa creare Ut non sit mirum si in taleis disposituras Deciderunt queque in taleis venere meatus Qualibus haec rerum âenitur nunc summa novando Thus we see the substance of the Epicurean Hypothesis that there were an Infinite number of Atoms which by their frequent occursions did at last meet with those of the same nature with them and these being conjoyned together made up those bodyes which we see so that all the account we are able to give according to this Hypothesis of all the Phaenomena of the Universe is from the fortuitous concourse of the Atoms in the first forming of the world and the different contexture of them in bodies And this was delivered by the ancient Epicureans not with any doubt or hesitation but with the greatest confidence imaginable So Tully observes of Velleius the Epicurean beginning his discourse fidenter sane ut solent isti nihil tam verens quam ne dubitare de aliqua re videretur tanquam modo ex Deorum concilio ex Epicuri intermundiis descendisset Confidence was the peculiar genius of that sect which we shall see in them to be accompanied with very little reason For those two things which make any principles in Philosophy to be rejected this Atomical Hypothesis is unavoidably charged with and those are If the principles be taken up without sufficient ground in reason for them and if they cannot give any sufficient account of the Phaenomena of the world I shall therefore make it appear that this Hypothesis as to the Origine of the Universe is first meerly precarious and built on no sufficient grounds of reason Secondly That it cannot give any satisfactory account of the Origine of things 1. That it is a precarious Hypothesis and hath no evidence of reason on which it should be taken up and that will be proved by two things 1. It is such an Hypothesis as the Epicureans themselves could have no certainty of according to their own principles 2. That the main principles of the Hypothesis its self are repugnant to those Catholick Laws of nature which are observed in the Universe 1. The Epicureans according to their own principles could have no certainty of the truth of this Hypothesis And that 1. Because they could have no certain evidence of its truth 2. Because their way of proving it was insufficient 1. That they could have no certain evidence of the truth of it I prove from those criteria which Epicurus lays down as the only certain rules of judging the truth of things by and those were sense Anticipation and Passion Let sense be never so infallible a ruie of judgement yet it is impossible there should be any evidence to
sense of the truth of this Hypothesis and let him extend his ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã as long as he please which was his great help for correcting the errors of sense viz. as it was in the Roman court when the case was not clear ampliandum est So Epicurus would have the object represented every way it could be before he past his judgement yet this prudent caution would do him no good for this Hypothesis unless he were so wise as to stay till this world were crumbled into Atoms again that by that he might judge of the Origine of it There is but one way left to finde out the truth of things inevident to sense as by Epicurus his own confession all these Atoms are which are now the component particles of bodyes much more those which by their fortuitous concourse gave Being to the world and that is if something evident to sense doth apparently prove it which is his way of proving a Vacuity in nature from motion but though that be easily answered by principles different from those of Epicurus and more rational yet that very way of probation fails him in his present Hypothesis For what is there evident to sense which proves a fortuitous concourse of Atoms for the production of things nay if we grant him that the composition of bodyes is nothing else but the contexture of these insensible particles yet this is far from being an evidence to sense that these particles without any wise and directing providence should make up such bodyes as we see in the world And here when we speak of the evidence of sense we may well ask as the Stoick in Tully doth whether ever Epicurus found a Poeme made by the casual throwing of letters together and if a concourse of Atoms did produce the world cur porticum cur templum cur domum cur urbem non potest why did it never produce a cloyster a temple a house a city which are far easier things then the world I know Epicurus will soon reply that things are otherwise in the world now then when it was first produced I grant it and from thence prove that because no such thing ever happens in the world now as a meerly casual concourse of Atoms to produce any thing Epicurus could have no evidence from sense at all to finde out the truth of his Hypothesis by And as little relief can he finde from his second Criterium viz. Anticipation for by his own acknowledgement all Anticipation depends on the senses and men have it only one of these four wayes 1. By incursion as the species of a man is preserved by the sight of him 2. By proportion as we can inlarge or contract that species of a man either into a Gyant or Pygmy 3. By similitude as we may fancy the image of a City by resemblance to one which we have seen 4. By composition whereby we may joyn different images together as of a horse and man to make a Centaure Now though it be very questionable how some of these wayes belong to a Criterium of truth yet none of them reach our case for there can be no incursion of insensible particles as such upon our senses we may indeed by proportion imagine the parvitude of them but what is this to the proving the truth of the Hypothesis Similitude can do no good unless Epicurus had ever seen a world made so the only relief must be from composition and that will prove the Origine of the world by Atoms to be as true as that there are Centaures in the world which we verily believe These are the only Criteria by which Epicurus would judge of the truth of natural things by for the third Passion relates wholly to things Moral and not Physical and now let any one judge whether the Hypothesis of the Origine of the Universe by Atoms can ever be proved true either by the judgement of sense or by Anticipation The way they had to prove this Hypothesis was insufficient and that was by proving that the bodyes of the world are compounded of such insensible particles Now granting the thing I deny the consequence for what though the composition of bodyes be from the contexture of Atoms doth it therefore follow that these particles did casually produce these bodyes nay doth it at all follow that because bodyes upon their resolution do fall into insensible particles of different size figure and motion therefore these particles must be praeexistent to all bodyes in the world For it is plain that there is now an Universal lump of matter out of which these insensible particles arise and whether they return on the dissolution of bodyes and all these various corpuscles may be of the same uniform substance only with the alteration of size shape and motion but what then doth this prove that because particular bodyes do now emerge out of the various configuration and motion of insensible paerticles of that matter which exists in the world that therefore this whole matter was produced by the casual occursions of these Atoms It will ask more time and pains then is usually taken by the Philosophers either ancient or modern to prove that those things whatsoever they are whether elements or particles out of which bodyes are supposed to be compounded do exist separately from such compounded bodyes and antecedently to them We finde no Aristotelian elements pure in the world nor any particles of matter destitute of such a size figure and motion as doth make some body or other From whence then can we infer either the existence of Aristotles materia prima without quiddity quantity or quality or the Epicurean Atoms without such a contexture as make up some bodyes in the world Our profound Naturalist Dr. Harvey after his most accurate search into the natures and Generation of things delivers this as his experience and judgement concerning the commonly reputed elements or principles of bodyes For speaking of the different opinions of Empedocles and Hippocrates and Democritus and Epicurus concerning the composition of bodyes he adds Ego vero neque in animalium productione nec omnino in ulla corporum similarium generatione sive ea partium animalium sive plantarum lapidum mineralium c. fuerit vel congregationem ejusmodi vel miscibilia diversa in generation is opere unienda praeexistere observare unquam potui And after explaining the way which he conceived most rational and consonant to experience in the Generation of things he concludes his discourse with these words Idemque in omni generatione furi crediderim adeo ut corpora similaria mista elementa sua tempore priora non habeant sed illa potius element is suis prius existant nempe Empedoclis atque Aristotel is igne aqua aëre terra vel Chymicorum sale sulphure Mercurio aut Democriti Atomis utpote natura quoque ipsis perfectiora Sunt inquam mista composita etiam tempore priora element is
Plato and Pythagoras attributed the origine of evil to the malignity of matter and so they make evils to be necessarily consequent upon the Being of things For thus he delivers expresly the opinion of Pythagoras qui ait existente providentia mala quoque necessario substitisse propterea quod sylva sit eadem sit malitia praedita Platonemque idem Numenius laudat quod duas mundi ââmas autumet Unam beneficentissimam malignam alteram sc. Sylvam Igitur juxta Platonem mundo bona sua Dei tanquam Patris liberalitate collata sunt mala vero matris sylvae vitio cohaeserunt But Plutarch will by no means admit that Plato attributes the Origine of evil meerly to matter but he makes the principle of evil to be something distinct from matter which he calls ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a confused infinite self-moving stirring principle which saith he he else where calls Necessity and in his de Legibus plainly ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã a disorderly and malignant Soul which cannot be understood of meer matter when he makes his Hyle ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Without form or figure and destitute of all qualities and power of operation and it is impossible saith he that that which is of its self such an inert principle as matter is should by Plato be supposed to be the cause and principle of evil which he elsewhere calls ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Necessity which often resisted God and cast off his reins So that according to Plutarch Plato acquits both God and Hyle from being the Origine of evil ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and therefore attributes it to that malignant spirit which moves the matter and is the cause of all the disorderly motions in the world But what this spirit should be neither he nor any one else could ever understand what darkness and ignorance then was there among the wisest of Philosophers concerning the Origine of evil when they were so consused and obscure in the account which they gave of it that their greatest admirers could not understand them But though Plato seemed so ambiguous in his judgment of the Origine of evil whether he should attribute it to the Hyle or some malignant spirit in it the Stoicks were more dogmatical and plainly imputed the cause of evil to the perversity of matter So Chalcidius tells us that the Stoicks made matter not to be evil in its self as Pythagoras but that it was indifferent to either perrogati igitur unde mala perversitatem seminarium malorum causati sunt they made the perversity of matter the Origine of evil but as he well observes nec expediunt adhuâ undeââpsa perversitas cum juxta ipsos duo sint initia rerum Dââââ sylva Deus summum praecellens bonum sylva ut censent nec bonum nec malum They give no rational account whence this perversity of matter should arise when according to the Stoicks there are but two principles of things God and matter whereof the one is perfectly good the other neither good nor evil But this perversity they tell us is something necessarily consequent upon the Generation of things ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã these are affections viz. the disorders in the world which follow the Generation of things as rust comes upon brass and filth upon the body as the counterfeit Trismegistus speaks so Maximus Tyrius saith that evils in the world are ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã not any works of art but the affections of matter Non potest artifex mutare materiam saith Seneca when he is giving an account why God suffers evils in the world and elsewhere gives thâs account why evils came into he world non quia cessat ars sed quia id in quo exercetur inobsequens arti est So that the Origine of evil by this account of it lyes wholly upon the perversity of matter which it seems was uncapable of being put into better order by that God who produced the world out of that matter which the Stoicks supposed to be eternal And the truth is the avoiding the attributing the cause of evil to God seems to have been the great reason why they rather chose to make it matter necessary and coexistent with God and this was the only plausible pretence which Hermogenes had for following the Platonists and Stoicks in this opinion that he might set God far enough off from being the author of sin but I cannot sâe what advantage comes at all by this Hypothesis but it is chargeable with as many difficulties as any other For 1. It either destroyes Gods omnipotency or else makes him the approver of evil so that if he be not auctor he must be assentator mali as Tertullian speaks against Hermogenes because he suffered evil to be in matter for as he argues aut enim potuit emendare sed noluit aut voluit quidem verum non potuit infirmus Deus si potuit noluit malus ipse quia malâ savit fic jam habetur ejus licet non instituerit quia tamen si noluisset illud essâ non esset ipse jam fecit esse quod noluit non esse quo quid âst âurpius si voluit esse quod ipse noluit fecisse adversum semetipsum egit cum voluit esse quod noluit fecisse noluit fecisse quod voluit esse So that little advantage is gained for the clearing the true origine of evil by this opinion for either God could have taken away evil out of matter but would not or else would but could not this latter destroyes Gods omnipotency the former his good-ness for by that means evil is in the world by his consent and approbation for if God would not remove it when he might the Being of it will come from him when if he would have hindred it it would not have been and so God by not rooting out of evil will be found an assertor of it male si per voluntatem turpiter si per necessitatem aut famulus erit mali Deus aut amicus if Gods will were the cause why sin was it reflects on his goodness if Gods power could not hinder it it destroyes his omnipotency So that by this opinion God must either be a slave or a friend to evil 2. This principle overturns the foundations of Religion and all transactions between God and mens souls in order to their welfare because it makes evil to be necessarily existent in the world which appears from hence in that evil doth result from the Being of matter and so it must necessarily be as matter is supposed to be for whatever results from the Being of a thing must be coexistent with it and so what flows from what doth necessarily exist must have the same mode of existence which the Being its self hath as is evident in all the attributes of God which have the same immutability with his nature now then if evil did exist
the Greeks received from the Barbarians ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã they put it into a better fashion i. e. they disguise it alter and change it as they please and put it into a Greek habit that it might never be suspected to have been a Forraigner Thence Tertullian speaks with a great deal of truth and freedom of such Philosophers who did ingenii sitim de prophetarum fonte irrigare as he expresseth it that quenched their thirst after knowledge with the waters of Iordan though they did not like Naaman cure the leproâic of the head by washing in them for as Tertullian saith theâ came only ex negotio curiositatis more to please the i tch oâ their curiosity then to cure it And wherein they seemed most to agree with the Scriptures their difference was beyond their agreement Siquidem vera quaeque consonantia Prophetis aut aliunde commendant aut aliorsum subornant cum maxima injuria veritatis quam efficiunt aut adjuvari falsis aut patrocinari Whatever the Philosophers speak agreeable to the Scriptures either they do not own whence they had it or turn it quite another way whereby they have done the truth a great deal of injury by mixing it with their corruptions of it and making that little truth a plea for the rest of their errors Neither was this only among the ancient Philosophers but the Primitive Christians began to discern the underhand workings of such who sought to blend Philosophy and Christianity together for Tertullian himself takes great notice of such who did Veritatis dogmata ad Philosophicas sententias adulterare suborn Christianity to maintain Philosophy which makes him cry out Viderint qui Stoicum Platonicum Dialecticum Christianismum protulerunt by which we see what tampering there was betimes rather to bring Christianity down to Philosophy rather then to make Philosophy truckle under the truth and simplicity of the Scriptures Whether Ammonius himself and some others of the School of Alexandria might be guilty in this kind is not here a place to enquire though it be too evident in the writings of some that they rather seek to accommodate the Scriptures to the Sentiments of the School of Plato then to reform that by the Scriptures but I say however it were with those who were Christians yet those who were not but only Philosophers made their great advantage by it For when they found what was reconcileable with the doctrine of Plato in the Scriptures done already to their hands by the endeavours chiefly of Ammonius and Origen they greedily embrace those improvements of their Philosophy which would tend so much to the credit of it and as contemptuously reject what they found irreconcileable with the dictates of their Philosophy Now what an unreasonable thing is it when what ever was noble and excellent in the Heathen Philosophy was derivative from ãâã Scriptures as the sacred Fountâin of it that the meeting with such things should in the least redound to the prejudice of the Scriptures from whence it was originally derived when on the other side it should be a great confirmation to our faith as to the Scriptures that they who were professed Philosophers and admirers only of reason did so readily embrace some of those grand Truths which are contained in the word of God For which we need no other instance then that before us concerning the Origine of evil the making out of which will tend to the clearing the last thing mentioned concerning it which was that the most material things in it are attested by the Heathens themselves And this honey which is gained out of the Lions mouth must needs tast sweeter then any other doth For it is a weak and groundless mistake on the other side which is the second which ariseth from meeting things consonant to the Scriptures in the writings of Philosophers presently to conclude from such things that they were Christians as it is said some have lately done in the behalf of Hierocles For there being such clear accounts given in Scripture of the grand difficulties and perplexities which the minds of men were troubled with when these came to the knowledge of such who were of Philosophick and inquisitive heads we cannot but think they would meet with acceptation among them especially if they might be made consistent with their former speculations Thus it was in our present case concerning the Origine of evil we have already beheld the lamentable perplexities the ancient Philosophers were in about it what Maeanders they were lost in for want of a clue to guide them through them now it pleased God after the coming of Christ in the flâshâo âo declare to the world the only way for the recovery ãâã souls and their eternal salvation the news of which being spread so far that it soon got among the Philosophers could not but make them more inquisitive concerning the state and condition of their souls and when they had searched what the Philosophers had formerly discovered of it their curiosity would presently prompt them to see what account of things concerning the souls of ãâã delivered by the preachers of this New Doctrine Bâ ãâã they could not but presently understand that they declared all mens souls to be in a most degenerate and low condition by being so continually under the power of the most unreasonable and unruly passions that they were estranged from God and prone to fix on things very unsuitable to their nature as to all which their own inward sense and experience could but tell them that these things were notoriously true and therefore they enquire further how these things came to be so which they receive a full account of in Scripture that mans soul was at first created pure and holy and in perfect friendship with God that God dealt bountifully and favourably with man only expected obedience to his Laws that man being a free agent did abuse his liberty and disobeyed his Maker and thence came the true ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the feathers of the soul whereby it soared up to heaven moulted away and the soul sunk below its self into a degenerate and apostate condition out of which it is impossible to be recovered without some extraordinary expression of Divine Favour Now what is there in all this account but what is hugely suitable to principles of reason and to the general experience of the world as to those things which were capable of being tryed by it And those Philosophers who were any thing ingenuâus and lovers of truth could not but confess the truth of those things which we are now speaking of viz. That mens souls are in a very degenerate condition That the most rational account of it is that man by the act of his own will brought himself into it and that in order to the happiness of mens souls there was a necessity of recovery out of this condition As to the degeneracy of the souls of men This
not to have a mixture of evil in them and as they have a mixture of evil so they have but a mixture of punishment none lying under so great miseries here but withall they have some share in the comforts of this life And therefore it is less wonder that this part of Divine Providence which concerns the sufferings of good men hath not wanted some among the Heathen Moralists who have made it their design to vindicate it which setting aside what Simplicius on Epictetus and many others have done is fully performed by Seneca in his tract on this very sââââct ââur bonis male sit cum sit Providentia as Muretuââ restores the title of that book wherein these following accounts are given of it 1. God brings them up as his children under sharp discipline for their future benefit A good man in Seneca's language is discipulus Dei aemulatorque vera progenies which in the language of the Scripture is one taught of God a follower of God and one born of him Now saith he Parens ille magnificus virtutum non lenis exactor sicut severi patres durius educat God who is the great Father of good men keeps them under discipline while under age and by hardship fits them for the practice of vertue Thence he bids us take notice of the different indulgence of Fathers and Mothers to their Children the Father he hastens them to school suffers them not to be idle on their playdayes makes them toyle and sometimes cry the Mother she is all for holding them in her lap keeping them out of the Sun and from catching cold would not willingly have them either cry or take pains Patrium habet Deus adversus bonos animum illos fortius amat God bears the indulgence of a Father towards his children and loves them with greater severity 2. Good men receive benefit by their sufferings quicquid evenit in suum colorem trahit saith Seneca of a good man which in the language of the Apostle is every thing works together for his good The sea loseth nothing saith he of its saltness by the rivers running into it neither doth a good man by the current of his sufferings And of all benefits which he receives that of the exercise and tryal of his vertue and patience is most discernable Marcet sine adversario virtus as soon as Carthage was destroyed Rome fell to Luxury True wrestlers desire to have some to try their strength upon them cui non industrio otium poena est an active spirit hates idleness and cowardise for etiamsi ceciderit de genu pugnat though his legs be cut off he will fight on his knees 3. It redounds to Gods honour when good men bear up under sufferings Ecce par Deo dignum vir fortis cum mala fortuna compositus It is a spectacle God delights to see a good man combat with calamities God doth in Seneca's phrase quosdam fastidio transire passeth them by in a slight an old wrestler scorns to contend with a coward one who is vinci paratus ready to yeild up presently Calamitates sub jugum mittere proprium magni viri est It argues a noble spirit to be able to subdue miseries 4. It tends to the tryal and increase of their strength Seneca highly extols that speech of the Philosopher Demetrius Nihil infelicius eo cui nihil unquam evenit adversi non licuit enim illi se experiri He is the most unhappy man who never knew what misery meant for he could never know what he was able to bear And as he saith to pass ones life away sine morsu animi without any trouble it is ignorare rerum naturae alteram partem not to know what is upon the reverse of nature Idem licet fecerint qui integri revertuntur ex acie magis spectatur qui sancius redit Though he that comes home sound might fight as well as he that is wounded yet the wounded person hath the more pitty and is most cryed up for his valour The Pilot is seen in a tempest a Souldier in battel and a good man in sufferings God doth by such as Masters do by Scholars qui plus laboris ab his exigunt quibus certior spes est who set the best wits the hardest tasks 5. God exerciseth good men with sufferings to discover the indifferency of those things which men value so much in the world when he denyes them to good men Blindness would be hateful if none were blind but such whose eyes were put out and therefore Appius and Metellus were blind Riches are no good things therefore the worst as well as the best have them Nullo modo magis potest Deus concupita traducere quam si illa ad turpissimos defert ab optimis abigit God could not traduce or defame those things more which men desire so much then by taking them away from the best of men and giving them to the worst 6. That they might be examples to others of patience and constancy For as Seneca concludes nati sunt in exemplar they are born to be patterns to others If to these things we add what the Word of God discovers concerning the nature grounds and ends of afflictions and that glory which shall be revealed in comparison with which exceeding weight of glory these light and momentany afflictions are not at all to be valued then we have a clear and full vindication of Divine Providence as to the sufferings of good men as well as to the Impunity of such as are wicked But how ever from hence we see how far the meer light of reason hath carryed men in resolving these difficulties concerning Gods Providence in the world and what a rational account may be given of them supposing evil of punishment to arise from sin and that there is a God in the world who is ready to punish the wicked and to reward the good Which was the thing to be shewed CHAP. IV. Of the Origine of Nations All mankind derived from Adam if the Scriptures be true The contrary supposition an introduction to Atheism The truth of the history of the flood The possibility of an universal deluge proved The flood universal as to mankind whether universal as to the earth and animals no necessity of asserting either Yet supposing the possibility of it demonstrated without creation of new waters Of the fountains of the deep The proportion which the height of mountains bears to the Diameter of the earth No mountains much above three mile perpendicular Of the Origine of fountains The opinion of Aristotle and others concerning it discussed The true account of them from the vapours arising from the mass of subterraneous waters Of the capacity of the Ark for receiving the Animals from Buteo and others The truth of the deluge from the Testimony of Heathen Nations Of the propagation of Nations from Noahs posterity Of the beginning of the Assyrian Empire The multiplication of mankind
after the flood Of the Chronology of the LXX Of the time between the flood and Abraham and the advantages of it Of the pretence of such Nations who called themselves Aborigines A discourse concerning the first plantation of Greece the common opinion propounded and rejected The Hellens not the first inhabitants of Greece but the Pelasgi The large spread of them over the parts of Greece Of their language different from the Greeks Whence these Pelasgi came that Phaleg was the Pelasgus of Greece and the leader of that Colony proved from Epiphanius the language of the Pelasgi in Greece Oriental thence an account given of the many Hebrew words in the Greek language and the remainders of the Eastern languages in the Islands of Greece both which not from the Phaenicians as Bochartus thinks but from the old Pelasgi Of the ground of the affinity between the Jews and Lacedaemonians Of the peopling of Amercia THE next thing we proceed to give a rational account of in the history of the fiâât ages of the world contained in Scripture is the peopling of the world from Adam Which is of great consequence for us to understand not only for the satisfaction of our curiosity as to the true Origine of Nations but also in order to our believing the truth of the Scriptures and the universal effects of the fall of man Neither of which can be sufficiently cleared without this For as it is hard to conceive how the effects of mans fall should extend to all mankinde unless all mankind were propagated from Adam so it is unconceivable how the account of things given in Scripture should be true if there were persons existent in the world long before Adam was Since the Scripture doth so plainly affirm that God hath made of one blood all Nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth Some Greek copyes read it ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã leaving out ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã which the vulgar Latin follows the Arabick version to explain both reads it ex homine or as De Dieu renders it ex Adamo uno there being but the difference of one letter in the Eastern languages between ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã and ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the one denoting blood and the other man But if we take it as our more ordinary copyes read it ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã yet thereby it is plain that the meaning is not that all mankind was made of the same uniform matter as the author of the Prae-Adamites weakly imagined for by that reason not only mankind but the whole world might be said to be ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã of the same blood since all things in the world were at first formed out of the same matter but ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã is taken there in the sense in which it occurs in the best Greek authors for the stock out of which men come So Homer ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Thence those who are near relations are called in Sophocles ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã thence the name of Consanguinity for nearness of relation and Virgil useth sanguis in the same sense Trojano à sanguine duci So that the Apostles meaning is that however men now are so dispersed in their habitations and differ so much in language and customs from each other yet they all were originally of the same stock and did derive their succession from that first man whom God created Neither can it be conceived on what account Adam in the Scripture is called the first man and that he was made a living soul and of the earth earthy unless it were to denote that he was absolutely the first of his kind and so was to be the standard and measure of all that follows And when our Saviour would reduce all things to the beginning he instanceth in those words which were pronounced after Eve was formed But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female for this cause shall a man leave Father and Mother and cleave unto his Wife Now nothing can be more plain and easie then from hence to argue thus those of whom those words were spoken were the first male and female which were made in the beginning of the Creation but it is evident these words were spoken of Adam and Eve And Adam said this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh therefore shall a man leave his Father and his Mother and shall cleave unto his Wife If the Scriptures then of the New Testament be true it is most plain and evident that all mankind is descended from Adam and no less conspicuous is it from the history of the Creation as delivered by Moses For how necessary had it been for Moses when he was giving an account of the Origine of things to have discovered by whom the world was first planted if there had been any such plantation before Adam but to say that all the design of Moses was only to give an account of the Origine and history of the Iewish Nation and that Adam was only the first of that stock is manifestly ridiculous it being so clear that not only from Adam and Noah but from Sem Abraham and Isaac came other Nations besides that of Iews And by the same reason that it is said that Moses only speaks of the Origine of the Iewish Nation in the history of Adam it may as well be said that Moses speaks only of the making of Canaan and that part of the heavens which was over it when he describes the Creation of the world in the six dayes work For why may not the earth in the second ver of Genesis be as well understood of the Land of Iudea and the light and production of animals and vegetables refer only to that as to understand it so in reference to the flood and in many other passages relating to those eldest times But the Author of that Hypothesis answers That the first Chapter of Genesis may relate to the true Origine of the world and the first peopling of it but in the second Moses begins to give an account of the first man and woman of the Iewish Nation Very probable but if this be not a putting asunder those which God hath joyned together nothing is For doth not Moses plainly at first give an account of the formation of things in the first six dayes and of his rest on the seventh but how could he be said to have rested then from the works of Creation if after this followed the formation of Adam and Eve in the second Chapter Besides if the forming of man mentioned Gen. 2. 7. be distinct from that mentioned Gen. 1. 27. then by all parity of reason ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the Generations of Heaven and earth mentioned Gen. 2. 4. must be distinct from the Creation of the heaven and earth mentioned Gen. 1. 1. And so if there were another Creation of heaven and earth belonging to
the Iews in Gen. 2. we may likewise believe that there was a new Creation of man and woman in that Chapter distinct from that mentioned in the former Again further if there had been any such persons in the world before Adam no doubt Adam himself was ignorant of them or else it had been a false and ridiculous account which he gives of the name of his wife ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã because she was ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the mother of all living Not of all living things for that had been a more proper description of a Ceres or Magna Mater or Diana multimammia of our Grand-mother the earth but certainly it extends to all of the kind that all living creatures that are of humane nature came from her So the Chaldeâ Paraphrast understands it she was called Hava because she was ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã the mother of all the sons of men And so the Arabick version quia ipsa fuit mater omnis viventis rationalis To which purpose our Learned Selden cites the version of the Mauritanian Iews and the Persick of Tawasius But what ever the credit or authority of these versions be this is most certain that Adam had no reason at all to have given this name to his wife as being the mother of all living if there had been any of mankind existing in the world from other mothers which had been long before Eve was formed So that we find it plain and clear that if the report given of things in Scripture be true the hypothesis of Prae-Adamites is undoubtedly false And certainly who ever seriously considers the frequent reflections on the authority of the Scriptures which were cast by the author of that Fiction and his endeavouring on all occasions to derogate from the miracles recorded in it may easily suspect the design of that Author was not to gain any credit to his opinion from those arguments from Scripture which he makes shew of which are pittifully weak and ridiculous but having by the help of such arguments made his opinion more plausible his hope was that his opinion would in time undermine the Scriptures themselves When he had made it appear that the account given in the Scriptures of the plantation of the world was unsatisfactory since there were men before Adam which the Scriptures to please the Iewish Nation take no notice of So that after he had attempted to prostitute the Scriptures to his opinion his next work had been to have turned them out of doors as not of credit to be relyed on by any when they were so common to every opinion But how impious absurd and rude that attempt was upon the sacred and inviolable authority of the Scriptures hath been so fully discovered by his very many not unlearned adversaries that it might seem needless so much as to have taken notice of so weakly grounded and infirmly proved an opinion had it not thus far lain in my way in order to the clearing the true Origine of Nations according to the Scriptures The main foundations of which fabulous opinion lying chiefly in the pretended antiquities of the Chaldaeans Egyptians and others have been fully taken away in our first bsok where our whole design was to manifest the want of credibility in those accounts of ancient times which are delivered by Heathen Nations in opposition to the Scriptures There is nothing at all in Scripture from the Creation of Adam to the flood which seems to give any countenance to that figment but only what may be easily resolved from the consideration of the great conciseness of the Mosaick History in reporting that long interval of time which was between the fall of Adam and the Flood By means of which conciseness such things are reported as speedily done because immediatly succeeding in the story which asked a very considerable time before they could be effected and besides all things which were done before the Flood being all quite obliterated by it and all the numerous posterity of Adam being then destroyed only Noah and his Family excepted to what purpose had it been any further to have reported the passages before the Flood otherwise then thereby to let us understand the certainty of the succession of persons from Adam and such actions in those times which might be remarkable discoveries of Gods providence and mans wickedness in it which being most apparent at first in Cain and his posteriry did by degrees so spread its self over the face of the then inhabited world that the just God was thereby provoked to send a Deluge among them to sweep away the present inhabitants to make room for another Generation to succeed them This therefore we now come to consider viz. the History of the flood and the certainty of the propagation of the world from the posterity of Noah after the Flood I begin with the History of the Flood its self as to which two things will be sufficient to demonstrate the truth of it 1. If there be nothing in it repugnant to reason 2. If we have sufficient evidence of the truth of it from such who yet have not believed the Scriptures There are only two things which seem questionable to reason concerning the flood the first is concerning the possibility of the flood its self the other is concerning the capacity of the Ark for preserving all kinds of Animals The only ground of questioning the possibility of such a Flood as that is related in Scripture hath been from hence that some have supposed it impossible that all the water which is contained in the ayr supposing it to fall down should raise the surface of water upon the earth a foot and a balf in height so that either new waters must be created to overflow the earth or else there must be supposed a rarefaction of the water contained in the Sea and all Rivers so that it must take up at least fifteen times the space that now it doth but then they say if the water had been thus rarified it could neitheâ have destroyed man nor beast neither could Noabs Ark have been born up by it any more then by liquid ayre To this therefore I answer First I cannot see any urgent necessity from the Scripture to assert that the Flood did spread its self over all the surface of the earth That all mankinde those in the Ark excepted were destroyed by it is most certain according to the Scriptures When the occasion of the Flood is thus expressed And God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually And the Lord said I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth It could not be then any particular deluge of so small a Country as Palestine which is here expressed as some have ridiculously imagined for we find an universal corruption in the earth mentioned as the cause an universal threatening upon
condition of our souls 3. The Scripture discovers to us the only way of pleasing God and enjoying his favour That clearly reveals the way which man might have sought for to all eternity without particular revelation whereby sins may be pardond and whatever we do may be acceptable unto God It shews us that the ground of our acceptance with God is through Christ whom he hath made a propitiation for the sins of the world and who alone is the true and living way whereby we may draw near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience Through Christ we understand the terms on which God will shew favour and grace to the world and by him we have ground of a ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã access with freedome and boldness unto God On his account we may hope not only for grace so subdue our sins resist temptations conquer the devil and the world but having fought this good fight and finished our course by patient continuance in well doing we may justly look for glory honour and immortality and that crown of righteousness which is laid up for those who wait in faith holiness and humility for the appearance of Christ from heaven Now what things can there be of greater moment and importance for men to know or God to reveal then the nature of God and our selves the state and condition of our souls the only way to avoid eternal misery and enjoy everlasting Bliss The Scriptures discover not only matters of importance but of the greatest depth and mysteriousness There are many wonderful things in the Law of God things we may admire but are never able to comprehend Such are the eternal purposes and decrees of God the doctrine of the Trinity the Incarnation of the Son of God and the manner of the operation of the Spirit of God on the souls of men which are all things of great weight and moment for us to understand and believe that they are and yet may be unsearchable to our reason as to the particular manner of them What certain ground our faith stands on as to these things hath been already shewed and therefore I forbear insisting on them The Scripture comprehends matters of the most universal satisfaction to the minds of men though many things do much exceed our apprehensions yet others are most suâtable to the dictates of our nature As Origen bid Celsus see ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã whether it was not the agreeableness of the principles of faith with the common notions of humane nature that which prevailed most upon all candid and ingenuous auditors of them And therefore as Socrates said of Heraclitus his books What he understood was excellent and therefore he supposed that which he did not understand was so too so ought we to say of the Scriptures if those things which are within our capacity be so suitable to our natures and reasons those cannot contradict our reason which yet are above them There are many things which the minds of men were sufficiently assured that they were yet were to seek for satisfaction concerning them which they could never have had without Divine revelation As the nature of true happiness wherein it lay and how to be obtained which the Philosophers were so puzled with the Scripture gives us full satisfaction concerning it True contentment under the troubles of life which the Scripture only acquaints us with the true grounds of and all the prescriptions of Heathen Moralists fall as much short of as the directions of an Empirick doth of a wise and skilful Physitian Avoiding the fears of death which can alone be through a grounded expectation of a future state of happiness which death leads men to which cannot be had but through the right understanding of the Word of God Thus we see the excellency of the matters themselves contained in this revelation of the mind of God to the world As the matters themselves are of an excellent nature so is the manner wherein they are revealed in the Scriptures and that 1. In a clear and perspicuous manner not but there may be still some passages which are hard to be understood as being either prophetical or consisting of ambiguous phrases or containing matters above our comprehension but all those things which concern the terms of mans salvation are delivered with the greatest evidence and perspicuiry Who cannot understand what these things mean What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God that without faith it is impossible to please God that without holiness none shall see the Lord that unless we be born again we can never enter into the Kingdom of heaven these and such like things are so plain and clear that it is nothing but mens shutting their eyes against the light can keep them from understanding them God intended these things as directions to men and is not he able to speak intelligibly when he please he that made the tongue shall he not speak so as to be understood without an infallible interpreter especially when it is his design to make known to men the terms of their eternal happiness Will God judge men at the great day for not believing those things which they could not understand Strange that ever men should judge the Scriptures obscure in matters necessary when the Scripture accounts it so great a judgement for men not to understand them If our Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not least the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should shine unto them Sure Lots door was visible enough if it were a judgement for the men of Sodom not to see it and the Scriptures then are plain and intelligible enough if it be so great a judgement not to understand them 2. In a powerful and authoritative manner as the things contained in Scripture do not so much beg acceptance as command it in that the expressions wherein our duty is concerned are such as awe mens consciences and pierce to their hearts and to their secret thoughts All things are open and naked before this Word of God every secret of the mind and thought of the heart lyes open to its stroke and force it is quick and powerful sharper then a two-edged sword piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joynts and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart The word is a Telescope to discover the great Luminaries of the world the truths of highest concernment to the souls of men and it is such a Microscope as discovers to us the smallest Atome of our thoughts and discerns the most secret intent of the heart And as far as this light reacheth it comes with power and authority as it comes armed with the Majesty
of that God who reveals it whose authority extends over the soul and conscience of man in its most secret and hidden recesses 3. In a pure and unmixed manner in all other writings how good soever we have a great mixture of dross and gold together here is nothing but pure gold Diamonds without flaws Suns without spots The most current coynes of the world have their alloyes of baser mettals there is no such mixture in divine Truths as they all come from the same Author so they all have the same purity There is a Urim and Thumim upon the whole Scripture light and perfection in every part of it In the Philosophers we may meet it may be with some scattered fragments of purer mettal amidst abundance of dross and impure oare here we have whole wedges of gold the same vein of purity and holiness running through the whole book of Scriptures Hence it is called the form of sound words here have been no hucksters to corrupt and mix their own inventions with Divine Truths 4 In an uniform and agreeable manner This I grant is not sufficient of its self to prove the Scriptures to be Divine because all men do not contradict themselves in their writings but yet here are some peculiar circumstances to be considered in the agreeableness of the parts of Scripture to each other which are not to be found in meer humane writings 1. That this doctrine was delivered by persons who lived in different ages and times from each other Usually one age corrects anothers faults and we are apt to pitty the ignorance of our predecessors when it may be our posterity may think us as ignorant as we do them But in the sacred Scripture we read not one age condemning another we find light still increasing in the series of times in Scripture but no reflections in any time upon the ignorance or weakness of the precedent the dimmest light was sufficient for its age and was a step to further discovery Quintilian gives it as the reason of the great uncertainty of Grammar rules quia non analogia demissa coelo formam loquendi dedit that which he wanted as to Grammar we have as to Divine Truths they are delivered from heaven and therefore are alwayes uniform and agreeable to each other 2. By persons of different interests in the world God made choice of men of all ranks to be enditers of his oracles to make it appear it was no matter of State policy or particular interest which was contained in his word which persons of such different interests could not have agreed in as they do We have Moses David Solomon persons of royal rank and quality and can it be any mean thing which these think it their glory to be penners of We have Isaiah Daniel and other persons of the highest education and accomplishments and can it be any trivial thing which these imploy themselves in We have Amos other Prophets in the old Testament and the Apostles in the New of the meaner sort of men in the world yet all these joyn in consort together when God tunes their spirits all agree in the same strain of divine truths and give light and harmony to each other 3. By persons in different places and conditions some in prosperity in their own country some under banishment and adversity yet all agreeing in the same substance of doctrine of which no alteration we see was made either for the flattery of those in power or for avoiding miseries and calamities And under all the different dispensations before under and after the Law though the management of things was different yet the doctrine and design was for substance the same in all All the different dispensations agree in the same common principles of religion the same ground of acceptance with God and obligation to duty was common to all though the peculiar instances wherein God was served might be different according to the ages of growth in the Church of God So that this great uniformity considered in these circumstances is an argument that these things came originally from the same Spirit though conveyed through different instruments to the knowledge of the world 5. In a perswasive and convincing manner and that these wayes 1. Bringing divine truths down to our capacity cloathing spiritual matter in familiar expressions and similitudes that so they might have the easier admission into our minds 2. Propounding things as our interest which are our duty thence God so frequently in Scripture recommends our dutyes to us under all those motives which are wont to have the greatest force on the minds of men and annexeth gracious promises to our performance of them and those of the most weighty and concerning things Of grace favour protection deliverance audience of prayers and eternal happiness and is these will not prevail with men what motives will 3. Courting us to obedience when he might not only command us to obey but punish presently for disobedience Hence are all those most pathetical and affectionate strains we read in Scripture O that there were such a heart within them that they would fear me and keep all my commandments alwayes that it might go well with them and with their children after them Wo unto thee O Jerusalem wilt thou not be made clean when shall it once be Turn ye turn ye from your evil wayes for why will ye dye O hâuse of Israel How shall I give thee up Ephraim how shall I deliver thee Israel how shall I make thee as Admah how shall I set thee as Zâboim mine heart is turned within me my repentings are kindled together O Jerusalem Jerusalem how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathered her chickens under her wings and ye would not What Majesty and yet what sweetness and condescension is there in these expressions What obstinacy and rebellion is it in men for them to stand out against God when he thus comes down from his throne of Majesty and wooes rebellious sinners to return unto him that they may be pardoned Such a matchless and unparalleld strain of Rhâtorick is there in the Scripture far above the art and insinuations of the most admired Orators Thus we see the peculiar excellency of the manner wherein the matters contained in Scripture are revealed to us thus we have considered the excellency of the Scripture as it is a discovery of Gods mind to the world The Scriptures may be considered as a rule of life or as a Law of God which is given for the Government of the lives of men and therein the excellency of it lies in the nature of the dutyes and the encouragements to the practice of them 1. In the nature of the dutyes required which are most becoming God to require most reasonable for us to perform 1. Most becoming God to require as they are most suitable and agreeable to the Divine nature the imitation of which in our actions is the