Q^arnell Iniocraitij library BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1691 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 092 346 000 6R VJ Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092346000 siBn&KSTT ;8ir-ifi;ssnsjsi. ^j::sos, isjEjaju®. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. A EATIONAL ACCOUNT THE TRUE RELIGION. JOH^ EYELYN, AUTHOR OF " SYLVA," ETC. NOTV FIKST PUBLISHED FROM THE OKIOINAL MS. IN THE LIBKART AT TVOTTOIf. "I am verily persuaded that errors shall not be imputed to them as sin, who use such measm-es of industry in tinding Trnth, as human prudence and ordinary dis- cretion (their abilities and opportunities, their distractions and hindrances, and all other things considered) shall advise ihem to."— Chillingwoeth. EDITED, WITH NOTES, Bv The REVD. R. M. EV ANSON, B.A. IX TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENKif G. BOHN, YORK STKEET, COVENT GARDEN. 1859. H TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT, THESE VOLUMES, FROM THE PEN OF AN ILLUSTRIOUS WRITER, IN TOKEN OF ESTEEM, ARE, WITH HIS GRACE'S PERMISSION, RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BT HIS OBLIGED AND FAITHFUL SERVANT, THE EDITOR. EDITOR'S PEEFACE. " He, being dead, yet speaketh.'' After a peaceful slumber of nearly two cen- turies in the Wotton Library, tbe original manu- script from which this work is printed was last year brought into light and notice by the pub- lication of the " Life of Mrs. Godolphin," from the pen of the same Author. This circum- stance directed fresh attention to the collection of manuscripts still in the possession of his representative, W. J. Evelyn, Esq., M.P., at the family-seat in Surrey, by whose permission the fruit of his literary labours, in a new and most important department, is now, for the first time, > given to the world. It is but due to the Publisher to relate, that it was mainly owing to his suggestions that the manuscript was carefully examined; and though, perhaps from its bulk, the grave theological character of vi editor's preface. its contents, and the exceeding minuteness of the writing, it seems to have possessed few charms for the eyes of those who hitherto have been permitted to inspect the Wotton manu- scripts, yet, upon patient investigation, it proved to be a work of considerable learning and re- search ; and, being partly devoted to the exami- nation of doctrines then current or opposed, was thought not ill adapted to a controversial age — nay, in some measure, calculated to soften the peculiar prejudices of our times ; to lead men to allow that all catholicity of mind is not Ro- manism ; nor attachment to the pure teaching of the English Church incompatible with unqua- lified rejection of Romish en'or; nor Christian charity of necessity violated by a calm and fear- less exhibition and condemnation of the fallacies of dissent. To this end, the well-known piety of the ^^uthor, coupled with the trying times in which he lived, must greatly contribute. Himself a layman, he is free from suspicion of priestcraft. His religious attachment to the Church of his Baptism is no fair-weather conformity in her EDITOR S PREFACE. VU sunny hours, but is manifested by firm allegiance in her days of darkness and distress, when he who owned his Spiritual Mother was not exempt from danger of proscription, imprisonment, or even exile. At such a period of her history, John Evelyn, a gentleman of fortune, with many dear ties to warp his judgment astray, showed rare strength and rectitude of principle, in choosing rather, at aU hazard, through faith in her Divine mission, to heed the pure light of an obscured and persecuted Church, (unhke some who would desert her in the hour of peril) than to bask with the many in the wild red glare of fana- ticism wherewith the land was overspread. Nor was his fideUty without its reward, so to speak ; for he Hved to see her restored, if not to the fulness of her rays, at least to her former elevated position, whence she might engage once more, under accumulated difficulties, it is true, in dispelling either the mists of infidelity that followed by re-action the gross hypocrisy of the Interregnum, or the chUUng indifference to " things unseen" so largely caught up from the pernicious example of a dissolute Court. viii editor's PEEFACE. In confirmation of these remarks, Ave have only to extract a few passages from his Diary of the time. In a foot-note to the title-page of the manuscript, we are informed that this work was "begun in the year 1657, when the Church of England was in persecution ;" and about that date are the following entries : — " .3rd August (1656). I went to London to receive the Blessed Sacrament, the first time the Church of England was reduced to a Chamber and Conventicle, so sharp was the persecution. The Parish Churches were filled with sectaries of all sorts, blasphemous and ignorant mechanics usurping the pulpits every where."' In the following year he writes under date December 25th, " Christmas-day. I went to Loudon with my wife, to ce- lebrate Christmas-day, Mr. Gunning preaching in Exeter Chapel, on Micah, vii., 3. Sermon ended, as he was giving us the Holy Sacrament, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surprised and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, others carried away. It fell to my share to be confined to a room in the house, where yet I was permitted to dine with the master of it, the Countess of Dorset, Lady Hatton, and some others of quality who invited me. In the afternoon came Colonel Whalley, Goffe, and others from Whitehall, to examine us one by one ; some they ' Evelyn's Diary, new edition, vol. i., p. 316. EDITOR S PEEFACE. IX committed to the Marshal, some to prison. When I came before them, they took my name and abode ; exa- mined me why, contrary to the ordinance made that none should any longer observe the superstitious time of the Nativity, (so esteemed by them) I durst offend, and particularly be at Common Prayers, which they told me was but the Mass in English, and particularly pray for Charles Stuart, for which we had no Scripture. I told them we did not pray for Charles Stuart, but for all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors. They replied, In so doing we prayed for the King of Spain too, who was their enemy and a Papist ; with other frivolous and ensnaring questions and much threatening ; and, finding no colour to detain me, they dismissed me with much pity of my ignorance. These were men of high flight, and above ordinances, and spake spiteful things of our Lord's Nativity. As we went up to receive the Sacra- ment, the miscreants held their muskets against us, as if they would have shot us at the Altar, but yet suffering us to finish the office of Communion, as perhaps not having instructions what to do in case they found us in that action.'"' Again, after the Restoration and the return of the Church of England from her captivity, his mind is so impressed with the overpowering bad example of the Court, and the general corruption that followed thereupon, that he does not hesi- tate to assign it as the chief cause of those signal ' Evelyn's Diary, new edition, vol. i., p. 323. X editor's preface. visitations, the Great Plague and Fire of London, thus recorded in the Diary : — '■ "October ]0 (1666). This day was ordered a general fast throuo-h the nation, to humble us on the late dread- f'ul conflagration, added to the plague and war, the most dismal judgments that could be inflicted ; but which in- deed we highly deserved, for our prodigious ingratitude, burning lusts, dissolute Court, profane and abominable lives; under such dispensations of God's continued favour in restoring Church, Prince, and People, from our late intestine calamities, of which we were altogether un- mindful, even to astonishment." The result of such, or rather similar feehngs, was, in 1657, the commencement of the present work, the scope and design whereof, as well as the motives that led to the undertaking, are told most strikingly in the Author's Preface, to which the Reader is especially referred. In the earlier chapter of the First Volume there will be foimd coincidences of thought, and even expression, with writers who have subsequently handled the same topics ; as, for instance, when treating of the moral government of the world, passages occur closely resembling the ai-guments of Bishop Butler, in his Analogy of Religion, who wrote ' Evelyn's Diary, new edition, vol. ii., p. 17. EDITOR S PREFACE. XI it need hardly be said, in the followiag century. In arguing, also, from Natural to Revealed Reli- gion, Mr. Evelyn's illustrations are frequently identical with those of the modern Paley. It is not, of course, pretended that such subjects are handled ia the same masterly way as by those eminent writers, who concentrated their mental forces upon, perhaps, a single branch of the many topics of this comprehensive Treatise; they are merely alluded to as further evidence, if any were wanted, of the versatility and originality of the Author's intellectual powers. In the Second Volume, wherein he professes to explain the true doctrines of Holy Scripture, and of the Church of England, the chief interest attaching to it will be found to consist in its value as an impartial interpretation of her Articles and Liturgy ; conveyed, too, in a manner which shows he was not propounding new views, but merely stating them as understood by her members in his time. The inferences that may be drawn from the perusal of this portion of the work are too palpable to need comment here. It remains only to give a brief description of xii editor's preface. the manuscript itself, in order to explain how far its integrity has been preserved, in preparing it for the press. From the remarkable accuracy of the writing, as well as from portions of the rough draft being found with it, it appears to be a second copy, and by the Author himself, with a view to pubhcation ultimately. This is partly corroborated by the close of his Preface, where, alluding to his " Adversaria," or collection of extracts from different authors (in the previous page termed his " Controversial Chapter), he says that " they [i.e., the Extracts] were entered promiscuously, and without that care I should have used, had I then designed them for this Treatise, or ever to appear in public." This " Adversaria," stitched up with the MS., and sufficient to fill a volume in itself, it was not deemed ad^dsable to publish, as forming no integral part of the work, and consisting, with few exceptions, of quotations from authors now in the hands of all. Two extracts, however have been given in the form of an Appendix being to all appearance in his own languao-e and on important topics. After this second copy EDITOR S PREFACE. XUl was completed, tlie margin furnishes proof of its revision by the Author himself, correcting even trifling orthographical errors, and, to judge from the different colour of the ink, at diflferent periods of his life. On a separate paper among the Wotton manuscripts the following memo- randum certainly occurs — " Things I would write out fair, and reform;" and "A Rational Account of the True Eeligion, or a History of it, with a packet of Notes belonging to it," forms one of the list.^ But this probably refers to the fresh ideas, inserted during revision, in the mar- gin, which, doubtless, had it been published in his lifetime, he would have embodied in the work, but, in the hands of another unwilling to do violence to the text, must be suffered to descend into the notes. It appears, also, from the original title-page of the manuscript, that the Author was in doubt about what name he should give it. Evae^eia first, and this is scratched out ; next @priigot. And if Epicurus and his poet * suppose the Supreme Being exempt from the solicitudes of sublu- nary things, he no where denies His existence, or if he any where seems to doubt of it, what should we expect from one that lived and died a madman ! So true is that of the orator : " Esse Deos qui negat, vix eum sanw mentis exisiimem."'^ Agreeable to that of holy David's, " The fool hath said in his heart." So naturally do aU wise men and sober agree on this topic of whatever Religion they are. From the philosophers turn we to the poets, who were of old their divines and prophets. How frequent are their raptures, invocations, and sentences to our purpose ! Witness their Orpheus, the most ancient : Hesiod, Homer, Menander, &c., of the Greeks i^ Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, &c., of the Latins, describing the crea- " Cic. De Nat. Deor. ; Sen. De Yit. Beal ; Nat. Qua:st. = Gal. De Usu. Part. ^ Lucret. 9. ■* " The man, who denies that there is a God, I can scarce account in his senses." ° Phooylides, Sophocles, Euripides. THE TRUE RELIGION. 7 tion of the world and the formation of man. Nay, the very loosest of the comedians, tragedians, satirists among the Latins, universally speaking of the Deity with all reverence ; accusing and scourging the impie- ties of an evil age by their pious instructions, sentences, and encomiums of virtue. So general was the consent of Pagans as to this article of a Deity, who made and governed the world, that rather than be thought to have none, or fearing they might miss of the true one, they embraced multitudes, and took in all animals and inanimate things — stones, plants, trees, rivers ; they had Dii nobiles, and majorum gentium, and others innumerable, over all tilings, places, passions, yea, and diseases. There were other com- mentitious deities ; not as so many divine or distinct substances, but manifestations, and several notions of one divine power. For, otherwise, so various were they, that Plato said he knew not what to call Venus — whether goddess or not : for she is sometimes taken for Pleasure, otherwhiles for Divine Love, Beauty, Sen- suality, Fecundity : and the several operations of their optimus mawimus were attributed to Vulcan, Bacchus, Ceres, &c. And besides the sun and moon, they ad- mitted all the constellations, the elements, all things in Nature, and inventors of every art: and, lest there should -any slip from them, they captivated the very images of the countries which they subdued;' for so the Romans; whilst the Greeks worshipped^ "the Un- ' See Jeremiah, xliii., 12. - Acts, xvii., 23. 8 THE TRUE RELIGION. known God," lest any of the rest should take it ill, and think themselves neglected. But not to insist on what the heathen acknowledge, even the devUs themselves believe and tremble, and are forced to confess Him, not only in our Scriptures, those oracles of the true God, but (to the confusion of his own dominion and false worship) from his own tripod, and the many idol-temples, where he had so long blinded and deluded the world. The images and shrines they adored; the altars they erected; their superstitious rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices, were manifest proofs of their devotion to some superior that could do them good and evU, seeing it was not to the statues they addressed their prayers and paid this honour (as St. Augustine ' makes plain by several instances) as to what they represented. Nor were they themselves so stupidly ignorant, to think the stone or metal was otherwise a god, than the fig-tree stump was MerciKy. Another undeniable mark is then- oaths, execrations, appeals, and prayers ; whence Zeno truly infers that, however an Atheist passes his life, his prayers (being in pain, and ready to die) confute his impious profes- sions, and the signal judgments usually befalling them. Examples of this were the catastrophes of Diagoras, Protagoras, and Julian of old,^ Vaninus,^ and some ' De Civ. Dei, lib. ix. ^ [Protagoras is reported to have been shipwrecked : Julian, the Apostate Emperor, to have exclaimed, when dying on the battle- field, " Thou, O, Galilean, hast conquered."] ^ [Lucilio Vanini, a determined atheist, was burnt at Toulouse, A.D. 1619.] THE TRUE RELIGION. 9 (but very few) others of later times, who may be ac- corded as prodigies in nature, phenomena rarely appear- ing, seldom met with in history, and to be looked upon as monsters rather than men. But of this more, when we come to speak of natural religion. Doubts and mistakes proceed not so much from the things or objects themselves, as from their not being rightly proposed to our understanding, in regard of the many prejudices which arise from things external, that pervert and vitiate the truth. And when we fancy that immense world of fire, the sun, to be no bigger than it to us appears — that a square tower at a distance is round — that 2)arallel lines extended beyond our ken touch at the extremes, and the like — I say, it is through some such hallucination that all our doubtful inquiries concerning the existence of a Deity proceed, and not from any general or natural principle, but such sohtary ones as are plainly erroneous and sophisticate — educa- tion, power, interest, passion, example, imagination, elo- quence, and whatsoever other circumstances bear any false colours or reasonings. There have been (among some of these) who pretend the being of a Deity to have been the invention of cun- ning politicians, to intimidate men, and reduce them to discipline and obedience, for the better government of the world. But this Is very foolish. Not Numa nor Lycurgus could have persuaded the people to embrace the belief of the being of a just God with any success, had they not been before inclined to it already ; since 10 THE TRUE EELIGIOX. it was the creed long before we read of any legislator (Moses excepted) or governor in the world : and sundry barbarous nations do yet believe and adore a God, who have hardly any notion of reward or punishment. And to acknowledge such deities as the Heathen did, was rather pernicious to government than advantage ; and, therefore, whoever of these pseudo-politicians per- suaded men there were any gods, on that account, they could not form nor create any such notion, without sup- posing it already in every man by nature. Wherefore, neither did Moses himself ever suppose it necessary to inculcate that behef into the people of Israel, as con- cluding it impossible for any rational man to believe the contrary. We have affirmed, and 'tis evident, that all we behold above us and beneath us, all we touch, and contemplate round about us, point to the Supreme author. And supposing (but not granting) that what we are obliged to believe from those objects were not the objects of our common senses, yet may it be as certain as that which is ; seeing there are innumerable things certain as to their existence, the natures of which are incapable of explanation. We feel, and are aifected with pain — we smell, and are sensible of odours, annoyed with such as are noisome and fetid — we are delighted with harmonious, displeased with harsh and discordant sounds, and the like of all other objects of the tactile senses; whilst we cannot explicate how these different sensations are made, or by what contrivance in the organ. It is abundantly THE TEUE EELIGION. 11 evident that we have proofs irrefragable, and which need not any so deep and philosophical researches. The Genesis of the world, and stupendous works of the creation — the Providence, government, and maintenance of this mighty machine, the structure of our own bodies and reason, and the deductions she must of ne- cessity make from these particulars, proclaim it aloud to all mankind ; and there needs no other demonstra- tion. God (says Seneca) is aU we see and all we see not ; for, whether there be any other middle-natures besides those inanimate, sensitive, animal, rational, or more intellectual and metaphysical beings, which both daily experience and history discover to us, is not so evident indeed to our senses, as highly probable to our reason, and conformable to the analogy of nature. It were strange that those vast and numerous regions and bodies above us should be desert and devoid of inhabitants ; whilst we find nothing so contemptible here beneath in the lower world but what is full of life and motion ; from the elephant, whale, and eagle, in the earth, water, air, to the most minute and despicable insect that crawls. Nor doubt I but as the inferior, so the superior continents may be furnished with living, and (for aught we know) intelligent creatures and species, annexing the elementary world to the celestial and etherial, even through all the illustrious orders of the heavenly hierarchy, as by a chain and series of causes, to the cause of causes itself. Thus the little stream and smallest brook hastens to 12 THE TRUE EELIGION. the more ample river through innumerable meanders, the river takes its way to the seas — thus the branch to the stem, the stem to the root, and that to its first and seminal rudiment. The being of mankind had thus its first origin, with retrospect from ancestor to ancestor, tUl we arrive at the first man from whom they sprung. Xow, though it be necessary and absolutely essential that his Creator be without beginning, as he is infinite and without ending : 'tis not so of the world or man, as we shall show : To continue this chase, there is, we find, a first and last in everything in nature, nay, in imagination also, whether we wUl argue from the succession of men, or the peopling of countries, the production and nativity of plants, foundation of empires, edification of cities, and other artificial works; seeing there were in all these a first father, a first colony, a first seed, first sovereign, first stone, a first hand which laid that stone, and superstructed or framed the engine. And thus, by a familiar instance, the hammer is raised by a wheel, that wheel by a consequence of other wheels; those are moved by a spring, pendule, or poise, which first gives motion to the first wheel, and, lastly, is that spring wound or drawn up by some hand which was the prime and original agent ; actuated by nerves, those nerves invigoured with spirits, origi- nated in the brain, prompted by the fancy, the iinder- standing will, and other faculties of the soul, by a first and immediate mover, of itself immoveable from any- thing extrinsecal, before or above it, in time or power THE TKUE RELIGION. 13 namely, that InteUigence which moves and directs the great clock of the universe. Thus, what has no beginning must be eternal, and that which is eternal was always the same it is, and ever shall be ; for were anything precedent to it, it were the thing we seek. But, seeing something must be first, that thing or Being must be God: nor may mankind or any being be deprived of that Being, but by some superior and more puissant Being or motion ; nor can it annihilate its being of itself, unless by some being greater than itself, and it were absurd to suppose it otherwise, and would involve us in the same circle. SECTION II. BY THE CREATION. The stupendous machine of the universe, which God unfolded in his creature, is another inference so convincing of the existence of a Deity, as that Zam- blicus will have the simple contemplation of it, a very beholding of God Himself with our eyes, and touching Him with our hands ; not as fancying it to be the real God we are speaking of, as some imagined, since, if so, the world, and what we see, must have been eternal, and made itself (which is absurd, and what we shall refute) but for its being composed, and framed with such admirable skill, wisdom, order, and magnificence, as takes off all pretence of doubting, and is so palpable an argument, that St. Paul (preaching to the Gentiles) tlilnks it sufficient to convince the learned Athenians,' ' Acts, xvii., 24. 14 THE TEUE RELIGION. and no less knowing Eomans,' where he tells them that God has evidently demonstrated it to them, "being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." And thus Heraclius shows to Hermadorus how the world, in its structure and orna- ment, gave testimony of a Deity. And those, who did less consider it, did yet grope after it, and could not devise how so goodly a structure should be raised, with- out something to move the materials, and dispose them into that wondrous order ; and therefore introducing a certain divine mind, they held it to pervade the universe, from whose activity all effects were first produced. As for those lazy philosophers, who left all to chance and atoms, they are rather objects of derision, than worthy of dispute : for Epicurus, with aU his fortunate encounters and coalitions, is driven to suppose strange hooks, figures, and claws, to make his system hang to- gether, and preserve his world from endless change. For that there should be a constant and uniform speci- fication, males and females, in such proportion, and not every moment jumble into new and anomalous ones, is not easy to conceive, without allowing the component principles to have either sense or quality, nor letting us know whence their motions do proceed. But that, though they were the originals of all, themselves had none ; and so make them gods, whilst he denies there be any, at least such as are at all concerned with things of this nature. And upon this substruction does the late Des Cartes '■ Rom., i., 19, 20. THE TEUE RELIGION. 15 raise his renowned edifice, making, by the mutual attri- tions of his atoms, the globular ones to compose the celestial bodies, and their chips, or filings, as it were, to be the materia suhtilis diffused through the universe, fiUing up the chinks and interstices, and giving motion and action, not only to the animal kingdom, (which he will have but dead and senseless engines) but to aU things else in nature. He will have God contribute nothing more to the creation of the world, than the whirling of innumerable vortices, globes, and striate particles ; from whose casual motions (according to cer- tain catholic and universal laws of matter) there pro- ceed all animates and inanimates whatsoever, without the conduct of any understanding Being, Wisdom, or Providence.' Let us suppose the production of mankind from his atoms. How principles of life and sense should emerge, without a vital nature, and a virtue of attracting to Itself a substance proper to frame the Inditiduum, is altogether inconceivable, seeing it must of necessity contain likewise the faculty of that formative act, by which the matter is moulded, and made conform to its specific nature. And, finally, it must have all the same powers and energies of the rational soul, as our late ' Similarly the Hylo-zoists held every atom of matter to be endowed with a plastic, spermatic life ; and though unconscious, yet capable of producing all things ; nay, and to improve them into animality and sense, yea, reason and understanding, without need of any incorporeal substance. Epicurus and Democritus, who made the world but &ov ttjs vuktos, an egg of one night, did not allow any such thing as incorporeal, but space. 16 THE TRUE RELIGION. grave and learned Hales' has elaborately made out, ex- amining the opinions of our wild philosophers, who state the original of things either ah aterno, or indeed any other cause, save the pleasure of a wise and omnipotent Being. Did ever any see a picture representing a history, in which divers actions and persons were judiciously de- signed, placed, and coloured; the lights, shades, per- spectives, and other circumstances of that curious art exactly observed, such as we see to be the works of Raphael, Titian, &c., and not believe some such skilful artist had managed the pencil ? Was it likely the Ihad of Homer, the commentaries of J. Caesar, or the vaster works of Livy, Plutarch, or Cicero, were composed by the fortuitous jimibling together of a printer's box of letters ? The world is a poem — the most perfect and consummate piece that ever was made; and did no more happen by chance than stones do dig themselves out of the quarry, not only squared and adjusted to every part and ornament of a regular building, but, according to the rules of architecture, form themselves into the five orders, and dance into a palace at the sound of the harp. Nor do trees hew themselves into beams, boards, and wainscot; nor tiles pin and lay themselves upon the rafters ; nor does glass blow itself into panels, and with other materials, which require art to bring them into use, erect themselves into houses, churches, and whole cities, with all their va- rious furniture ; nor do ships grow equipped with all ' Origin of Mankind. THE TRUE RELIGION. 17 thoir tackle and apparel, rigged and ready to sail ; nor find we clocks and watches, with all their subtile wheels, and curious springs and motions, in the mines of brass and iron, without the labour and excogita- tion of an intelligent artist. And if we acknowledge that every house, ship, and watch, so fitted and com- pletely finished, was the work of some man, shall we not much more conclude that this far more exact system of the Universe (so admirably contrived beyond all that the art of man can boast of skill and cunning), was made by some Omnipotent and infinitely wise Agent ? But so our modern wits, who never yet so much as saw one atom or grain of dust start up into being out of nothing, will have them to frame the world, and, with- out patience to consider wit, or honesty, persist in this madness, and think thereby to ridicule all Eehgion as well as sense and reason. But as the wise man has noted : " So v-ain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and cannot (or rather, idll not), out of the pood thinr/s that are seen, hnoio Him that is, neither by con- sidering the works, acknowledge the work-master. For (nj the greatness and beauty of the Creature, proportionally the Maker of them is seen." ' Of how depraved a sense must needs one be to think that Chance was the producer of intellectual substances, and devised so many beautiful and useful inventions, and gave them an understanding to effect that which Chance itself could not, namely, impart that power and faculty to another it never was possessed of! No, this ' Wisd. xiii. 1-5. VOL. I. C 18 THE TRUE EELIGION. noble and illustrious work, cemented In its various parts, and cast into the system we behold it, was doubt- less limited and determined to the forms assimied. Nor could its component matter form and actuate itself with- out some impulse and impression separate from its matter. If self-motion be essential to matter, it must of necessity have been coeval, and in it ab acterno, which is not possible. For, if there be no atom in repose but what naturally is in motion, then the principles of Epicurus are corruptible, because divisible. If of no parts and indivisible, then have they no extension, and if no extension no power to form anything, much less to make a world. Moreover, does matter move? Then it takes up place, and consequently has parts, figure being a deter- mined superficies. Again, if motion result from the principles of matter, how comes this motion (infinite and variable as it is) to be determined to such a form, such order, and in so regular a method and economy, for so many ages, without relapsing into chaos and confusion; seeing there is no natural or essential necessity that either matter should at aU exist, move, or determine itself to such particular form, but by some casual en- counter or superior directing cause ? The first is child- ishly ridiculous, for chance is either nothing or some- thing created. If something created, then had it a beginning ; if none, then must it be something distinct from matter, eternal, and self-existent ; and so is what we contend for, namely, the First Cause, which is God, the Cause of Causes, But, if Chance be nothing save THE TRUE EELIGION. 19 a name — vox et prasterea nihil — how monstrously absurd were it to affirm that nothing created something, nay, all that ever was created ! whereas, if there had ever been nothing, nothing could ever have been. Some- thing, therefore, must be which never was made, namely, self-originated' and eternal. That, in the mean time, God, who Is something, nay, who is all things, created all things out of nothin<,', implies no contradiction, though to us inexplicable, ex nihilo nil, excluding no supernatural production, but natural generation only. Theophrastus doubted not of tliis, and Seneca acknowledged a Chaos, so did Linus, Hesiod, and even the very Indians, as did the Egyptians long before, something of a sluggish, pre-existent matter, which was held from the consideration of things artificial, that supposes something out of which all things were made. But, from the weakness and imbecility of the creature, to argue the same of the Omnipotent, were to betray a greater weakness in us, and want of reason. AA'hen, therefore, it is affirmed that nothing produces nothing, we must conceive it of natural causes, raised out of our experience of successive generations, wliich indeed mvist necessarily have some being before the things arisinij; from them had being. For though, since that time, all plants have sprung from their seeds, and animals from their parents, &c. ; yet was there doubtless a plant which bore and produced that seed, and parents to beget that offspring. Hence the opinion that the whole Universe ' 'AvTocpves. 20 THE TRUE RELIGION. was at first but one great egg, of which the shell was the vast expanse, the air the white, and the earth its yoke. And some affirmed it of an oval form also, and made it symboHcal of the world,' as may be gathered from the Phoenician philosophy, Plutarch,^ Macrobius, Proclus, and the Platonists, agreeable to the incubation of an indulgent Spirit, which some of them gave hints of. We shaU not trouble ourselves with that imperti- nent question, which was the first, the egg, or the chick (as some have done) ; but tliis we find, that God created every plant of the ground in its full vigour and perfec- tion, prolific and ready to yield increase, and so the fowls before we hear of any disclosure of the eggs. The womb of animals also was made before a child was born; and sundry things, as Heaven, Earth, Angels, and Si)uls, and elemental bodies, were the immediate pro- duction of Almighty God, as other tilings mediatehi from things pre-created, namely, out of the Earth and ^.A^atcrs, as birds, beasts, fishes, and plants, and even man himself. In the mean time, 'tis as hard to conceive how matter (or anything out of wliich anything is made) should rise and residt out of itself, as out of nothing, and altogether incomprehensible that senseless materials should be their own architectresses to the degree of furnishing such a world of things as are daily the objects of our senses. I say, this is a strain of wit so extravagant, and, in plain terms, so impossible, that, should it once be ' Plut. In Sympos , i. 2. ^ Plut. In Sympos., 1. 4. Macrob., 1. 7, c. 16. THE TRUE RELIGIOX. 21 seriously embraced, would not only bring to ground all our mechanical philosophers, but aU that Ave have been taught of good sense and religion. That God made all tilings from nothing is yet cer- tainly true, and even demonstrably so, or else there can be no such Being as God. For, if there be such a thing, then of necessity there must be that principle, which created the first thing ; and, if He did not make the first thing, then there is something besides Him, and which never was made ; and, if so, then there are two first or two Eternal Beings. Wlierefore, if God formed the first tiling, he formed it of nothing. One, then, of these propositions must be true : either nothing was before something existent, or was not. If it were (though but one single moment), then was there never anything, or ever could be since ; because nothing could produce nothing; and, to pro- duce itself before it was, is not only absurd, but im- possible. Therefore, of necessity, something had an actual existence from all eternity ; self-subsisting and giving being, immediately or mediately, to all sub- ordinate beings. And this independent Being is only necessary ; all the rest contingent and at his pleasure. On the other side, ascribe we aU to Nature, and mean not the God of nature, is to split on the same rock. Nature, therefore, (in the large sense) is that which comprehends the entire virtue of aU finite beings, subordinated to the first of Beings, and which, accord- ing to the ordinary course, are regulated by certain constant and uniform laws ; and so the course of nature 22 THE TETJE EELIGIOlSr. is no other than the will and pleasure of the God of nature. Indeed, God does not do all things in nature inunediately ; but governs the motion of matter to the form designed, whilst that matter does not understand the reason of what it does, nor for what end, being wholly guided to that by a mental and wise causality. Things, then, have their primogenital being from the supernatural power of God, who imprinted on them all their specific ideal signatures and animal efficacies ; so ordered, and setting in motion second causes, as to bring together apt materials for the composition of the several species. And, when once they are in this method of existence, they afterwards move and act according to the nature and course of life and progress, minted and stamped upon them in their first creation. This is nature, nor has she any further hand or intent in any of those operations ascribed to her ; and, in this sense, we may safely have recourse to, and speak of second causes without reproach ; since they are but the Almighty's instruments, ordinary and natural Provi- dences — unless where things and efifects are so very extraordinary, as the wisest and most considering per- sons cannot sound and discern the reason, or are other- wise altogether stupendous, just as miraculous works, and things supernaturally happening ; while our atheis- tical devotees to Dame Nature (though what they pre- tend be with the greatest violence imaginable to all reason, experience, and indeed to the very laws and sanctions of nature) think it, forsooth, beneath their wit and high-flown reach to acknowledge any other TUE TRUE RELIGION. 23 efficient than what is the object of their senses, and form their conclusions accordingly of all things else. Once more, then, nature (in a more restrained sense, and as she more nearly concerns our enquiries) may be said to be the power and capacity of matter, as that power (we said) is conducted by the same steady and constant ordinance by which she acts and disposes of it, ]\Iatter being, of itself, as to any interior principle, stupid, immoveable, and uncertain, till agitated by some superior virtue exterior to it. And this philoso- phers call motion, and is that which, dividing this stupid and heavy lump, does also figure and modify all that we with so much worthy admiration contemplate in tliis aspectable world ; and which, without this mover, had still remained substantial matter and bulk indeed, and in capacity of being moved by another ; but never thus diversified for beauty and usefulness, and might as well have been a deformed and rugged rock. But, supposing that matter were endued with any necessary motion, yet being without mind, purpose, thought, or counsel : though that motion might possibly have separated the mass, it could never have produced any useful figure, regular and organic species, witli those several and admirable accommodations, with all the train of subordinate circumstances, and orderly effects of necessity belonging to them. Moreover, this unexcogitated division would also have been illimited, and never left crumbling and mouldering away ; having nothing to hinder, nothing to maintain it. Wherefore that motion which has given 24 THE TEUE EELIGIOX. tills impulse to matter, and brought it to tliis beautiful and firm contexture, is (whether we will or not), that prime, superior, and noble cause, the Father of Nature, IMatter, and ]\Iotion ; the Omnipotent central Being of Beings. 'Nov was it other than God's goodness and free bene- v<:)lence, which was the cause of what He has wrought ; no intrinsic necessity, no, not of doing the good He (iontinuaUy does, and daily pours upon His work. For though his own nature be the most benign, the emana- tions and exercises of it, as to His creatures, are directed by His own free will and favour; seeing otherwise He could make nothing worse or better. Indeed, there be who will have Him to be a necessary cause, and yet a voluntary, and that He does always what is best, because it is of His perfection to do so, namely, to communicate of His bounty to something without Him, from the eternal beneficence of His nature. But this is inconsistent with the necessity they pretend; seeing necessary agents have no more power at any time to suspend their activity, than fire to burn and heat. To imagine, therefore, this of God, were to deprive Him of imderstanding and the exercise of His power, wisdom, and wUl, which alone created all, and can do aU things. Thus have we examined the Invalidity of that pre- carious fancy, that unthinking matter should fall by chance, or act necessarily (when once in motion) into this orderly figm-e ; or that it should retain any innate perfection, beside a bulky magnitude, much less an- THE TKUE RELIGION. 25 infinite perfection, such as eternity and all those other divine attributes, incommunicable and needful for the work of creation. We have Ukewise showed the work of nature to be the work of reason, not of created nature ; that without diversity, separation, and union of parts, nothing can be made, and that this separation being the eifect of motion, and not competent to matter of itself, does of necessity require some hand or power to actuate it. It is likewise evident, that no part could produce the whole: that the world could not make itself; that without sense, excogitation, and purpose, things so orderly contrived could never have been created ; and that, therefore, tliis principle is something extrinsical, and nothing from within common matter. Lastly, that nothing is or can be eternal, but in the idea of the Almighty : and that to make matter pro- duce itself is to make that God which is no God, but to Atheists and impious men without God in the world. But we now descend to particulars. The contem- plation of this vast and goodly machine, how loudly it bespeaks us in the language of the Royal Prophet, the " glory of God and His handy-work."' Behold here a demonstration, 0, Atheist! if nothing save daily mi- racles will convince thee, here thou hast to entertain thy infidel curiosity. 'Whether it be^ the position, course, or order of the sun, or other luminaries' motion, or that of the earth ; or the ' Psalm xix. ' See "Dr. Taylor's Consideration of Man." 26 THE TRUE RELIGION. sweet influences of the Pleiades, Orion and his sons, or other refulgent constellations, which give light, growth, and vigour to aU the lower world, and (for aught we know) to ten thousand more above us ; — their order, progress. Immense magnitude, distance, and inconceivable spaces, comprehending perhaps many million of greater bodies, and likely habitations and continents, serving to the Almighty's vast design, — are the astonishing wonders, which proclaim that nothing but an Infinitely wise and all-powerful agent could raise a machine so useful, glorious, and Immense. Nor Is It possible that all those glorious and infinite number of distant globes should have nothing in them to praise their omnipotent Maker ; since Christ has said that in His Father's House are many mansions, who framed the world to communicate his own infinite beneficence, and that there might be other Beings happy with Him: " Israel, how great Is the house of God, and how large Is the place of his pos- session !" ' Who without amazement can consider the self-poising earth, and the other celestial bodies we look upon, with- out other prop to sustain them in the liquid air, or more subtUe ether ? Contemplate we the periodical returns of the equinoxes and solstices — the just distance of the sun — the interposition of atmosphere, qualifying and attempering the fiery emanations of that burning ocean, to a just and benign warmth, for the comfort and pro- duction of those innumerable species, to which it imparts growth, maturity, and life; In a word, the universal ' Baruch, iii. 24. THE TRUE EELIGION. 27 benefit of the elementary world ! Behold, next, his oblique motion, whereby he visits every part and re- gion, by which the grosser exhalations are meteorized, circulated, and condensed into clouds, and sustained by the atmosphere ; both to shadow and refresh the weary ground, descending in fruitful showers, softening and impregnating the teeming earth ! The snow, hail, ice, and frosts, subdue and mellow the stubborn clods, keep- ing the native warmth within from dissipation, whose virtue else would soon be exhausted by the perpetually burning planet ! Then behold the sun in the firmament and centre of the heavens ; the subterranean fires in the bosom and centre of the earth, to prepare and con- coct the mineral juices, and other concretes for useful metals, gems, and other precious substances, stones, shells, and colours : qualifying also the waters for nutri- ment, medicinal drinks, and salutary baths, and a thou- sand other purposes ; wliilst the seasons, not passing from one extreme to the other, but sweetly, and by im- perceptible degrees, sUde as it were from winter to spring, from spring to summer, from thence to harvest and fruitful autumn, in a wonderful economy ; and by a no less admirable Providence all things are preserved, which else would have been inverted, disturbed, and lost ; since things so contrary could never have met to make up this harmony and perfection. The restless ebbing and flowing of the seas, observing the course of the lunar phases ; their enigmatical cur- rents, fluxes, and reciprocations ; and how they were contrived to irrigate and refresh all the parts of the 28 THE TRUE RELIGION. earth, in rivers and larger streams ; made to serpent in meandering crooks, not only to check their rapid course, but kindly to visit the most inland parts ; and are fitted for navigation and commerce of distant nations. The havens too, and creeks, and bending shores and bays, are stations for ships, impelled by various winds. These not only ventilate the air, and stir the water from un- wholesome stagnations, and give motion to mills and other useful engines, but help the bold mariner to plough the vast and liquid main, and bring him to the haven where he would be. And when the storm arises, and the proud waves swell, the shores are a curb to their fury. Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther. But who can number the sands of the sea ? He, only, to whom earth and sea are as a drop of the bucket, and the dust of the balance. " For the sea is His, and He made it, and His hands prepared the dry land."' " All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and what- soever passeth through the paths of the seas;"^ innume- rable for multitude, stupendous for shape and magni- tude, and incomparable for use and benefit. Thus every place is garnished and furnished; nor has God made anything lq vain ; nothing is defective, nothing su- perfluous. Take we next a prospect of the earth's surface, and behold from the lofty mountains how the humble valleys are clothed with verdure, goodly trees, and variety of plants and flowers. These serve for building, fuel, ' Psalm xcv., 5. * Psalm viii,, 7, 8. THE TJtUE UELIGIOX. 29 fruit, and mccrniiio, and for the sustenance of those who cultivate them. Consider but the rudiment of a tall and unibrancous tree, from so minute a seed as may bo borne away by every blast, or carried to the hold of an insect less than itself, increasing to so immense a stature as a Inmdred oxen cannot move. The shady boup;hs, verdant leaves, useful timber, delicious juices, wholesome fruits. Then turn your eyes to the enamelled grass, and read God on every flower: see and admire their uniformity, beauty, colour, variety, perfume, virtue, which who could ij;ive them, but an infinitely wise and glorious Ik'ing? Is it possible to contemplate the single production of one of these, without astonishment and hymns of praise ? Whilst the head and root of all this flowery beiiuty is hid and buried in S(jualid nuid, enduring all the sevt'rities of weather, and even emerging out ol' rottenness into that ravishing variety of shape, tincture, odour, qualities, and operations I The cocoa alone is a miraculous instance, Jitted for all hvmian uses, meat, drink, clothing, shelter, and a thousand other eou\en!euces ! A\'ho but the Physician of Souls were able to enu- merate the virtues and eli'ects of the vegetable king- dom? The various sorts of apples, pears, cherries, a[)ricots, peaches, nectarines, plums, grapes, and smaller berries; the orange, lemon, tig, granate, melon, sugar- cane ; and all these even in one alone, the royal pine — II coiupcudium of all that is delicious to the taste and smell. That from so weak, despicable, and \iscless stem as what supports the vino, planted among the 30 THE TRUE RELIGION. rocks and pumices, such variety of delicious and tempt- ing juices should flow ! corn to strengthen, and wine to comfort the heart of man, and oil to make him a cheer- ful countenance ! Behold the odoriferous cedar, the tall fir, and spreading oak, the shady plane, the upright and victorious palm, the beautiful cypress ; and among the more humble shrubs, the myrtles, jasmines, laurels, honeysuckles, healing balms, and sensitive plants, &c Walk then a turn into the flowery parterres of roses, lilies, tulips, anemones, amaranths, frittUlarias, gen- tianellas, hepaticas, and carnations ; together with the aromatic spikes, thymes, &c. ; all these, and thousands more, dressed, figured, fringed, folded, miniated and decked by the hand of Him who made the heavens ; nor was Solomon, in all his glory, clad like one of these. Demand, next, of the beasts of the field, and even they shall teach thee — the fowls of the air, and they shall instruct thee — and the fishes of the sea, they shall declare imto thee, Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?' The whale, which God has made to take his pastime in the vast ocean, among innumerable spawns, producing that variety of fishes and crooked serpents: who can con- sider the crustaceous kinds — the lobster, armed cap-a- pie, crabs, tortoise, in their fortress-shells, without ad- mii-ation ! The beaver, crocodile, and hippopotamus, are amphibious : the behemoth, rhinoceros, docile elephant, the useful horse, camel, di-omedary, for speedy carriage ' Job, xii., ix. THE TRUE RELIGION. 31 and courage : the painful, strong, and patient ox, for laljour ; the fleece-bearing sheep ; cows for milk ; goats, deer, and other cattle, upon a thousand hills. In deserts lurks the spotted leopard, the swift tiger, indomitable panther, bears, wolves, and foxes; and those most in the colder climates, affording iuxs and skins. The wild boar is in the forest ; the squirrels on the trees ; the faithful and watchful dog, domestic ; the mimicing apes divert us ; and above all these, for strength, are the lions, seeking their meat of God ; and so do the young ravens that call upon Him ; the tower- ing eagles, hawks, and birds of prey ; the loquacious parrot, the sagacious crane, pious stork, architectress swallow, chaste dove, warbUng nightingale, glorious peacock, thrushes, linnets, canaries, and other singing birds, their wonderful notes, nidifications, trains, and plumage. These, and infinite more, are fed with flesh, grain, fruits, flies, of which latter there is stupendous variety, for shape, colour, and contrivance: consider but the strength of the minutest gnat, piercing with his in- ^•isible dart the thickest skin, and drawing blood through lus proboscis ; hear his trumpet, sounding from so small a pipe : for him lies in wait the subtle spider, display- ing her nets for the surprise. From the wise serpent to the crawling worm, they are all endowed with won- derful instincts, to propagate, defend, and preserve themselves : nor is there among them the least mite or peper-worm, (that dust of a creature, whereof fifty thousand are contained in one drop) but is for food to 32 THE TRUE RELIGION. some other creature ; and we extract antidotes out of vipers, and sanative remedies from the poisonous can- tharides. What shall we say of the monarchical bee, and the dulcet elixir she so industriously gathers and stives in her admirably contrived and waxen city ; the govern- ment of her numerous subjects: or, again, the order and economy of the little ant, to which Solomon sends the sluggard ? Can we look on the laborious silkworm, from an egg no bigger than a grain of sand, through all its wonderful changes, life, death, sepulchre, and resur- rection, without astonishment! how, with her tender web, she clothes the proudest potentate, and without wliDsc spoils the heiglit of their glory would be but from the common fleece, which covers the beggar as warm as the king ! The murex yields us purple, and a despicable worm the scarlet, which gives reverence to princes. It were endless and plainly impossible to con- tinue the recension through remote countries and the Xew World, or to take an account of every creature that came into the ark of Noah. Millions there are we liardly take notice of, and some so small, as to elude the most accurate microscope. All things are fuU of life ; and the least of these framed with admirable pro- portion, fitted to their several natures and distinct organs. Thus are seen through the mirror of Creation the maqivdla of God in His smallest works. AU thinfrs, as the wise man says, are double one against another, and He has made nothing imperfect, but one thinn- for the good of another ; and who shall be filled with be- THE TraTE religion. 33 holding Ills glory ?' In sum, we may speak much, and yet come short : wherefore lie is AU. But there are yet greater things than these ; for we have seen but a few of His works, till we have seen and considered i\Ian, the kist, though not the least, of tlie Creation : the Almighty proceeding still to more jDcr- fection, and because he designed a place and habitation richly furnished for him that was to be the image and bear the character of his glorious Maker, and to raise his admiration to contemplate and delight in the bounty of his gracious Benefactor. C\insidcr we, iirst, the structure of his body, upright stature, majesty, charming countenance, ra\ isliing eyes, and variety of features. Let us search witliin his liead for the seat of his superior faculties. That so fluid and unlikcl)' a substance, placed in the several cells, should pretend to the residence of his sense, reason, memory, imagination ; aud be the shop and magazine of those wonderful ideas. The velocity of the motion, wliicli carries its mandate over the rest of the body, even to the most distant members, in a moment of time ; .and retaining so many ditt'crcnt notions of tilings, figures, persons, places, and be able to reposite and draw forth for use and in order ; and then to express his mind by articulate sounds and eloquent speech, for society, con- ■versation, and the praise of his ISIaker ; and all these faculties contained in so small a fortress as the head, is plainly miraculous. Let us consider how these several senses, sent out by ' El-cIus., xlii., -24, -io. VOL. I. 1> 34 THE TRUE RELIGION. the soul to speculate abroad, report what they find, by the central touches and perceptive notices darted from every atom, and the surface of various objects, on the exquisitely fine, innumerable, and universally dispersed nerves and membranes that invest them ; whose root is in the brain, where (as we said) all our conceptions are forged, our appetites and passions excited and regulated. Look into the fabric of the eye only, for an instance of the rest of the sensitive organs. The hu- mours and tunicles are transparent, to let in colours, and therefore tinctured with none themselves. The parts of the eye convex, to let in the many rays pro- ceeding from one point of the object to the bottom of the eye. Then has the uvea a muscular power, to con- tract and dilate that perforation in it called the pupil, thereby moderating the transmission of light. Then is the inside of the uvea black, that the rays, falling on the retina, may not, by rebounding on the uvea, re- vert on the retina again, and so, by repercussion, con- found the light. Then follows the tunica arachiioides, enveloping the crystalline, by help of the ciliari/ processes, to thrust forward or draw back the useful part of the organ, as the vicinity or distance of the object requires. Lastly, the tunica velina is made purely white, the better to receive the species, as black letters are better distinguished on white paper. We might proceed to de- scribe the wonderful effects and contrivances of the several muscles which direct its several motions ; the quick motion of the eyeUds, to preserve them from injury : and, after the same manner, how the tactile, THE TRUE RELIGION. 35 auditory, and olfactory senses, and that of the taste, are excogitated : but, to speak a little of each, would re- quire a volume, not a chapter. We cannot yet pass by the hand, that instrument so indetermined to any operation, and universally useful, but we will suspend it till we come to speak of Pro- vidence, which will be another topic of conviction to our atheist. Innumerable are the uses of this organon organorum,^ as the philosopher calls it. And verily we must acknowledge it altogether stu- pendous, and superior to what any other creature can pretend to. He calls it (and that rightly) not owe, but all instruments, and is in a kind of rapt and admiration at the curious mechanism of the fingers,^ adapted to so many intricate conveniences. And in earnest, when we consider the wonderful motions of the spine and several vertebrae of the human skeleton, composed of so many Integrals, among the joints and bones, .the irri- guous and meandering veins, their sluices, valves, &c. The pulse of arteries, conjugation of nerves, divaricated into so infinite a number of capillary vessels, so wisely and copiously disposed for the perception of the most delicate touch ! When we contemplate how the chyle is made into blood ; the blood accended, circulated, refined, spiritualized, distributed, assimilated, and co- piously diffused; when one reflects on the perpetual vibrations of the heart, moving so many years ; the functions of the liver, spleen, gall, kidneys, and other ' Aristotle, De Part. An., c. 30. ' Lact. De Opif. Dei., c. 10. d2 36 THE TRUE RELIGION. intestine cleansers: or examine the connexion of the joints, and their numberless flexures ; that at the least six hundred several muscles belong to our bodies, on which attend ten distinct intentions (namely, to each so many) amounting in the total to six thousand various purposes and ends to be considered ; and that of the bones to be of a hundred thousand ; to say no more of the minuter contextures of all those other parts of the body, with what curious stamina and threads the whole is woven and knit together, we cannot be to seek for a demonstration that there went something more than chance, or ordinary power, to the framing of so beauti- ful, so useful, so admirable a creature. We have said nothing of the astonishing contrivance of other parts ; how the teeth are ordained, some to cut, others to grind the meat, and fit it for the stomach, after the tongue and palate have passed their censure ; nor how it is there concocted and transmitted into the viscera, and by what mysterious actions and various ferments it is drawn and distributed, for the supply of blood, spirits, and other juices and humours necessary to preserve the body : whilst the lungs maintain a per- petual stream of breath and air, to temper and refrige- rate the heart — that shop of Hfe, which maintains that intercourse with the brain, and, through the recurrent nerves, gives motion to the muscular system, in obe- dience to the dictates of the mind. Wlio is able to trace the stupendous circulation of the blood, its perpetual flux and reflux, both to carry that elaborated and noble juice to the most distant vessels. THE TRUE RELIGION. 87 and to preserve it from stagnation? But, above all, the miraculous economy of the several offices serving for propagation, and that, from such unlikely rudiments, the species should be continued, and endowed with faculties, vegetable, sensitive, rational, so stupendously united ; and with innate sentiments, improvable to the perfecting of a rational life. How this embrion is ir- radiated, how nourished, produced, and perfected, is a subject of contemplation that can enter nowhere but in the highest wisdom, and a Providence altogether divine. AYell might Galen,' then, have raised that noble thought on this so noble a work, as indeed he has ; and, there- fore, Justin Martyr tells us that, in his time, even among the heathen, there was an express hymn in use, to celebrate in particular the creation of man ; account- ing religion and true piety not to consist in sacrifices, hecatombs, and costly incense ; but in recognition and declaration of God's infinite power and beneficence in adorning the world with such a goodly creature, and making such great variety, without envying good to anything capable of His bounty. And on this account it is, that INIaximus Tvrius exhorts men to con- temjilate God, and lifting up our minds to penetrate even beyond the visible heavens to the Invisible Deity. Man, therefore, thus formed, endowed, and accom- plished, was not made by chance, and to grovel only here ; nor sprung he up from the exuberance of preg- nant earth betwixt the tropics, now effete, and spent with bearing ; nor, as mice and insects, from the slime ' De usu part. 38 THE TEUE EELIGION. of Nilus ; which yet never anybody has seen. For who should give the tender and senseless babe the breast, and cherish the new-born infant ? These are visions of poets, and the dreams of idle men. In a word, there- fore, man, framed by angehc hands, erect of posture, fit to act and command, in the bloom and vigour of youth, of goodly stature, exact proportion, with quick and sparkling eyes, judicious brow, floating tresses, every feature, every motion composed and graceful, has all that the earth, air, and water can produce, to delight and serve him. The various shape of beasts, the charming notes of birds, the several sorts of fish sporting in their liquid element, the beauty of flowers, the diapered and enamelled meads, verdant grass, delicious fruits, shady trees. The resplendent sun, the orders of stars, the meandering rivers, crystal streams, the cooling frosts, the surprising heights of the rising mountains, the luxurious valleys, rocks sparkling with gems and veins of richest ore; and all these without labour but what is agreeable to his nature, and the enter- tamment of his contemplation. For He made us, and aU these things, and not we ourselves; we are the work of His hands. O happy sovereign, then, whose empire once was the whole world; whose palace was the spacious earth, whose canopy was the starry heavens, whose vassals were all the creatures ;i whose food was paradisian; clothing, innocence ; conversation, angels ; whose law was refined reason, without passion, without fear, want, ' Sen. De Ben., 1. iv., c. 5. THE TKUE KELIGIOX. 39 sickness, or death itself; from what happiness dost thou fall again, when thou deniest to acknowledge who it was that made thee, and gave thee all these things? What, what is man that Thou art mindful of him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, to crown him with glory and worship ! O Lord, our Governor, how excellent is Thy name in all the world ! For thus the Almighty, to demonstrate His power, educed light out of darkness ; raised the most noble of His creatures from the basest matter ; that in all this height he might be humble here ; and gave him reason, and an immortal soul, to exalt him again hereafter (for as man, without this principle, and, after all we Juive said, is but a beast), that neither of them should sink too low in this animal condition ; that both may look up, and be assured of a more glorious state (pur- suing the paths of virtue). He has distinguished him with a prerogative that sets a good man next his Maker. To conclude, man has eyes given him, not only to see, but contemplate the astonishing fabric of the uni- verse ; and a tongue to proclaim the praise of its Creator, and understanding to comprehend His works ; so as mankind seems made on purpose for His worship, and to be a curious and diligent observer of them, and speak his glory, and, in particular, his obligations to Him above all other creatures of sense without these noble faculties. This was, doubtless, the end of our being, and of all those perfections which distinguish us from them. Such active and boundless passions were 40 THE TRUE RELIGION. not designed to mean employments only ; besides that no other creature was made capable of religion ; nor is it imag-inable that God would create a world, and place no creature in it, whose proper business should be to know, adore, and contemplate his wise and bountiful benefactor. Man, therefore, is the priest of nature, to offer up the praises and acknowledgments of the whole creation. Not that He (who is alone most happy in the contemplation of His own perfections) needs any accession from anything He has made, or any ser- vice we can return Him; though it be an end, not unworthy, to render His beneficence and works con- spicuous, and receive the deserved honour of them from His creatures. But, seeing that none of these (man excepted) have any sense, either of their own excellency, or from whom they received what they have ; as destitute of that intellectual principle which should direct them ; God has ordained man (for whose use and benefit He has, in a more especial manner, designed them) to perform that duty for them which they could not of themselves ; and ennobled him with those faculties, that he might be capable of and participate in fruitions commensurate to his nature. And, verily, this consideration should make us careful that we destroy not that which He has designed to a state so excellent; embase or dedecorate that trans- cendant principle which has placed us above the rest of His creation ; namely, the intellectual soul, which comes next to be examined. THE TRUE RELIGION. 41 SECTION III. — PART I. BY THE SOUL OF MAN. The soul, not the animal life which he has in common with the brutes, and is no other than a certain subtile and active flame, giving life, motion, and vigour to the whole body, — but the rational soul, I say, is the man. And the disquisition and belief of this is of that im- portance, and so convincing a demonstration of the Deity, that, though virtue herself were reward and encouragement svifEcient for one to embrace a pious and rehgious life, it is absolutely necessary we should be grounded in the truth of this particular, that so we may, with more seriousness, provide for its future being and eternal state. Forasmuch as the body, or vessel, which, for a while, contains it, is but of frail and perishing matter ; and it is for the sake of this other precious particle and substance only, that has obliged us to the search of all that is designed in this treatise. For irrational creatures in this are happy, that they glorify their Maker by performing those natural func- tions which instinct prompts them to, nor are they capable of any other. But man, being an intellectual agent, is endowed with more sublime and noble objects ; that act of understanding and vohtion, which is united to that fabric of man's body we have been describing. It is then by this that sensible, as well as altogether intel- lectual objects and mental notions, are reposited in the 42 THE TEUE RELIGION. memory, through such tracts of time and variety of accidents, without dissipation or confusion. And hence we may contemplate how the exercise of sense is per- formed in the brain, or by the soul, through the media- tion of the spirits. How also visible objects are trans- mitted through those obscure passages between the organs and cerebel, or in what other parts of the brain it is more eminently seated. This is that sparh of life, extending and communicating its virtue equally, even to the utmost confines of the animal nature, with the same facility in the most enormous whale and largest elephant, as in the minutest fly and mite. With how much more ease, then, does God, who is all Spirit, and the Father of Spirits, govern and actuate the universe ; which, as a living but elemental body, would soon dissolve and turn to corruption (were that great soul to be absent but one moment), and perhaps be annihilated ! But we have hitherto spoken of animal life only ; and, as we communicate with other living creatures, composed of flesh and blood, and in man alone con- nected with a sublimer substance, wholly separate from matter. Indeed, there are who wish and hope the soul were no other ; and, to this end, use all the witty arguments their love of what is present is able to suggest. For, should the soul happen to survive, and, after all their labours, prove a more lasting and immaterial substance than the body and vital spirit, it would disturb them with the doubts, which not only our preachers, but philosophers of old, have con- stantly asserted, that some just deity, being the author THE TRUE RELIGION. 43 of it, will inquire hereafter how it has behaved itself, and treat it accordingly. And this apprehension of a future being not only introduces the necessity of a God, and the retribution we mention, but engages these men of pleasure to be serious, and reform their sensual lives, which, rather than they wUi part with, they adventure all. To establish this opinion, there- fore (namely, that the human soul is nothing but re- fined matter), Satan, the enemy of mankind, has, both of old and now again more vigorously of late, raised up a sect, whom he has furnished with subtle arguments to maintain a thesis (were it possible) which would sub- vert all piety and religion in the world. This then it is, which we shall endeavour to oppose, as of the greatest importance in the world. That the human soul should consist of matter is alto- gether incomprehensible. Since (as all consent) it acts not without motion, and that motion to be irregular and uncertain, how is it possible it of itself should pro- duce a thought, or any such thing as reflection, with- out some exterior principle productive of the thought, while they affirm matter to be insensible, its motion variable, contingent, and changing figure to effects, that have no manner of conformity to thought ? J\ ow, if this giddy and inconstant motion be not able to produce a thought, neither can its effects. If motion of matter produce the cause of Thought, or reasoning, that cause must proceed from Motion, or else there can be none. Thought is, then, the immediate effect of motion ; whilst motion produces no effect, but to range, sort, and dis- 44 THE TRUE EELIGION. pose matter, without immediately producing the least reflection. Besides, it is not simple matfer that acts when we think ; since, though its parts may act on one another, they cannot upon themselves, and reflect as thought does, and may do, to infinity. There is, then, something in man distinct from matter, with all her motions, and which has some other source ; nor can that he, but from God. For the simple existence of matter never could have produced a world, with all that admirable furniture we have described ; or organized the most despicable mite, that crawls, without some exterior paramount principle to manage and direct its motion. We find, then, in the world, an existent matter, moving in such sort, and in some portion of this matter ; a ihink'inri principle, not only able to reflect upon itself, but conceive things more sublime, even of spirits, and things abstracted, and which has infinite ideas, without being the results of mere matter, but something more transcendent. Add to this, that matter cannot be essen- tially self-existent ; forasmuch as aU beings must exist, either from their own existence, or some exterior prin- ciple, or, thirdly, from the perfection of their own nature. Now, the perfect existence of matter neither proves that it always had, or shall perpetuate, the same exis- tence : seeing those moments of being have neither any natural or actual connexion by which it may subsist. If it be replied that every thing exists as it is a being, it is answered that, as nothing or no-existence, it has no being; because in effect it is nothing: whereas the THE TRUE RELIGION. 45 mind, or soul, be It substance or accident, is at least a being. Men believe not she always was or shall con- tinue, because they look on it as matter, and its motion only ; when yet it always might be, even by that prin- ciple. Whereas, thought, which adds something to this motion and matter, has not always been ; and therefore a being, though it now exist, may not always have so been. Nothing, as was said, has no existence, because it is nothing, and, being a simple negation, needs not any thing that it may not exist. Whereas, a Being which is positively something, exists not, but as the principle of its being subsists; which yet is not the universal quality of a being, as is evident from beings which do not always exist, but either from an efficient cause which has given it being, or from the emanation of his perfection who has exempted it from needing any thing at all. For it is not from the eminency of its own perfections that matter necessarily exists ; seeing it is so remote from those perfections, that it has hardly any ; but re- mains, as it were, rasa tabula, deriving aU its qualities (which yet are but mixed ones) or sensations rather, from the mind than from any motion at all of matter. We find thought indeed in some portions of matter, as it becomes perfectly organic; biit then it proceeds not from mere matter ; seeing whatever is in matter must either be essential to it, or accidental and acquired. Aow, to think is not essential to matter, seeing all matter has no thought, nor any does acquire. For then she must have it of herself or from some other. If from 46 THE TRUE RELIGION. another, then it is another principle which imparts it, and that is God. If from herself, it must proceed from rest or motion: from rest it cannot be, for rest does nothing, being a cessation of all action. Nor is it from motion that matter thinks, what it did not think before ; there being in motion only these four things : firstly, the thing moved ; secondly, the term from whence it moves; thirdly, the place whither moved; fourthly, who or what the mover is : none of all which is thought. For were thought the result from the motion of matter, then must thought be itself that motion, or its effect ; and it is not a simple motion only : forasmuch as thought, doubt, reflection, &c., is no simple transport, or motus a quo, ad quem. Nor is it an effect of motion, since that being but the transport a loco ad locum produces no other immediate effect than the situation of the thing moved ; and if several mobiles move at the same instant, they all would encounter when they separated, fall into and produce a new order. Now, thought is neither any new situation of any body, or sensible atom, nor any new series of several atoms, greater or smaller bodies, sen- sible or insensible. Moreover, did matter produce thought, it must either be from the virtue and power of motion in general, or the differences of motions, or the thing moved, or exte- rior differences. Now it is not from the sole power of motion, or motion in general, or as a motion producing an effect, which can create a thought; inasmuch as there are an infinity of bodies, which move without thought. Nor is it the difference of motion; because THE TRUE RELIGION. 47 that is diversified by slowness, swiftness, and determi- nation. Now, since rapidity is but a quicker transport, and determination but the motion of a body inclining to one side rather than to another, it is not possible those differences should bring forth thought. Nor, finally, is it the difference of place whence it rises, or whither it tends, or by which the matter passes, which produces thought, where there was none before, because that is extrinsic to the subject, which then does alter itself and thinks. Again, were thought from motion of matter, it must spring from the motion of one or more atoms ; if from one, whence comes it to pass, that one has more than another ? If of more particles, then every atom or par- ticle has its share of thought ; and so thought becomes divisible, and mensurable according to their numbers, wliich is extremely absurd. In general, indeed, it may be affirmed, of all qualities and modes of matter, that they retain an essential property of being mensurable and divisible. For motion has its degrees and measures, and figure may be divided and measured ; but so cannot thought ; for no one can say, without impropriety, half or three-quarters of a thought. Moreover, did thought result from motion of matter, it would be a thinking, intelligent principle, which is equally vain to suppose. Nay, motion of matter would be knowledge itself; which were as extravagant. In a word, the effect cannot be nobler than the cause by which it subsists. Now, plain it is, that thought is in- comparably more noble than the motion of matter. 48 THE TEUE RELIGION. Besides, one may know, by induction of effects, that they hold some proportion with the cause ; whereas, we find no sort of proportion between motion and thought. Add to this, that the motion of the atoms of matter are limited, and can extend but to such a term. Nor can the particles of our bodies, so abiding, ascend and mount the skies, and range the universe, penetrate the centre of the abyss ; — matter and motion acting only upon things present — while thought is able to perform all this in a moment — nothing limits, nothing bounds it. Thought, then, can by no means be the result of motion of matter ; nor consequently the soul, of which thought is only a faculty, and no material thing. More- over, motion cannot represent all things and beings to our contemplations as the soul can do. Finally, if the simple motion and matter produce no thought, it is wholly inconceivable how the existence of matter in such a place, or near another body, should produce this effect. Now, so it is, that motion only assigns place for matter, nearer or farther from the other body ; thought, therefore, rises not from motion of matter. If, then, these two principles subsist, that matter acts by motion only, and thought results not from it, it must follow, that thought has some other principle ; and, con- sequently, that there are intellectual beings, spiritual and immaterial, namely, God, and the spirits, and the souls He has created. Moreover, it is proved, that it is not in the power of matter to cause the least obstruction by the mutual j(5stling of atoms against atom, since it hits no decree THE TRUE EELIGIOX. 4f) or SO much as part of any being, body, or suljstancc, but the entire atom ; and only that individual one it strikes against. But thus it is not of the soul or think- ing principle, which separates only by metaphysical de- grees, and is able to contemplate a thing, as a being abstractedly, stripped of all substance or body. Nay, and to represent it as a body, without so much as con- ceiving it an atom ; we having notions of things that have no mathematical dimensions or affections of bodies, such as thought, virtue, vice, &c., in which there is nothing at all of mathematical extension or magnitudes. It is internal energy, not any local motion, capable to act and penetrate any extended substance, and to co- exist with it. It is in the capacity of the soul that we see and com- prehend almost infinite things ; the dimensions of bodies, the beauty of colours, the difference of taste, odour of perfumes, harmony of music, pain and pleasure, without the substance or presence of the objects, by these mere ideas. Then our memories furnish maxims, principles, conclusions, and all sensible and intellectual beings, though never so remote and absent. Xow, what cor- poreal substance, plunged in matter, could present us with such subtile instruments, for the forming a work so incomparable, but that Supreme Being, who has en- dowed the soul with those perfections, even that cause more noble than the effect ? Add ao-ain to aU tliis, those acts of reflection ab- stracted from matter, and of which it is totally incapable, namely, the ideas of God in all their perfections, and VOL. I. E 50 THE TRUE RELIGION. other notions not obnoxious to sense. And, then, the infinite and insatiable thirst of our souls after knowledge and the love of good ; its restless passion after something more perfect than what she can find here in any condi- tion whatsoever, &c., of which more hereafter, when we shall have occasion to speak of its immortality, and to prosecute this material-immaterial subject, as we have done here its existence ; and as iheform of man, differ- ing him from other animals, and exalting him above them; aU of them asserting the being of a Deity, which was to be proved in this chapter. But the union of the soul with the body is now another argument of this Divine power, namely, the so reciprocal connexion betwixt an intellectual substance and organized matter : substances and essences, though totally unlike and independent ; and yet that to be so apprehensive of pain, upon the least division or violence on matter. For, how should local motion beget a thought, seeing motion only produces motion? for, should it pretend to more, the effect would exceed the cause. This union is, therefore, from no law or necessity of nature, but from some supernatural establishment of a Divine Author. To this might be superadded the unaccountable effects of miracles, inspirations, oracles, apparitions, magical feats, and the extraordinary operations of sorcerers, so imiversaUy attested, not only by the Jews, but by Christians, and innumerable witnesses. Finally, by the more metaphysical and abstracted arguments, the re- flections of a serious man, enquiring how himself came THE TRUE RELIGION. 51 Into being, since he made not himself, (no effect being possible without a cause), nor can continue or preserve himself a moment, or foretel the future. Wherefore, these things, and the like, must of necessity flow from some Superior Cause and more excellent Being than himself; and, if so, then is there a being besides him, of infinite power ; and if, from any limited or subordinate being, that being derived its existence from a being self- essential, which is the thing in question. Believe we but once, that the wisdom, understanding, and other noble and rational faculties of man were the result of matter only, and we may conclude the same of the wisdom and power of God himself, notwithstanding all those mighty works of wonder we have enumerated in the Creation ; since, in respect to us at least, intellect, wisdom, reason, &c., is more noble than the mere naked character and marks of them are, for his operations are no other. If it be replied. How vast a difference there is between those faculties in man and those in God! 'Tis true. But who knows not that, besides the understanding, wisdom, &c., which we find to be formally in the soul, we also there meet with the same characters of the Creator's wisdom conspicuous in the Universe ; and that the subordinateness of the parts of Nature is not more astonishing than the subordinateness of thought and affections in the soul? Did the least understanding spring from the motion of matter, so may the greatest, seeing the motion of matter seems to have no more re- lation with the least than with the greatest and most perfect understanding. One of the most convincing O'J. THE TRUE RELIGION. arguments, therefore, proving the existence of a Deity, is, that matter we see immoveable, as to any power or virtue of beginning its own motion, and that it has neither degree nor determination of motion. ^^Tiere- fore, we conclude, upon solid and irrefragable grounds, that something superior and extrinsical to matter gives, regulates, and directs its motion, and has determined it into this admirable fabric of the aspectable universe. So, as it were plainly madness, so much as but to ima- gine that matter should tkink of itself, or have anything to do in the composition of the human soul ; or that, in case it had, it should not have motion and determination of that motion ; motion being but a mode of matter, and so consequently thought; and, as was said, the same matter to produce understanding and those other Divine faculties, which, how visionary and absurd, has abund- antly been evinced. And thus we have likewise proved that life and sense could never be the result of stark and senseless matter, much less cogitation, reflection, and the power of comprehending eternal verities, &c., from magnitude, figure, size, motion, or any other mixtures and combinations of elements and qualities. We have likewise made out that the human soul is a substance specifically distinct from body, of parts in- separable, subtile, and capable of penetrating bodies; that she is self-active, having an internal energy, dis- tinct from local motion ; but whether totally unextended, otherwise than as a body, may be doubtful philosophy, and is no point of faith, but reason. For, were not the soul in every part, part of it must, which cannot be THE TRUE RELIGION. 53 predicated of a substance that has no parts, and were to divide an indivisible thing. Lastly, as to atoms, as they are the workmanship of Almighty God, they give indeed a more probable reason of a world of considerable elFects of Nature, above all other principles. But that atoms, with all their re- nowned advantages, or happy concourses, should of themselves produce a thought, life, or reason, is madness to affirm ; so immensely disproportionate are the opera- tions of the soul to that of matter.' Mankind, by virtue of a far superior and more sagacious principle than matter, can pretend to great things; and is eternally thinking, contriving, recollecting, comparing, changing, resolving, providing, and the like, in a rational series, which inconstant matter, however supplied, never can do. Did matter contend with matter, what confusion would it produce ? whilst the mind and soul of man sedate the hostility, and bring it to due obedience, as being a power abstracted, a distinct and immaterial principle. Hence it is able to comprehend abstracted notions, the mathe- matical point, infinitesimal divisibility, and other geo- metrical affections, sti'ipped both of body and sense. Pier knowledge is progressive, producing consequences from premises, and things precedent, even to demon- ' All the mechanic motions, percolations, subliming, and elabo- ration of the efflorescent hyle, or matter, be it never so subtile and quintessential, is still (we say) but matter, and to matter must return, and to drowsy senselessness : for how sensation and percep- tion (nay, reason, reflection, yea, and immortality itself,) should result from the posture, figure, and motion of mere magnitude, is incomprehensible. 54 THE TRUE EELIGIOK. stration. Add to this, the soul's notions of moral virtue, metaphysical theology, stable and eternal truths, wholly strange to matter, as are all the immediate emergent motions of our mind, thought, and reason; which, haying no progression from matter, are things that are pro- duced, and can subsist without it, and which we better comprehend than we do our very bodies, of which the rational soul has little cognizance. The soul knows not how nature and matter works, either in the framing or nutrition of the body, and therefore pretends not to intermeddle with it. But, when, through any exorbitancy, or violent inclination from some sensual object, it is disordered, the soul then exerts her power, and can curb, deny, consent, deter- mine, as she pleases, which shows her to be distinct from matter, and also her despotic sovereignty and empire over it, and that she owns no superior but God alone. For that which corrects and controls sense must be above it ; and though sense never be deceived as to its own affections and faculties within itself, (provided it be not vitiated) yet can it not judge or reason of the external object, which may be vastly disproportionate to the organ ; we should not, therefore, wholly consult our senses when we speculate truth, but caU our reason to assist us, who, in conjunction, never err. In the mean time, the soul, as seated more conspicu- ously in the brain, does, by the originated Neurology, give intercourse to the animal spirits, and by the muscles produce corporeal motion, as they alternately communi- cate their passions to the soul, where they are imme- THE TRUE RELIGION. 00 diately sensated. How yet the soul, thus incorporeal, is united to the body, is the mystery ? We find that she takes cognizance of all considerable impressions, and that by a wonderful providence, lest the body, dull and inactive of itself, should fail of necessaries to sustain it. But what this nexus is, this intermediate, through wliich her virtue is derived into the body, must, for aught we know, remain a secret as long as soul and body dwell together here, nor is it less a paradox how they should come to know each other better when asunder than when together, and so near. In a word, tliis soul of ours is a perennial source of perpetual motion to something yet to come, and more than aU this world contains, furnished as is described. Since, though he had all the wealth, youth, strength, beauty, learning, and perfection it can afford him, and were he never so calm, sedate, and assured, within and without, of a future well-being; yet would all be too narrow for his large and immense desires, which some- where else have an adequate object, as all things here are provided with. It is indeed acknowledged that we cannot form a proximate idea of anything which is not body in this mortal and bodily state of ours, so twisted and entangled with our corporeal senses. But this does not prove that, therefore, there really is nothing besides body and matter ; there being so many things of which we have no positive ideas, which yet forces U8 to acknowledge and believe that they have real beings somewhere. The Epicureans themselves confess they have no positive idea of their atoms, being so minute as 56 THE TRUE RELIGION. not to be capable of falling under their most accurate senses, notwithstanding they rationally conclude they are. But though we cannot positively say what that principle in our rational operation is, by way of defini- tion, we can what it is not, namely, that it has no pro- portion or relation to mere matter, but something (as we have already proved) superior to it. The operations of man differ from those of brutes, even from the more perfection of principles ; albeit, even in the operations of brutes, there may perhaps be something of more perfect than body and matter only. But these men, because they had the advantage of other sects in being able to explain many most con- siderable effects of nature, by local motion and dispo- sition of matter only, with more ease and probability than others of less mechanical heads, would impose upon the world, that by the same principles they could unfold all the phenomena of nature, and whatever else concerns the being and operations of the human soul. "Wliilst we have i)lainly made appear how absurd it were that sensible should spring from insensible with- out a powerful aid of something highly sensible and intelligent. No, we must not pretend to explain the nature of the principles of our reasoning faculties ; nor play the geometrician with our soul, as we may with lines and figures, and things obnoxious to our senses, in this umbratile state and dependence : Invida praeclusit speciem natura videndi ;' ^ Lucretius, lib. i., 321. THE TRUE EELIGION. 57 but have recourse to a higher idea of ourselves than to make our souls (that precious substance by wluch we are distinguished from the beasts that perisli) of that base alloy. Let us resolve it to be infinitely more noble and perfect ; and that, though we cannot exactly tell what we are, we certainly know we are far from that they would persuade us we be — mire and dust, inactive and unthinking stuff, such as they wiU wish themselves. SECTION III. — PART II. BY THE NOVITY OF THE WORLD. The novity of the world,^ and that it had a begin- ning, is another proof of a Deity, and his being author and maker of it. Nor does it, by any authentic records, appear to have begun much sooner than ]\loses has set it down. Aristotle, indeed, seems to fancy the world co-eternal with its cause, as light is from the sun — by a necessary, not voluntary production. And Plato's argument was, that, it being the most perfect, first, and best of His works. He would never destroy it. But, had it been eternal, it must then have been the first, and so, of necessity, God himself ; and, doubtless, in all this tract of time, been more and sooner peopled. Whereas, we find it many ages and periods ere the western and northern parts were at all inhabited, or brought to any culture. Nor is it possible that busy ' See Macrobius Somn. Scip., lib. ii., cap. x. 58 THE TRUE RELIGION. mankind should have lived so very long without better houses and conveniences of hfe; or passed so many- thousand thousand years without books, buildings, navigation, and other useful arts; the fathers and inventors of aR which, with their progress, perfection, and decay, are transmitted to us.^ Seneca teUs us, that, even in his time, there were almost none of the sciences which could derive their pedigree above one thousand years ; nor any history or chronology beyond a certain epoch. We know of none more ancient than Moses or Job,^ (whom some conceive the elder), nor any heathen writer before Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, and some other Greek poets. And Lucretius ingenuously confesses, that before the Trojan war there was nothing worth knowledge delivered by any author worthy credit ; which, with the like argu- ments of the late invention of arts and forms of govern- ment, he makes use of to assert the npvity of the world. For, as to laws and legislators, they began in the paternal, and continued to famihes; and as they in- creased into tribes and clans, to colonies and migrations ; as people and kindred combined into societies for mutual ' After all the wonderful things pretended to haye been in- vented by the Chinese so many thousand years beyond our chronologies, those who have made the latest and best discoveries of those people, and most accurately examined things upon the place, can really find nothing exceeding the universal flood. " Some have affirmed Job to have been one of Esau's sons, and the friends who came to condole, petty kings. THE TKUE EELIGION. 59 defence and assistance. And then men lived meanly, in huts, and ambulatory tents ; the father of a family being both the prince and priest, that function being still preserved in the primogeniture, as long, at least, as they hved before the promulgation of the IMosaic law ; and till they erected tyrannies and kingdoms, and built cities and fortresses, as they grew opulent and haughty ; when they also raised enormous structures, pyramids, and temples ; and vice and rapine breaking them in divisions, made them choose captains and guardians to conduct them; and judges to do right, when better settled ; and, since that could not be amongst them without force and power, they came in time to submit to kings and princes, at first, perhaps, of choice and by compact, or right of conquest, which grew to empire and arbitrary dominion. Thus, from private families, and inter-community of goods, as they separated and dwelt at distances, they used exchange and permutation ; thence to money, weights, and measures, merchandize, and traffic ; from iron to brass, gold and silver, or whatever was most precious and apt for their commerce and ease. As to sciences, the Greeks knew nothing of philo- sophy before Pythagoras ; Socrates was the first who gave them any rehsh of it. Thales first taught them astronomy, who learned from the Egyptians — they from the Chaldeans ; but it never arrived to the perfection it now is at. As for medicine, Hippocrates gave them rules, and began to methodize what before was com- prehended in a few scattered receipts among empirics 60 THE TRUE RELIGION. and silly women. Laws, from the code of Justitlan, to that of Theodosius ; his from the twelve famous tables, compiled from those of Greece ; theirs from Solon and Lycurgus, and his from Egypt. Truly, the world was thought to be so young a creature, that Macrobius did not compute its age to be above two thousand years before his time, and that very rationally, from the paucity of books and good histories, which should have informed us ; so as, from the creation to the incarnation, all our Christian clironologies, even at the widest dis- tance, agree within forty years of one another. Touching cataclysms and universal inundations, they could not possibly arise by any natural means ; and if through supernatural, it proves what is contended for. And, besides, that of Noah's only excepted, such as we read of to have happened since, were but partial, affect- ing but some particular countries. Add hereto, that the Assyrian, Chaldean, and Egyptian computation of their annals brings no manner of solid proof of the world's having been 'extant so many years, whatever fancy and ambition of antiquity have created; making their kings to have reigned above twelve hundred years a piece. The Assyrians, theirs forty thousand ; all which, as brags and boastings, are worthily refuted by St. Augustine.' The Persian empire, in Alexander's time, not being fully three hundred years old. But these exorbitant computations were spread abroad for the honour of those great nations, which we named ; unless, which is more probable, they reckoned months ' De Civ. Dei, lib. ix., c. 10. THE TRUE RELIGION. 61 for solar years, as divers have conjectured. But, as we said, these misreckonings have been sufficiently refuted by St. Augustine ; and by one who was not in the least obliged to Moses, the Epicurean poet,' from the known original of cities, arts, nations, colonies, victories, books, and records, as we have already showed ; and by considering how vast a tract of earth and sea was both unknown and uninhabited. I know there are who tell us of earthquakes and conflagrations, as weU as floods, which have sometimes confounded all, or reduced the world to ashes, and that it has as often (Phoenix-like) emerged, and been successively repaired ; but these are precarious dreams. Indeed, the school-men hold the world, though created at a certain time, yet that it had such parts, as might have been antecedent to the time in which it reaUy was created, and have been eternal too, had God so pleased. But neither will this hold, since something must still have been before it. Besides the world being composed of mixed bodies, particles of matter, and con- cretions, full of contrary qualities, could not last for ever, all mixture being obnoxious to corruption. And if the world consisted of simple bodies only, it would not be of use, adapted with all its necessary furniture, as now it is. For we see what diversity of materials is required to the composing of most natural mixed bodies and individuals, which both commenced in time, and require it for their perfection. Successive things must have some beginning ; and divers principal things, ' Lucretius. 62 THE TRUE RELIGION. useful and absolutely necessary, are successive — as vegetables, animals, and whatever is maintained by propagation ; all kinds of motions, augmentations, and diminutions ; since, if that motion had beginning, it had existence and a place, or ubi, before it moved ; and, if motion be not eternal, neither can the world be so. So as the necessary supposition of successive alterations unavoidably subverts the world's eternity ; because it is composed of such individuals as derive their originals from the nature of their species. For so a tree rises from its proper seed or tender plant before it can arrive to full stature and perfection, and the like will happen in every other thing essentially alterable. Lastly, as to the invention of letters and other arts, which should deliver to us times past. Though Plato made a god of Hermes, to whom he attributes them, yet we never heard of any more ancient than the Hebrews or Phoenicians, Palamede's alphabet, and some Egyptian hieroglypliics. As for the inscription on Seth's plUar,' (if no suspected antiquity) it proves nothing to the eternity of the world, no more than the calculations of the Chinese annals, Egyptians, and other nations. It is confessed, both by Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, &c., that they counted all by lunar years, as ' [The posterity of Seth (says Josephus, 1. i., c. ii.) having heard that Adam had foretold that the world should some time be destroyed by water, and at another time by fire, resolved to pre- serve the discoveries they had made in astronomy, and in the know- ledge of heavenly things : they, therefore, erected two columns, one of stone, the other of brick ; and it is said that the column of stone is still in being in Seiraih, or St/rias. — Calmefs Diet.'} THE TRUE RELIGION. 63 we have already noted. Nor was the institution of the Sabbath in memory of the creation, even before the Jewish Sabbath was enjoined, a contemptible argument ; nor the division of time by weeks, so universally re- ceived. In a word, had the world been from eternity, the very course of rivers, and descent of rains from the more eminent parts, had ere this levelled the profound- est valleys, and made the earthly globe but one vast campaign, by carrying down the looser earth, gravel, and other mould, sufficient to have fiUed up the deepest abysses and gulphs of the ocean itself. In the mean time, it was a nice (or indeed rather an idle) question. What God did before He made the world? St. Augustine answers the impertinent, that he did "curiosis fabricare infemum.'" Doubtless God was a world to Himself, when no world was. Never was he alone or idle. The contemplation of His own glory and perfections is sufficient to entertain Him to eternity, without other society, for He is all. And when he thought fit to create this aspectable piece of work, it was of His own good pleasure, and to diffuse and spread His glory, power, and beneficence, not to receive any the least accession from His creatures, but communicate it. It was likewise another question, but more modest, from some expression pretended of St. Augustine : Whether God created all in eodem nunc et momento,^ or made it six days' work, mentioned so in Scripture, only ' " Create hell for impertinent inquirers." ' " In the same now and moment." 64 THE TRUE EELIGIOK. to comply with our weak capacities, who do nothing but in time and successively. To this it is replied, that, according to the literal text. He did it not at once ; not that He could not so have done it by a thought alone : • nor that, indeed. He used these words to the dull chaos : but to teach us to deliberate in all our actions, and contemplate what this glorious God has made. Besides, we read that, dividing the supernal waters from those beneath, on the second day. He gave no benediction or approbation, tiU they were collected into one place after this separation ; as if tiU that were done, the work were yet imperfect, which was not till the third day. Lastly, His reposing on the seventh supposes His desisting from adding any further to His works, or multiplying new species. Thus have we showed how the creation of the world had its original in time, and in this research, as of man by retrospect from ancestor to ancestor, till we come to the first. For, though it be essential to the existence of a Deity thus powerful, that He be eternal, it is not so of the visible and material world, or aught within it. Crea- tion, as well as generation, being actions, have a natural relation to certain principles producing them. And (as we have said) if we descend from the branches to the trunk and stem, it will infallibly lead us to the root : and if there be no branch but what has an end and top-twig, it were infinitely absurd to think there were infinite stems and roots to that twiff. o ' So Epicharmus and Plato, verbo Dei facta omnia ;—" Every thing was made by the word of God." THE TEUE RELIGION. (Jo SECTION IV. BY PROVIDENCE AND GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD. We come, In the last place, to prove there is a God, by the government and preservation of what He has created. Providence is, indeed, but a continual crea- tion, discovering to us His infinite power, omniscience, goodness, and wisdom, no less in maintaining what He has made, than in His making them destined to their various ends. For, although the Almighty desisted from creating any new species on the seventh day, yet it is not meant that He left off from sustaining and preserving what He made. The , Epicureans would indeed have their god to be lazy as themselves, but such is not our God, who is a perpetual Act, always doing good, filling our hearts with food and gladness. But, not to insist here on what Scripture alone dis- covers of the ways of God, by wliich He wonderfully blessed and preserved His peculiar people, and divers particular persons in all ages : His judgments on the wicked, destroying kings and mighty empires by His stretched out arm, by signs and wonders ; but by the suffrages even of every heathen is showed the just vene- ration they paid to that incomprehensible Being, upon the contemplation of such things and events as declared His providence, and that the world could not subsist without it. That illustrious passage of Seneca serves for all : ' " Maiient cuncta, non quia wterna fiunt, sed 1 Seneca, Ep. 58. VOL. I. F 66 THE TRUE EELIGION. quia defenduntur curd Regentisy' Things so repugnant, amidst that infinite variety, never could have conspired together, to uphold the wondrous frame of the universe in that admirable order and economy we see it, had not He who contrived it guided every wheel, every action, motion, and property about it. It were, therefore, far less absurd for man to believe himself not to be, than to believe that he or anything in nature sprang from no cause at all ; and he, who peremptorily denies that there is any Providence, does worse than he who believes there is no God. So as Aristotle being asked what answer we should give to one who questioned Provi- dence, replied, " A scourge ;" intimating that such un- grateful wretches deserved rather to be treated like slaves than men of honour, so generally were the very heathen for this paternal care of God.^ But, because God does not immediately punish evil- doers, and vengeance is not suddenly executed, there- fore is the heart of man set upon mischief and unbelief. The lightning and thunderbolt, 'tis true, do sometimes strike, sometimes pass by without their dreadful effects, to show to mortal man His justice, clemency, and power. Insects and noxious vermin also devour the fruits of the earth and hopeful harvests. And is not all this ordered by a wonderful Providence ? Should God be severe to mark what we continually do amiss, there would be nothing left, since we daily provoke ' " All things continue, not because they are made eternal, but because they are upheld by the care and defence of a Euler.'' = See Grotius De V. Rel. Chris., lib. i. THE TRUE RELIGION. 67 Ilim by our ingratitude. But for these His cliastisc- ments, we should utterly forget the benefits He confers upon us. The very heathen, therefore, acknow- ledged this His lenity and long suffering; and that, if their Jupiter should send out his artillery for every offence, Exiguo tempore inermis erit, he would soon be disarmed. And we know what Plu- tarch has concluded, upon the late strokes of the Deity ; ' and that, though the feet of God be slow, and soft as wool, His revenging hands are as heavy as lead. Be- sides, neither is it for nothing that Grod has ordained some creatures and things, which we think (but which are not) superfluous. Even insects eat up and cleanse the earth of much corruption ; and they are medical, and feed many creatures which nourish us ; whilst, at other times, they are sent as plagues for our luxury and in- temperance, and to show the despisers of His Almighty power what great things He can effect by the most despicable means. And, as to the rest of God's pro- ceedings in this sort, as we shall never here comprehend the cause of aU things, so neither shall we know the cause of these ; nor why God sends rain and storms, good and evil, promiscuously ; washing as well the barren rock and wilderness with His benign showers, as the fruitfuUest garden ; though we may not, there- fore, conclude He does it from no cause, or by chance, because, we cannot comprehend the reason. ^ De Ser. Yir.d. Dei, f2 68 THE TRUE RELIGION. For, though the pregnant clouds dissolve In the most seemingly unnecessary places, they may be the cause and originals of those rivers, streams, and fountains, -which flow from those eminences to refresh the valleys, and give drink and other conveniences both to man and beast. In a word, there is not the silliest fly, or worm that crawls, nor any grain of seed which falls, and becomes lost and scattered upon the ground, but is for the food or help of some creature, at some time or other necessary for us ; so as there is nothing made for no- thing (though made out of nothing) but such ungrate- ful creatures, who blaspheme upon these accounts, and from their shallow reasonings. The most abject, vile, and trivial things in nature are admirable, and those creatures which we reckon most defective, the most curious, and completely accom- modated to their several functions. Indeed, some are noxious poisons, yet become antidotes ; one fierce animal devours another, lest the wild beasts should increase upon us. Yet have we the benefit of their flesh for food, or fat, or other parts, for ointments, or skins for clothing, and other uses, of the most truculent bears, wolves, and other brutes. Then we find, that those animals which are weakest and less able to defend them- selves, and preserve their useful species, are either most swift of foot or wing, or willingly reduce themselves under the care of men; as sheep and other cattle, poultry, bees, &c. And they are spread over all the earth, as well as air and water, without which none can live. How many fruits are there encrusted with thorns, THE TRUE RELIGION. 69 shells, and other hard integuments, to defend their kernels and nutritious parts from being devoured before they ripen and are fit for use ! And if in ncithing here we find all perfection, it only shows that the creature is not God, but He who only is. For the beauty of the world consists not in its separated parts, (which seem imperfect) but united, its order, economy, and concurrence to the end; which shows it to be the work of a wise and voluntary Agent, the nature whereof relates to final causes. Now, if in the universe there be a final cause and last resort, there must needs likewise be a prime eflicient cause, which is God, who cannot be imagined to forget his own pro- duction, without whose assiduous care the thing de- signed would be to no end or purpose. He, therefore, doubtless, governs, maintains, and directs what He has made, to the end for which He made it. If, then. He take such care of the least of His creatures, and most insensible, shall we think He takes none of man, for whom He created thcni ; who of all His creatures most resembles Him, and is endowed with faculties to ac- knowledge his bounty and beneficence ? And now we mention Man. Is anything more stu- pendous than the providential subserviency and use of all his bodily functions (whether voluntary or involun- tary), for the mutual preservation of the whole ? The distribution of chyle and aliments, formation and coiu-se of the blood, generation of spirits, nutrition and growth of the whole, his natural faculties, and all these acting, whether we sleep or wake, and whether we think at all 70 THE TRUE RELIGION. of tliem or no ! Upon this, therefore, let us enlarge a little, and consider the hand again. As man has but one natural and tender covering, and is born with so little defence, he has an instrument to furnish him with all manner of weapons, and is alone a magazine ; and that, whilst other animals have, for the most part, but one sort of food and medicine, man has variety and abundant choice of all things. This is what the orator' has, from the light of nature only, termed a Divine and God-like work. For albeit there be the same number and contexture of parts, and that the most of these actions and circumstances are common to brutes, yet, when all is done, 'tis plain the use of them is not accommodated to so multifarious and divers pur- poses, nor conducted with that thought and cogitancy, but may be reduced to some very few ones in compari- son.^ Nor deny we that, as to the structure of the body, and geometry (so to speak) of animals, there is anything in the lever, wedge, pulley, axis, screw, spring, counter- poise, or like mechanism, whose artificial powers and figure are not established on the same principle with the natural motion of animals, as, among others, the famous Descartes and the late BoreUus ^ have, with surprising acuteness, made out ; but, to make the powers of the " Cic. De Nat. Deor., 1. ii. ^ De Placit. Hippoc, Plato, 1. v., c. 10. Aristot. Mech., c. 31. Lactant. De Opif. Dei, c. 6. The Epicureans did not allow that any organ, or member, was designed to any proper use at all, from any providential cause, but ex usu vitce merely, and habitude. ' Borell. De Mos. Anal. 9. THE TEUE RELIGION. 71 rational soul, In which man is chiefly concerned and distinguished, as merely proceeding from the contrive- ment of certain apartments in the brain,' is altogether wild. In the mean time, we admire the inventions and machinations of engineers, new and old,'' (Myrmecides' ship, Callicrates' Pismire, &c.), and acknowledged they were authors of many wonderful and curious contri- vances by their art and sagacity, whilst this stupendous masterpiece of their Creator, and who endowed them with that ingenuity superior to the rest of the animals, and so widely different to all operations and possible perfections desirable to render them sensible of their extraction, must either (with them) be the result of chance, or the base contrivement and modification of the parts of matter, and a little warmth to give it mo- tion, without other form or principle considerable ! And whilst, with all this, we have convincingly shewed how these great wits (as they would be esteemed) do not clearly make out how spontaneous motion can anyways correspond with a pure mechanical hypothesis, it is evidently beyond the activity of the most ingeni- ously framed parts, or even animal spirits themselves, (as the elegant Burla3us' observes) however pretended, ' Like the combination of atoms and elements to the conse- quences of Democritus' Hypothesis, or those who follow him. Talid quidem sunt, nor deny we the effect. Sed non tamen sunt alicujus gratict, which we. utterly reject. ^ Daedalus, Archytas. Cstesibes Hiero. ^ " Cum nee membra ha3C, nee spiritus internuntii, aut mandata capiunt, aut mandantera norint." — Burl. De Anim, Hum. 72 THE TRUE EELIGIOK. to descend thus into them from the brain. When the musician runs division with his nimble fingers on the harp or other instrument, they so answer every motion of his fancy, as that neither of them outruns or prevents the other, although (as our learned Ent' illustrates it), at the same instant he plays, he sings, he dances, and moves at least three hundred muscles, and all this done with that prodigious swiftness as seems to prevent the very thought ! Shall we imagine (says the Doctor) all this performed by a crowd of spirits steaming from the brain, and confusedly rushing through the divaricated sextipar nerves into those exiguous passages (according to the Atomists) without a guiding power, or some dex- terous and nimble Mercury, to conduct them by the various ways they are to take ? But to return to the hands again. » Anaxagoras was used to say, ]\Ian was of aU creatures the most prudent, because (as we celebrate that organ) he was fitted with hands ; but Galen, with much more reason, that therefore he had hands, because it was in- tended he should be wise and prudent ; so as that learned physician is compelled to acknowledge a sublimer cause, as may be seen with great delight in those seventeen admirable treatises,^ which are, in a manner, but one ' Antidiatrib., p. 130. [Dr. Ent, afterwards knighted by Charles II., was President of the College of Physicians, London, and one of the first members of the Royal Society. He is named by the author (chap, iii., sec. 2), as one of the first men of his time.] ^ Galen, "De Usu Partium;" more especially lib. iii.. c. 14, in THE TRUE RELIGIOX. 73 lieq)ctual liymn to God. In good earnest, the passages arc of such a strain, that one should transcribe them all, or say nothing at all, for there is nothing to be left out, whether we consider the dignity of the matter or sub- limity of the style. Nor with less, the orator, who is plainly transported with admiration at the fabric of man's body, and particularly of his hands, eyes, &c. ; and, breaking into the most pious reflections, ascribes nil to the Providence of God. If the subtle Cardan ' so much admire a Providence at the structure and working of a mole, as, upon the contemplation of his feet and snout only, (how expe- ditely he mines into the earth, breaks and removes the stubborn clods, and makes a little earthquake in its working) to confess that despicable animal could not be created by chance, but by some wise design ; what may we not conclude of so many other, and especially of man^ whose parts and operations are so much more worthy of admiration ! It is in this golden discourse of the Nature of Gods '■' that the same Cicero, in the person of his stoical dia- which he extols the Omnipotent Architect, His power, wisdom, providence, beyond all the mysteries and sciences of the heathen world. ' [Born at Pavia, A.D. 1501, professor of mathematics and me- dicine. He was employed to calculate the nativity of King Ed- ward VI. ; owns himself a dealer in the black art, and believed that he was attended by a Daimon from the planet Saturn. — Bio- graphie Universelle.'] " Ex quibus intelligitur, quanta: res hominibus a Deo, quamque eximae, tributas sunt. — Cic. de Fin., 1. 3. 74 THE TRUE RELIGION. legists, proceeds to describe the admirable economy of universal Nature, or rather of God himself, (for it is m assertion of a Divine and Providential Being that he argues aU along in that incomparable force of reason and stream of eloquence) in framing brute animals, as well as man, after so wonderful a manner. It is then he describes the crafty addresses of the little spider, how some are weaving nets, and toils for the prey, others watching to surprise it. He speaks of the so- ciety of fishes, for mutual assistance and provision; of the martial discipline of fowls ; descends to beasts, and their great sagacity for defence and covert ; how naturally they seek the teat; how educated by their sires ; form such artificial nests ; and that such as are not able to defend themselves crave the aid of man, and the protection of his reason, as dignifying him above themselves. Thence passes to the fabric of his body, and, entering into all the parts of anatomy, describes the head, and more eminent seat of the senses. Takes notice how Nature, like a skilful architectress, placed the organ of smelling at a remoter distance from the more noisome and ofiensive sinks and emunctories : describes the eye, and several tunicles and muscles ; the meandering ear, and how the voice is undulated. In sum, after an accurate inspection and comparison, he still reserves the pre-eminence to man. This he proves by innumer- able instances worthy the recital : men's eyes, says he, judge better of colours, beauty, figure, and curiosities of art : his ears distinguish the varieties of sounds and THE TEUE RELIGIOX. 75 voice more accurately: the palate, variety of tastes, and so of the rest. But when he comes to reason, qua nee In Deo quidem est res ulla prwstantior, what streams of eloquence does he not pour forth ! To this succeeds the instrument of speech, which he calls domina rerum, the queen, and mistress of all the rest ; and, attributing a kind of divinity to it, strews such flowers on it, as none but that prince of orators is able to describe it. " By this," says he, " we learn, by the same we teach. By her we exhort, by her we persuade, by her we comfort the afflicted, encourage the timorous, moderate the transported, bridle the furious, restrain the covet- ous ; it is she who has bound mankind in civil society, and, in a word, made him diifer from brutes, &c."' But then he takes him by the hand again, and enu- merates its ability for all manner of operations in ten thousand inventions. By these, says he, we prepare and vary our food, make our garments, tame wild and furious creatures, and compel those who offend us to fight and conquer for us ; and after all these truculent monsters, which with our hands we cicurate, by our hands also we subdue the most terrible of all the ele- ments, the wind and the sea, and domineer over the whole earth ; so as our hands become a second nature, even in Nature herself. ' Hac cohortamur, hdc persuademus, hac consolamur afflictos, hAc deducimus perterritos a timore, h4c gestientes comprimimus, hac cupiditates iracundiasque restinguimus ; haec nos juris, legum, verborum societate devinxit, ha;c a vita inani et fer^ segrega- vit, &c. — De Orat., 1. iii. 76 THE TRUE RELIGION. Finally, (speaking of his intellectual abilities) he pene- trates the sublimest Heavens, and from things supreme arrives to the knowledge of a Deity ; and to a sense of religion, piety, justice, and the whole circle of virtues, which render him par et similis Deorum, and in nothing inferior but that he is mortal. These are the transcen- dents and pre-eminences which this admirable heathen attributes to mankind ; and what could a Christian more, considering with how particular a care and pro- vidence God has invigilated over him above all other creatures ? Turn we our eyes from man a little on other sensitive substances, innumerable as they are, moving in the air, swimming in the water, dwelling in the earth ; their diversity, propriety, figures, beauty, habiliments, arms, instincts, actions, ends. How many vast volumes should one be obliged to write to describe them ! How much vaster understanding to comprehend them ! Tantis operihus Deus notitiam suam armavit, says Tertullian. And, indeed, were not the world sustained and governed by an Infinite Providence, like to a crazy vessel, weather- beaten, and grounded without a pilot, it had long ere this been shipwrecked, and fallen to pieces. Volcanoes, inundations, conflagrations, plagues, and epidemical sick- nesses ; factions of unruly people, rebellions, diflferences of religions, and violent commotions of ungovernable men, and tyrannies ; no element in Nature, but, at one time or other, domineering, and threatening to swallow and reduce all into principles, did not some Almighty Power compose these disorders, reduce the proud and THE TRUE RELIGION. 77 swelling waves, and say, Hitherto shall ye go, and no farther. Nor is this great God molested or distracted with this multiplicity of things under His care, as some Heathens fancied. 1 say not all; for Socrates con- vinced Aristodemus' the contrary, by the soul's govern- ing the body, without the least confusion ; whilst others fancied as many several deities and powers as there were employments; and accordingly assigned them their particular provinces, measuring them by the possibilities of men. Neither must we imagine the Almighty docs anything in time, and by succession, (as we finite creatures do) but He sees, thinks, acts, dis- poses all things, semel et simul, even to the determining the nature of every cause, the leaf of every tree, c-\'cry hair of our heads, every sparrow that falls and lights iipon the ground ; and knows all that does not actually exist, even the ultimitics of what can or may be ; naj-, future contingencies and events, which He does not necessitate, to the end we may entirely depend on Him alone. ^ But thus some wretched sophists and shallow fops took umbrage that so many and diiferent notices and things should be assigned to any one Grod, as fancying him a man, no more capable than themselves ' Xenophon. Mem. 1. 1. " If God did not comprehend and take in particulars, as well as universals, how could He comprehend Himself, since all generals subsist in particulars? And should these latter fail, (as they would, did not God preserve them) the former must come to ruin also. /8 THE TEUE RELIGION. of what we attribute to him : and as if He, who made all, understood not what He made, even all the springs of motion whatsoever, and possible resorts. We see the sun at the same moment, without the least fatigue or confusion, employed about innumerable services, for all the creatures, animal or vegetable, and aU things under heaven ; all distinctions of seasons, pro- ductions of plants, maturity of fruits, concoction of minerals; meteorizing of vapours, cherishing animals, enlightening the world, and other numberless uses, which we take no notice of. But, especially, how the soul of man (as we have instanced) is able at the same moment of time to contemplate the remoted heavens and its various revolutions; directs the body and its several affections, and comprehends such wonderful and distant notions, arts and sciences, and tilings metaphy- sical and abstracted, without the least trouble or dis- traction. Now, if a creature soul is able to perform all this, how much more able is the Great Soul of the World (Creator of Souls) to govern, manage, and dis- pose of all things, and who has, for infinite occasions, infinite wisdom, power, faculties, and accomplish- ments ! I know there be who have with bold blasphemy imagined that, had they been of counsel with the Great God, when He created the world, they could have con- trived it better. There should, say they, have been no wildernesses, nor barren rocks ; no noxious beasts, no birds of prey, no dissensions among people, no death nor misery in the world. Epicurus and his scholars of THE TllUE RELIGION. 79 old,' and some daring persons of later times, make this an argument of there being no God, such faults they have discovered in the workmanship, as if all were made by chance. But we have already shewed the pride and vanity of these impudent and ungrateful wretches, and with what incomparable wisdom God has made all things as they are. So as with the pious stoic :^ " He who would," says he, " undertake to mend what is done, and contrive things to more advantage, should in the first place try to mend God, and teach him better; but if he find that too hard for him, mend himself, and no more entertain so wicked an imagina- tion." It is admirable what Xenophon' makes Socrates to enumerate of the incomparable advantages God has en- riched man with above all the creatures, discoursing of His care and providence to Enthydemus, and how much we are obliged to be thankful : that though the rest of animals are many of them stronger than man, yet they are his vassals. In a word, the whole dialogue seems a paraphrase on the eighth Psalm, and is so full of what Cicero has written, (and we have already cited) that it was certainly transcribed verbatim out of our author from the Greek. There are those who complain that they had not eyes in their neck behind, as well as in their faces before, and pretend to refine on the works of nature, and that God has not given them the legs and strength of horses, ' Lucretius. ^ Epictetus. ' Xen. Mem., lib. 4. 80 THE TRUE RELIGION. and that man comes into the world so feeble and de- fenceless — " ut ssevis projectus ab undis Navita nudus humi jacet," &c.' " The little infant child cast out, Like a poor mariner, tossed by fierce seas. Naked on earth the helpless baby lies. When Nature makes it in the light at first By throes out of its mother's womb to burst ; And that with mournful cries the place it fills: Justly, whose life must pass so many ills. While divers cattle breed, herds, and wild beasts, Nor need they rattles, or to be caressed With broken words of the fond nurse, nor yet Need they to change their clothes for seasons fit. Nor arms, nor bulwarks raise, nor a high wall To guard them, since the earth all things for all Provides " Or, as is most elegantly described by Pliny ;2 and by Plato in his fiction of Protagoras, where he shows how mankind, coming naked into the world, was com- mitted to the care of Epimetheus, to supply what he wanted; but that he had been so profuse in furnishing the rest of animals with all things necessary, and so improvident as to man, that there was nothing left for the poor creature, till Prometheus stole fire from Vul- can, and from Mercury the use of it, who was sent by Jupiter to assist his other wants, and to teach him arts and sciences. And we must indeed confess that there is nothing in nature more helpless and utterly destitute ; ' Lucret., lib. v., 223. ^ Nat. Hist., lib. ii. Prajf. THE TRUE RELIGION. 81 but tills is SO far from detracting from the Providence of God, that it infinitely exalts it. The feeble infant, truly, can neither stand nor go, feed, clothe, or shift for itself, whilst we see other living creatures come vested, armed, able immediately to find their pasture, defend and maintain themselves. But see : no sooner does this child grow up, but he covers himself with their spoils, feeds on their flesh, and uses them for his vassals. They plough, sow, carry burdens for him, and do whatever he pleases. For though he have not the strength of the elephant, the swiftness of the roe, the sagacity of the dog, nor the bulk and procerity of an oak, yet he has prudence, and reason, and faculties, which not only supply what he may seem to want of the perfection of other creatures, but transcends them.' He conquers and subdues the strongest and fiercest of them ; brings the sturdiest cattle under yoke ; manages the most ungovernable horse ; catches the swiftest fowl ; climbs to the highest nest ; takes the craftiest fox and indomitable panther in nets, gins, traps, and a thousand surprising inventions. " For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind, "^ so as to serve both his necessity and recreation. Moreover, he digs into the entrails of the earth ; dives into the bottom of the seas ; shuts out and admits the heat of the scorch- ing sun at his pleasure ; prepares his food ; knows the ' Simonides apud Plutarch, Utrum Animal. Theodor. Serm. 5. De Prov. Oppian, lib. v, Halieut, ' James, iii., 7, VOL. I. G 82 THE TRUE RELIGION. use of fire for a world of purposes ; and clothes and warms himself, which no other creature does beside him. He builds lofty pyramids, cities, and enormous fabrics, out of the bowels of rocks ; and makes whole forests of sturdy oaks and stately pines descend from the lofty mountains to the lowest floods and far-dis- tant ocean, where go the ships, and where is that Leviathan whom God has made to take his pastime therein.' But even him, with his harping spear, he boldly encounters, subdues, and brings captive to the shore. He cuts huge channels of water, joins seas to seas, raises forts impregnable. He levels mountains, and sometimes removes them with his artificial light- ning. And yet nothing of all this, almost, by virtue of his natural strength, (in which he is so far inferior to brutes) but by that Reason which the providence of God has supplied him with, stronger than all created powers on earth. How imreasonably, then, does ungrateful man cavil, as if he alone were neglected ; whereas, should God have gratified his foolish wish, he would be the first to deplore his unhappy condition, and wish himself like other men. Plato, says Lactantius,^ with better reason might have thanked the gods he was a man, and con- demned those ingrates, who are not satisfied in being the noblest of creatures, unless they also had been beasts. How vain, yet impossible, that were, Firmianus hand- somely demonstrates, when the philosopher gave thanks ' Psalm, 104, 26. Job, xli. ' Opif. Dei, c. 3, et de fals4 Eel., 1. i., c. 8. THE TRUE RELIGION. 83 to the Deity that he was a man, and not a beast ; bom at Athens, not in an obscure village : than which, says he, nothing is more impertinent. As if, had Plato been indeed a brute, he had been Plato. How much wiser, then, had he proceeded to have reserved his thanks, that he was an ingenious, docile, and learned person, since so many duU blockheads might have been bom at Athens, as well as himself, &c. But for the rest of those malecontents. "Were I a nightingale, says honest Epictetus,^ I would do as a nightingale does ; but since I am a rational creature, I will laud and celebrate my Maker. Let ns learn of tliis Christian Heathen. I tell you, Seneca^ is in ad- miration at these peevish wretches, these iniqui diti- norum munerum wstimatores,^ as he calls them. The whole passage were worth transcribing, but more the pondering of it by our wits and droUs, who, as the phi- losopher speaks, are (as now in ours so in his time) arrived to that pitch of impudence, that they hated even Nature herself, because she had not made them Gods, whereas they ought to have been thankful they were men, and dignified with the second place of all His glorious and royal palace, enriched with so ample a dominion and so many prerogatives ; that all the crea- tures are subject to him ; that he is endowed with such virtue and powers above them ; that his soul lustrates and pervades through all things ; his thoughts prevent- ing the swiftest motion of the heavens ; in a word, that ' Enchir. ' De Benef., 1. 2. c. 20. ^ " Unfair valuers of God's gifts." g2 84 THE TEUE EELIGION. mankind enjoys such an accumulation of earthly bless- ings, that, when he shall have well surveyed them all — because he can find nothing so accomphshed as himself, for which he would exchange his condition, and choose what he most desires — he must be driven to confess himself the very darling of Nature, and that the Gods have placed him next themselves: which is the su- premest honour we are capable of, Magna accepimus, majora non cepimus, so brim-fuU, that we can contain no more : thus Seneca. To this let us add the wonderful and wise contrivance of the aspectable world again, and its furniture ; that in all this tract of time there should not appear the least crack, defect, incoherence, or decay of any of the most minute parts or accessory ; so as to require need of mending, repair, or of being better excogitated for the use and purposes they first were made, but that all continue as they did from the beginning, (as the Atheist in St. Peter tells us themselves acknowledge) is of stu- pendous consideration, and asserts the wisdom, power, and providence of the Creator.' WUl not the Heathen rise in judgment against our modern Atheist ? For, indeed, not only the celestial bodies and their regular courses, and more illustrious instances of the Divine Providence in the mundane sys- tem, but every tree, and plant, and flower, and fly declare His goodness, care, and vigilance, and that in wisdom He has made them all ; that both Heaven and earth are fuE, top-full of His riches, I say ; all that is ' n. Pet., iii., 4. THE TRUE RELIGION. 85 on the earth ; all that is in the earth, minerals and stones ; all that is above the earth, the glorious orbs, the vicissitudes of seasons, propagation of species, and exuberance, in their several elements, for their clothing, food, delight, medicine. The faculties, instincts, poHty, combinations accommodating all things to the use of man, above the rest. Not that the universe was only made for us ; the whole not for any part, but that part for the whole, and the whole for the Maker, though the things of this inferior world may be said to be princi- pally made for man, while other superior creatures may not be altogether unconcerned even in this visible crea- tion. Nothing, then, of all this could subsist without a wise supreme cause or moderator, or possibly be the result of chance or blind necessity operating on sense- less matter. Nor is human nature a mere machine, nor our mind and soul the mechanical creature of motion ; nor does any the least thing hang merely by the links of natural causes, but is the decree of a most admirable disposer ; the structure and formation of man alone being as great a proof of the Deity and His providence as that of the whole world itself. Lastly, the preserva- tion of empires and governments, as well under mo- narchs as republics ; that so many different men of so many different minds, interests, and affections should submit to one, as a few for so many ages have done ; as well as the translation of kingdoms and governments by such wonderful methods and means, for the punition of tyrants, and the vices of men, of which history abounds with examples. And what unexpected events 86 THE TEUE EELIGION. have followed : as in Alexander's conquests, Augustus's peaceful time, the success of the Turks against the dis- agreeing Christians, the present lowness of Spain from their inhumanity in the late revolution. Nor can the unequal distribution of prosperity and adversity of virtuous and religious people at all preju- dice God's providence to any one, who considers that our condition is totally independent ; and that, when at any time Almighty God is pleased to disappoint our expectations, it is for reasons perfectly known by Him, for some necessary and prudent end, most just and equitable, though we at present comprehend it not. So as when it is said, " the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding," ' &c. It is not meant as if all fell out by adventure, but that God dis- poses otherwise than we conjecture. For He only sees the heart, and can teU what cross events and inconve- niences would succeed our contrivances and imagina- tions, should everything be as we desire, who know not what is best for us. And thus, likewise, does God show His absolute dominion over His creatures ; and would men but contemplate the exceeding great reward designed to holy and excellent persons for their short sufferings here, and ordinary disappointments, they would, instead of murmuring, doubting, and censuring, give God thanks for everything that befalls them. The most righteous man living being but an unprofitable servant, happy they, who, enduring afflictions and ^ Eccles., ix'., 11. THE TRUE EELIGIOX. 87 animadversions here, shall be accounted ■ worthy to escape the judgment to come, when there shall be rewards distributed, and crowns of immortal glory. Lut, besides this, it sets the higher value on piety, virtue, and obedience. It may also be generally ob- served, that holy and good men have commonly the greatest temporal blessings too ; and that if any thing intervene to the contrary, it is evidently from their own Avant of prudence and timely caution, or for their good : not here to pass by the Divine vengeance upon noto- riously wicked men, even in this life also, and how uncomfortably they go out of it, in the midst of all their seeming prosperity. The sum, then, of all we have here produced, is to prove what is most manifest, That there is a God. In- deed, we cannot see God, whom none shall see, and live. The most sagacious of our natural organs would be oppressed with the splendour of that vision, till they come to be refined, changed, and spiritualized ; and then shall we see and contemplate Him as He is, in the face of Jesus Christ, who is the only image of His counte- nance, and in whom all the perfections of the Godhead are consjncuous, to the filling the largest of our capaci- ties. But, considered as they are here, so far are we unable to behold God, save in His works and Provi- dence, that we see not our own selves ; that is, our souls, (for the soul is the man) which is yet so near, so intimate, and perpetually about us. But, though we can neither see God, nor our souls, we may and can have a real idea of both, without a sensible vision ; and 88 THE TEUE RELIGION. our reason can represent that which our imagination falls of — our imagination represents Him material, our reason immaterial ; our fancy corporeal, our reason spi- ritual and incorporeal, wise, powerful, perfect, the sovereign being of beings ; and it is a natural impres- sion in our soul, which then exerts itself, and most appears when we reareon best. But, indeed, all our cer- tainty of natural things begins at our senses, by the sense or impression of the things themselves, or their operations. And yet, though I see not nor touch many things with my organs, because imperceptible, that all I do proceeds from some cause, my understanding cer- tainly concludes. It was the vain objection of Vaninus, that, were there a God and Providence, He would hinder men from sin- ning against Him. But power is either absolute, or tempered with justice, clemency, and other virtues. By His absolute power He is able to effect all things, but, as just and merciful. He does not. For, though he permits sin to exercise our obedience and make trial of our virtue. He gives thereby occasion also of manifest- ing His love and favour. Without this, we had never come to know the infinite degrees and extent of it, since it is reward and punishment that produce love, fear, and obsequiousness: forasmuch as God is pleased to act with mankind as with a rational creature, and by such methods and objects as He is pleased to propose, and not altogether by blind and casual impressions. Unless we understood the unfathomable depths of His infinite knowledge, wisdom, and other attributes, we can never THE TRUE RELIGION. 89 safely pronounce concerning the reason of His actions, who educes good out of evil, by expedients and ways most just and reasonable. From all, then, we have alleged In proof of a Deity, it can hardly be that there ever was such a monster as a thorough-paced, speculative Atheist in the world. A small and superficial insight into nature might, perhaps, as my Lord Verulam says, dispose some sort of men to think there were no God ; but a thorough and deeper research will make it impossible : so convincing is every tiling in Nature. And when all is said, it is every good and wise man's interest and advantage to believe a Deity ; for, supposing (but by no means granting) that there were none, this infidelity has so many sad conse- quences attending it, and the other so infinite advan- tages accompanying it, that a wise man would live as if there were, though there were none, as certainly, by all that we have shown, there is. And, when our atheist has produced all he has to say against it, it is still more diflficult and inconsistent to prove the nega- tive. All Nature cries out ; all nations, ages, people, sciences ; aU consequences, the chain and ligature of aU subordinate things ; universal consent, both of learned and unlearned, civil or barbarous ; the consequence of all Providence; all reasoning, all the arts and sciences; astronomy, by the motion of the celestial bodies ; juris- prudence, by all that is just and equal ; history, by innumerable events ; morality, by every virtue ; nature, by all her operations; all the philosophers, by their most accurate researches ; and Aristotle himself, by his 90 THE TRUE RELIGION. acknowledgment of subordinate motion leading to tlie First Mover ; Des Cartes, by his free choice of a supe- rior intelligence, confining matter to a particular motion and quantity, and that nothing but a Prime Cause cain produce thought or any thinking principle in an organic body : in sum, even the wild and extravagant motion of Epicurus's atoms and diiferent determinations of them in such perfect creatures, do all of them demonstrate the being of a God and of His providence. In a word, our senses, imaginations, consciences, pas- sions, and even all our faults, the voice of every sin, (fearing a future punislunent) aloud proclaim it. To conclude, be the event what it wUl, he who beUeves a God hazards nothing valuable, should he be mistaken (as it is not possible he should) ; but he who does not, or but doubts of it, is infinitely miserable ; there being no medium or proportion between the trifling satisfac- tion we deny ourselves so short a time, by living well and orderly, and the eternal damnation of a vicious in- fidel and obstinate Atheist. Nay, admitting the proba- bilities equal, our passions and wicked inclinations indeed would have no God; but the interest of our reason, conscience, health, and other benefits of virtue and sobriety, the contrary. "Were there no God in the world, virtue were a chi- mera, — common honesty, folly, — fidelity, simpleness and ridiculous folly. Who would trust his nearest neigh- bour or relation? All governments, safety, and pro- priety, would disband and vanish. Truth, justice, hu- mility, charity, temperance, sincerity, and friendship — THE TRUE EELIGION. 91 in short, all that elevates our nature above other crea- tures — would expire. And now to conclude this long, but necessary chapter: if all these arguments wiU not prevail, no miracle will, nor ever can. For, (as that noble Chancellor' has ob- served) though we read of many illustrious miracles;, which it pleased God to work upon other occasions, we never read that He vouchsafed to work so much as one, to evince the truth of His own existence, power, wis- dom, and beneficence, for the establishment of natural reliffion, or to convince one obstinate Atheist. Since even the hght of nature were sufficient, and the won- ders that are daily the objects of our senses, the miracles of every moment, though we are blinded by the com- monness of them, and so do not sufficiently heed them. Else we should confess that everything we see and enjoy is a miracle, and such as can be no other than the effects of a Divine and Almighty power. Indeed, other extraordinary favours have sometimes been showed to heathens and idolaters, who acknowledged a deity, though they erred, of ignorance and not of obstinacy, about his worship: but never to any professedly be- lieving none; because it is plainly monstrous, pro- digious, unnatural, impious, and ungrateful, beyond all reproach or sufferance. ' Lord Bacon. 92 THE TRUE RELIGION. CHAPTEE II. WHAT GOD AND THE SUPREME BEING IS. SECTION I. HIS ATTHIBUTES. SECTION II. OP ANGELS AND MINISTERING SPIHITS. SECTION III. OF THE INTELLECTUAL SOUL. SECTION I. HIS ATTRIBUTES. The felicity of man consisting in the contemplation of the highest Cause, we have already, by undeniable arguments, asserted the being of such a Cause. By the light of nature, we are convinced of His existence — by the light of grace, of His essence : Reason dictating the first. Revelation the latter. And yet to determine positively what God is, w'as thought so difficult, nay, so impossible, that not only Simonides, (in his famous reply to Hiero) but not any one of the philosophers were able to solve the question, farther than to ac- knowledge that He was a Being that gave to all things their being. There were, indeed, of the Physici, (as the lonians named them) who, degenerating into Atheism, and making all the result of motion and matter, whoUy left out the Divine Cause. MTiilst others, on the con- trary, left out the natural and necessary cause, and held that God was all things, and all things God ; not THE TRUE RELIGION. 93 distinguishing the Creator from the creature ; and so made inanimate bodies under several forms the sub- stance of God Himself. That God, containing aU things in himself, upon a time displayed and brought them forth, as being what is said of Isis, lu koI iravra. Indeed, this All-in-one and One-in-all doctrine (so ad- mirably pursued by Hermes in the Asclepian dialogue) may in some sort be true ; as when he calls him the radix, or root of all ; but these did not penetrate the thing, but as a cause, not the definition ; much less his attributes, which they could never comprehend to fix in one. The whole consessus of the Heathen deities had their several powers ; but that any single deity had them all they judged impossible. Those who come nearest in their notions, made God the mundane soul ; as for instance Seneca ; > and Pythagoras cited by Cle- mens to the same effect. This they had from Thales, Anaximenes, and the rest, who made him all the elements, denoting his uni- versal and immense extent and influence. But then this must be taken with reference to His power and omnipotence only. For otherwise, should God be the soul of the universe, (as we understand the soul) how should the human soul be happy and unhappy at the same moment? As when in one place, or member of any animate creature, it is sensible of pain and torture, whilst it is pleased and delighted in another, according as the matter, or animal, happens to be affected with ' Quid est Deus ? Meus Universalis. Nat, Quest, i. Prof. 94 THE TRUE RELIGION. the universal soul which animates it ? This, therefore, is to be taken for that diffusion of life and motion which God does universally impart to His creature, nay, the whole creation, and not as being any part of His divine substance, which is altogether incommunicable. So as what this great God formally is, though He dwell in the light, it is a light not to be approached by us, by reason of the thick darkness which environs it, (like that described by Moses on INIount Sinai at the pro- mulgation of the law) or rather the darkness of our un- derstandings to comprehend it. Wlierefore the wisest of philosophers endeavoured to describe Him rather by what He appears in the crea- ture, and the wondrous works which declare His power and wisdom. Not that He is like to any of them for any eminence or perfection in them ; but as they approach Him in virtue and goodness, they may be so far said to have a resemblance of Him in a moral sense ; whatever is excellent being an emanation from Him. Nostri melior pars animus est, in illo nulla pars extra animum, totus ratio est. The soul is our best part ; God is all soul, the noblest part, for He is All. And when we are able to define what that part of us is which has no parts, we shall be best capable to say what He is, who is All. Till then, men may rack their wits and study high and lofty notions, but never shall they come to know positively what He is, but rather by what He is not. He is yet aU we see, but aU we see is not God. All things (says Trismegistus) that are and that are not Those that are He has manifested from Himself; those THE TRUE RELIGION. 95 that are not, He contains in Himself. They come to know positively what He is, but rather by what He is not. He is yet all" we see; but all we see is not God.' How is it possible we should know what He is, (so as to define Him) who know not ourselves, namely, that which makes us what we are, our souls ? When we come to know the God within us,^ (as Seneca says) we may then come nearer to the mark ; but it is not visible to us yet. No ; not though He be every moment in us, near us, and about us.' Whence the notion of an intellectual sphere, whose centre was every where, cir- cumference no where. Thus the philosophers called Him Friendship, Fate, Nature, the Sovereign Good ; in a word, they described Him by His attributes ; nor was there any of them left out, which some of their wise men did not expressly mention : so as Minutius teUs us, one might in his days have thought the new Christians had been philosophers, or the old philoso- phers Christians. Thus Plato calls him the Idea of the most consummate perfection ; Aristotle,'' the Being of ' I find this prettily explained in that of Ocellus (in Stobseo). " Life,'' say3 he, " contains the body of animals ; the cause of lifei is the soul — concord contains houses, cities, estates ; the cause of concord is law, and the fountain of law is God." ''■ " Deum in humano corpore hospitantem." Sen. Ep. 81. ' Parmenides and Hesiod made Love the supreme Deity ; Love being an active principle, and cause of motion ; and indeed it is the first and greatest ; for God is Love and Beneficence ; whence all this theogony and cosmogony springs. * Lib. de Rel. 96 THE TEUE EELIGION. Beings, whose "miserere" he is said to have implored at his last agony. Nor did the ancient Pagans intend any more by their several names than the divers attributes of one Deity, representing them all. Seldom do we hear them imploring these deputy gods, when they were in distress, but held up their hands to heaven, the seat of Jupiter, not to the Capitol, or Pantheon, where all their statues were enshrined; which TertuUian notes as "concurrent testimony of Unity. ''^ And thus, whilst without God in the world, did the Heathen grope after Him, though He was not far from any one of them. For what was Jupiter but the true Jehova ? So Ma- crobius, from a certain oracle that the Supreme Deity was to be called Jao.^ Lastly, touching the unity of God, (besides what we have alleged) the very poets, who took the greatest liberty to set off and adorn their fictions with the introduction of so many deities, spake but of one, when serious : nor did Plato mention more, when in earnest — Ely Zev? a-vv dot^la bvvaTos Bafia Kal iroXv-oK^os- One God, wise, omnipotent, and happy ; for so Phocylides ^ So when Thales makes him Water, Anaximenes Air, Heracli- tus and Hippocrates Fire, the first bom Light, &c., they meant but the vast expanse of matter. And those who held He was a body, and that qualities and forms were entities only distinct from body, intended only, substance. Hence °H a\r]6ivri ia, oicrla, KTj § akr)6i,vrj ovaia, (To Tertull. adv. Marc, 1. i., c. 5. '' Plutarch, in vit. Alex. ' Plotinus. 106 THE TRUE EELIGION. but He is as much that which He woiild be, as if He had made himself. He is able to do all things not repugnant to His nature ; as to be sick, or die, or be false. ' He can do all He will, though He do not all He can ; that is, all that can be done, and implies no dishonour or contra- diction to His veracity and excellency, as St. Augustine* says. In respect of all other objects and actions. His power knows no bounds ; nor were all His other attri- butes anything, without it, but speculative notions. And whatever dominion others may have of mankind, one peculiar title has God, which none but He can have over us, that He gives us our being, and is of right our Sovereign Lord and Potentate. God's omnipotence, then, consists in an ability to do whatever can be done, and the object of this power is whatever is possible. But what is impossible is no adequate object of power, but destroys it, rather, and dishonours it ; as that He should undo the past, make another God like himself; destroy ^ or deprive his own substance, or corporify and change it. God is with all reverence said not to do that which belongs to no power. The same is affirm- able of His infinity and of His telling the last number, because there is no end or determination of either: since, were there any end, it could not be infinite ; and the greatest possible notation of number may be in- ' S. Aug. Enchir. '^ Velint invenire quod Omnipotens non potest, liabent prorsus, ego dicam, mentiri non potest. S. Aug. De Civ. Dei, lib. xxii,, c. 25. ^ See Maimon. De Natura Imposs. THE TRUE RELIGION. 107 finitely doubled. In a word, whatever God is said not to effect, or to be impossible, proves not any impotence, but rather shows that all His other attributes and per- fections are as essential to Him as His Power ; and as His power suffers no resistance, so neither do the rest of His perfections admit any repugnance. But, in all events, it is safer to say what He never will do, rather than positively what he cannot do.' " Is anything too hard for the Lord ?" Nor is the Almighty more powerful than just and righteous ; so as He never does or can abuse His power. Justice and rectitude is His nature. " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ?" — Shall He not take cognizance of all injustices, vindicating the injured, as the very Fountain of Justice ? It was for this the ancients had recourse to the gods in their solemn oaths and appeals, as to whom all must render account of their actions, for the reward or reproof of Him, who only distributes them. AVTierefore, it were the greatest defect in so Divine a nature, not to recompense good- ness and virtue, and punish wickedness and vice, be- cause it were unjust ; and as well might we deny all Providence, and even God Himself, as to deny Him justice. For if He be an intellectual being, he com- prehends all possible actions, be they good or bad ; the one being agreeable to Him, and nearest to His excel- lent nature : the other, contradictory and repugnant. ' Genesis, xviii., 14; S. Aug. De Civ. Dei, lib. v., c. 10; Hie- rome ad Marc, 5 ; Seneca Prsef. Nat. Quest. Gregory Nazianz. 108 THE TRUE RELIGION. His justice and dealing must needs be accordingly, and thus are all God's attributes chained and hnked to each other, never to be sundered. His wisdom shows he cannot be deceived; His omnipotence proves He has no need to deceive ; His goodness declares His unwil- lingness to deceive; and aU of them assert his exact and impartial justice. 5. Truth : — God has sworn by Himself, because there is none greater ; not that it is possible He should be false, but to support our diffidence, and want of faith. For otherwise it is as impossible for God to lie without an oath, as with one.' The virtue of His veracity is not fortified by an asseveration of God, as to its being true ; but from the nature of God, who cannot equivo- cate, or dissemble. It is inconsistent with His purity ; a contradiction to His integrity; repugnant to His justice, and averse to his goodness, to deliver anything contrary to His certain knowledge ; and therefore He cannot wrong any one. His testimony is truth itself; and accordingly, exacts our assent. Truth is the found- ation of God's authority, the source of His omnipotence, and the only support and stay of all our confidence. 6. Goodness, Beneficence, and Love: God does not govern arbitrarily, upon the sole account of His power and will, but as His will is the wiU and law of justice and highest reason. Nor does He punish any, but for their good, and to make them better. To conceive rightly of God, is to figure in our minds an existence of aU possible goodness, justice, truth, and other divine ' Hebrews, vi., 18. THE TRUE RELIGION. 109 virtues, and that all things are in Him as they should be ; and the imiversal system so framed and governed, as nothing could be more perfect, or possibly improved, however things may appear to our shallow comprehen- sion. For as He is the source of all good, so all that He created was good, yea, very good. God, as a free agent, undetermined by anything but His own good pleasure, spreads His goodness and beneficence over all His creatures ; and this it is that entitles Him to the universal empire, even above omnipotence itself. His mercy, as David says, is over all His works. Nor, in- deed, is there any majesty without goodness. Take away the notion of goodness from God, and none would serve Him, none seek Him sincerely. It is His good- ness leads sinners to repentance, and repentance from fear alone is unacceptable. Yet so gracious is God, that He does good even to the evil, as well as to the good ; not that they may continue evil, but because He is superabundant in mercy and goodness. All our evil is from ourselves — all that is good in us, from Him. The whole universe, and the provisions it affords us, and all His creatures, declare His beneficence ;' and 80 conspicuous is this attribute, as to be celebrated above aU the rest. Indeed, creation is an attribute be- longing to God alone ; and so is all nature, all sub- stance, good. For God did not create evil, nor its effects, Death and Sin, which are neither nature nor substance, but enemies and foes to both. Evil has no existence, but as an accident fallen unhappily into sub- ' See Seneca De Benef. 110 THE TRUE RELIGION. stance, and has no other being of itself.' Nor is it an effect, but defect.^ When things, therefore, deflect from goodness, it is chaos, and darkness, and nothing. Now, if there be any other evils in the world, they are so only to our ignorance. For even the deleterious and noxious juices, &c., of plants, repugnant elements, and contrary seasons, are all of them good and profitable to us in time and place, and spring from the fountain of all goodness. If we know not the use of them, it is our ignorance : and if they do us hurt, our own fault. For every thing has two handles, a right one, and a left, a tractable and untractable ; and a wise man takes hold of the first.^ God has not hid and concealed these things out of envy and want of goodness, but to exercise our reason, incite our industry, and excite our devotion. They, therefore, infinitely dishonour Him, who deny God philanthropy,* whereas God is all goodness and love ; the most illustrious proof of which (till we come to speak of the work of His redemption) is His 7. Providence ; by which He operates insensibly and imperceptibly ; which shows the spirituality of His being, penetrating all things. However events seem to us, we should never cease to admire and praise God,* ' Evil is an omission of good, and has nothing sohd and real, but as it may be of kindred to that, indeed, of which God made the world, namely, nothing, as tending to nothing. ^ Plato In Timseo. Plotinus, &c. ' IlaK npayfia Sio i'xct- Xa/3ar." — Epictet. ' Hobbs. Udvra oav^a^etv, irdvTa Inaivclv, irdvTa dve^eraaTws aTTodeyfo- Bat, TO T^s Trpovoias efrya, Kav (f>alve