they have the main Propertie of Romaneers to talk much of Love And indeed Plato himself seems to have been the first Author of Amorous Romances for towards the beginning of his Convivium he chides the Poets that lived before him for their Omissions in reference to Love and that when they had made Panegyricks of all the other Gods None of them had ever attempted an Elogie upon This. Now to Discourse of the Natures of Things in Metaphors and Allegories is nothing else but to sport and trifle with empty words because these Schems do not express the Natures of Things but only their Similitudes and Resemblances for Metaphors are only words which properly signifying one thing are apply'd to signifie another by reason of some Resemblance between them When therefore any thing is express'd by a Metaphor or Allegory the thing it self is not expressed but only some similitude observ'd or made by Fancy So that Metaphors being only the sportings of Fancy comparing things with things and not marks or signes of Things All those Theories in Philosophie which are expressed only in metaphorical Termes are not real Truths but the meer Products of Imagination dress'd up like Childrens babies in a few spangled empty words such as the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 empty Phraseologies that have not Notion Thing enough to fill them out Thus their wanton luxuriant fancies climbing up into the Bed of Reason do not only defile it by unchast and illegitimate Embraces but instead of real conceptions and notices of Things impregnate the mind with nothing but Ayerie and Subventaneous Phantasmes But 't is still more fantastick and absurd to talke metaphorically concerning those things of whose Ideas we are utterly ignorant of which we are not able to discourse in Proper Terms for such Discourse must needs be Non-sence and the matter of it must needs be nothing because they treat of they know not what For Metaphors not signifying things and things being always signified by proper Termes what can be more evident then that meer Metaphors without proper Terms are employed about nothing at all or only an Imaginary something And they that talk thus do but first imagine a Subject and then imagine in it some Resemblances to something else that is in effect they make a bauble and then play with it Of this Nature to give you one Instance are the greatest part of their discourses concerning the Soul in discoursing of which they draw Metaphors from all the Senses Members and Functions of the Body from all the General Hypotheses of Nature from all the Phaenomena of the Heavens and the Earth from all the several Properties and Operations of the several species of Creatures and apply them to the Nature Faculties and operations of the Soul But because they are altogether ignorant of the nature and substance of the Soul and are not able to express the greatest part of these things by proper terms all these Metaphors must pass for idle and insignificant Non-sense because they signifie we know not what and describe we know not how so that methinks the Platonick Philosophie is just such another thing as the Epicureans fancy the world to be a Mass of pretty words handsomely and luckily pack't together I must confess that before I had examined it by reason of its huge Tumid words I look't upon it at a distance as the loftiest and sublimest knowledge in the world but when I came to survey it more closely I soon found that it was nothing else but words so that I may more handsomely compare it to a Landskip in which at a distance appear huge Rocks and vast Mountaines that seem to vie height with and out-reach the Clouds and yet by a nearer approach these vast bulky Appearances are found to be nothing but a few Artificial Shadows 5. Another miscarriage is that they employ much of their Contemplations in things altogether uncertain and unsearchable They delight excessively to wander into remote and invisible Notions and to talk confidently as Travellers into forreign Regions are wont to do of doubtful and unaccountable Problems and any thing which is as far distant from Humane discovery as concernment Which scopeless desire of searching into things exempt from humane Inquisition is that which renders Curiosity Criminal For Curiosity it self is a gallant and heroical Quality and the natural Product of a Generous Complexion but when it aspires after the knowledge of things placed above its Reach it degenerates into a vain and fruitless Ambition or rather an unnatural lust of the mind after strange and extravagant Notions Though the Truth of it is The minds or rather fancies of men have such a natural liquorishness after the knowledge of things strange and remote that they swallow nothing with so grateful a Gusto as stories of things rare and unusual neither care they how uncertain and phantastick they be so they be but odd and prodigious and hence it comes to pass that men are generally more tickled and enchanted with Legends and Romances then with useful and remarkable Memories Which they say is the Reason why the Ancients made so much use of Fables and Apologues to instruct the People because they carried in them something monstrous and exceeding the limits of Probability The senseless multitude that could not rellish the wise Discourses of Socrates would be much taken and surprised with a pretty and extravagant Tale of a Lyon an Ape or a Fox c. But not to aggravate this Childishness of these dull and muddy Souls 'T is an unpardonable Luxury and Wantonness for Wise and considering Philosophers to spend their time and study to disclose distant and inscrutable Mysteries and frontlesly to dictate to the world in such Theories as are infinitely remote from humane knowledge and discovery and which 't is as impossible to know as it would be if they had never been And that the Platonists are of all men most chargeable with this folly these few ensuing instances may demonstrate As when they confidently take upon them to give the world exact and minute descriptions of Incorporeal Beings To give an account of the Nature and Oeconomy of the God-head and how the several Ranks of Ideas are suspended upon the three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Uniform Hypostases to pry into the most hidden Recesses of the Divine Mind and distinctly to delineate how the Ideas of all Created Perfections are there displayed To discourse about the Substance Nature Properties Offices Actions Orders and Polities of Angels To assert that the Heavenly Host is divided into three Hierarchies and that each Hierarchie is subdivided into three Orders and every Order into as many Legions as there are contain'd Individuals in every Legion i. e. 6666 and that this Ternary of Hierarchies and Norary of Orders do Circulate about the three-fold Essence of God as the Planets about the Sun with infinite other the like Dreams about their peculiar Natures Offices Distances and Employments And
proportionable evidence I suppose it will not be impertinent to give you a competent proof of it if I can perform it without being tedious Which may be done by proposing one instance and referring you to an Author that will supply you with infinite more if you think it worth the while to examine them The Instance I shall give you is the known and famous Argument for the Souls Immortality in his Phaedrus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The sence of which words is fully and more plainly contained in this Analysis The Soul is always in motion that which is always in motion is self moving that which is self-moving is never deserted of it self that which never deserts it self never ceases to move that which never ceases to move is the source and origine of all motion that which is the source of all motion has no beginning and that which has no beginning can have no ending To omit that every Proposition is either false or uncertain or incoherent as your self will easily observe judge whether we are not likely to have a mighty proof of the Souls immortality when it must be resolved into its own self-subsistence The Author I shall refer you to is Iohannes Baptista Crispus his Quinarius Primus de Ethnicis Philosophis caute Legendis 'T is a Book of no small bulk containing above 500 pages in folio and yet the main business of it is to display the defectiveness of Plato's arguings Where you may be supplyed with infinite apparent palpable instances thereof if you will be at the pains to read and consider them We might possibly have had a better account in Theopompus his Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of which thus Athenaeus 11. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato's Dialogues are trifling and false and that many others of them are stoln out of the Discourses of Aristippus or Antisthenes or Bryson of Heraclea After this brief account of Plato's Logick I come now to his Natural Philosophie in which I shall endeavour all possible brevity because this part as well as the former doth not so directly concern my present design the intendment of my charge being chiefely against his Natural Theologie But that my Discourse may be entire in all its parts and regular in its method I shall to my account of his Logick cast in this of his Physiologie Which will be sufficiently display'd and disparaged too by telling you that in its main strokes it accords with the Aristotelean Philosophie a parallel between them was asserted and demonstrated by Ammonius Porphyrie Hierocles and others of the sacred succession among the Ancients and among Modern Writers has been attempted by Foxius Carpentarius Marronius Buratellus and others The Retail of instances you may see in them but he that tells you in gross that they agree in one Principle by which alone they solve all the appearances and productions of Nature tells you all For as Aristotle resolves all Phaenomena into his Forms which he starts from the Bosome of matter so Plato solves all by the Soul of the Universe and Ideas which in Greek are all one with Forms For the Mechanical Hypotheses having been probably advanced to a considerable Grandeur by Leucippus and Democritus of whom Plato makes not any mention in all his Writings and other Ancient Vertuosi these two great and ambitious Wits Plato and Aristotle designing a Philosophical Empire to themselves scorn'd to be so meanly employ'd as only to improve other mens principles and therefore endeavoured to amuse the world with new ones which they knew others could as little confute as themselves could prove by reason of their obscurity and remoteness from sence How little Aristotle intended his Forms should be understood is already infinitely notorious and how little mind Plato had that it should be ever known what kind of Thing his Universal Soul is is as notoriously apparent from his descriptions of it which are nothing else but some odd fantastick Schemes of numerical figures and proportions as you may see in both the Timaeus's where 't is highly pleasant to read how seriously he prescribes the Method of its Composition out of numerical Ingredients Take saith he all the numbers which make up Musical proportions as Diapente's Diatesserons and an infinite number more but be especially careful not to omit the double 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which arises by even proportions as 1 2 4 8 c. and that whose proportions run into odd numbers as 1 3 9 27 c. Mix and pound them together with all possible exactness and if you find any void spaces between the even and odd numbers fill them with the smallest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which are some very fine and minute fragments and when you have wrought all exceeding exactly into the shape of the Letter I divide it in the middle long ways into two equal parts cross them in the form of the Letter X and be sure to fasten them very strongly at the Commissure and then bow all four joynts till at length you make them so pliable as to bring them into a Spherical figure and then 't is brought to a right Animary Temper and Harmony If this description to what ever purpose 't is design'd be not prodigiously silly and ridiculous pray tell me what is And yet this sensless insignificant Jargon is made the sole and intimate Principle of all Natural Events All Motions Generations Corruptions Alterations Sympathies Antipathies the properties of Bodies the figure of the Heavens the systeme of the Stars the motions of the Planets Eclipses Comets Meteors The roundness of the Earth the Flux and Reflux of the Sea the Original of Rivers and Fountains the Generation of Winds Thunder Lightning Clouds Rain Haile Snow Ice Dew Petrification the wonders of the Magnet the Generation and Transmutation of Metals the Powers and Specifick Vertues of Plants the Variety of Animals their Origine their Shapes their Nutrition their Faculties The Qualities of the Elements Heat Cold Gravity Levity Fluidity Firmness Rarity Density Perspicuity Opacity Hebetude Subtilty Smoothness Asperity Hardness Softness Stubbornness Flexibility Light Colours Sounds Tasts Smells and all other Phaenomena of Nature are only so many Tricks of this Magical kind of Soul If I could have satisfied my self it had been to any purpose I should have given you an account of his enormous absurdities in all the forementioned particulars as they are discoursed of in his Timaeus which contains the whole Body of his Natural Philosophy But I shall beg your leave to dismiss this Theme partly because none have more professedly disclaimed the Platonick Physiologie then they that stickle most for his other Whimsies partly because the Aristotelian Philosophy having been of late so shamefully bafled this which agrees so much with it in its main Principles and more in its Genius must of necessity perish together with it and so will as little need as deserve any particular confutation partly because their Physiologie is well nigh
Prudent Unpassionate It consists of Love Candour Ingenuity Clemency Patience Mildness and all other Instances of Good-Nature It detests nothing more then a Peevish Froward Morose Uncivil Passionate Furious Talkative Fanatick Zeal It begets a true Liberty and Freedome of Spirit It Exempts us from all effeminate Fears and Scruples and begets the greatest Serenity and Chearfulness of Mind It instructs us to dread no Evil from God but to look upon Him as an infinitely Gracious and Benigne Being that designs nothing more then the happiness and perfection of his Creatures that Transacts with Mankind by gentle and paternal Measures and that is so far from tying upon us Niceties and Scruples that he pities our Infirmities and bids us to concern our selves onely about plain and palpable Duties It is the most spritely and vivacious thing in the world driving away all sad and gloomy Melancholly begetting in us a firm and rational Confidence and the ineffable joys of a good Conscience It advances the Soul to its Just Power and Dominion and enables it to govern all Corporeal Appetites and therefore enjoyns us above all things to shun Intemperance not only for its own Intrinsique Baseness but for its mischeivous Effects because it naturally so debauches and dulls our Reasons as to disable them for all good and vertuous Actions For Religion is pure cleanly and spiritual but an intemperate sensuality is nasty sottish and makes the mind of man cheap and foolish and unapt for any thing that is Manly Generous and Rational and so is the greatest Impediment to all the ends and Exercises of Religion which directly tends to the enobling of our Natures the fortifying of our Reasons the subduing of all our lower and sottish Appetites the advancing of our manly and intellectual Abilities in any thing that renders us less like Beasts and more like men But as for Intemperance that does by a natural necessity besot and weaken the vigour of our Reasons and so directly thwart all the ends of Religion for it either stupifies or enrages our Spirits either stuffing our Bodies with dull watry and flatulent humours or putting their Ferments into irregular and extravagant motions I have often known a rude wild dissolute cholerick ungovernable Spirit enter into persons otherwise of a well-inclin'd Complexion by no other way then a wide and devouring Throat To conclude our work in this World is to see that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 maintain its own Authority against all the assaults of rude and barbarous Passions that it tame and civilize that wild and salvage Beast to which Providence has tyed it that by a compleat Victory over all ignoble and unhandsome motions of the brutish Faculties it may be in a manner restored to the condition of a pure and intellectual Being and so be capacitated to relish the joyes proper to God and Spiritual Natures for we are not capable of that degree of Felicity which they enjoy till our Souls are rendred so by proportionate degrees of Purity and Holiness for the happiness of Heaven is pure and intellectual and therefore our minds are purged here from all feculencies of matter that they may be fitted and qualified to relish its Enjoyments so that when the vigorous Energy of the Soul has melted down all the drossy parts of sluggish and unweildy matter and is become 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God-like and purely spiritual then it shall mount up into the Regions of Bliss and Happiness and shall be admitted into an intimate converse and union with the Divine Nature and shall live in the Ravishing Contemplations and Embracings of uncreated Beauty and bathe its dilated Faculties in the full streams of Infinite Goodness and Sun it self in the Invigorating Beams of Light and Love and spend a whole Eternity in the blissful Acts of Love and Joy and Peace and every thing that can procure or encrease its happinesse By all which you easily discern that Religion is no Arbitrary Exaction but Wise and Rational and of natural necessity to perfect and refine our Natures to raise and purifie our Minds to prepare and fit us for a higher and more Divine Condition the Soul being not capable or fit without it to enjoy the pleasures of God and Heaven And now I descend to their Speculative or Metaphysical Theologie which the Platonists stile Divine The Peripateticks Primitive Philosophie and include in it that which they call Sapience or Metaphysicks so that I shall not confine my self to matters meerly Theological but shall take in all the general Principles of Science especially because I do not intend a pursuit of all particular Disputes for that would be an endless undertaking but only some such General Exceptions as though they may have a more direct aspect on Metaphysical Speculations yet may concern their Philosophie in gross and cast an oblique look upon all its other parts This premised I proceed 1. The first thing therefore against which I except is their way of resolving knowledge into its first and fundamental Principles in that by rejecting the Testimony and Judgment of sense in matters of Philosophie they do but involve and perplex the Principles thereof under the pretext of a more abstracted and intellectual discovery of things For hereby the minds of men are taken off from the native Evidence of plain and palpable Truths and are fain to ground all their knowledge upon nice and subtle Speculations whereby at least clear and unquestionable Truths are resolved into Principles infinitely more uncertain and disputable then themselves And that the Platonick way of resolving knowledge is justly chargable herewith needs no other proof then barely to represent it They then suppose that the Truth of all Beings consists in a conformity to their Archetypal Ideas whereby they mean some General Patterns by which all the Individuals of each species are framed so that to investigate the Nature of things we must endeavour to know the Resemblance they have to their Originals and that therefore to reflect upon these and to consider their agreement with sensible things is the onely way to attain a certain knowledge of the Natures of the things themselves And therefore Plato concludes the Omniscience of the first Mind from the supposition that it is furnished with the Ideas of all things And that Mankind might be in a capacity of knowing the Natures of things he asserts that God has hang'd a multitude of these little Pictures of himself and all his Creatures in every mans understanding that by attending to them he might direct himself in his Conceptions and Notions of the things themselves and that herein alone consists the Nature of true Science and therefore the only difference he assignes between Science and Opinion is that the one attends to these unchangable Ideas but the other to the uncertain and variable Reports of sense And in another place discoursing more particularly of this Notion to the Science of a thing he requires a threefold knowledge viz. of
withall to pretend to demonstrative Evidence in these things Again when they confidently assert the First Mind to be the onely Author of Souls and that humane Souls were temper'd in the same Vessel where the Soul of the Universe had been wrought and that they were made out of some remaining fragments of that mixture out of which the Gods of the second and third Classis had been framed That the First Mind had deputed the Genii or Iunior Deities Guardians of his Of-spring and that it is they that Marry them to their Respective Vehicles When they define whether the Apostate Genii be purely immaterial and whether they be vitally united with matter and whether they were made peccable only by union with their Vehicles whether any of the Aerial Spirits be Atheists or no whether any of them be of a sportive droling humour and delight to effect Antick Prodigies in the Aire to abuse and affright silly Mortals How they change Intelligence and discourse together When they delineate the Cosmographie of the Archetypal World replenished with the Immaterial Ideas of all material Beings and describe the Systeme of the Invisible Heavens When they frame particular Hypotheses not onely of the nature of the Soul but of the manner of its living before its lapse into this life and after its return home again Lastly when they Graphically describe the manner of the worlds last and final Conflagration I might add too their Hypotheses about the manner of the worlds Production for unless they had been Spectators it was not possible for them to know in what way and method the Universe was Erected that depending wholly on the free Election of the Divine Will Though some Learned Men have thought it a mighty Confirmation of the Truth of the Mosaick Writings if they could but evince a consonancy of any of the Philosphers Hypotheses with the Mosaick Account of the Origine of the Universe as if their naked surmises could give any Testimony to Truth For either they received the Account they give from a credible Tradition and if so then Moses was the first Author thereof for none else could give any certain Account of the Process Providence was pleased to use in the Production of things but certainly t is no Argument of the Truth of the Mosaick Account because the Iews told it to the Egyptians and they to the Grecians for this can adde no Authority or Evidence to it Or else they were of their own framing and consequently were altogether groundless and unwarrantable Conjectures for it was surely impossible any mans Reason should tell him the particular Circumstances of the worlds Creation as that its material Principle was a Tohu and a Bohu that it was agitated by the Divine Spirit that several Portions were form'd at several times that all was finished in six days space rather then five or seven and the like this designe therefore of discovering a Consonancy between the Hypotheses of any of the Philosophers concerning the Origine of the Universe and the Mosaick Account thereof is absolutely scopeless and unprofitable But this is a digression that has thrust its self in here before I was aware of it To resume therefore my former Theme is it not the highest and most disingenuous madness for men to give such confident and definitive sentences in matters so remote and unaccountable All the forementioned particulars to which it were easie to add a thousand more are apparently beyond the reach of humane Cognisance and such things as cannot be known but by Revelation there being no other means to attain to any knowledge of things of their vast distance and remoteness And if we will but reflect upon our own Thoughts we must confess that we cannot perceive the Ideas of Beings that are not placed within the Horizon of Sense and those that pretend to a discovery of them had better pretend to Oracles Prophesies Illapses and Divinations then to the sober and steady Maximes of Philosophie And therefore 't is not unusual with the Platonists to pretend to a kind of Enthusiasme They stile themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the inspired Priests of Truth and their Philosophie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if it had been poured into them in a Divine and Extatical Fury and Proclus says it a thousand times of Plato and his Commentators that they did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if they had written with a kind of Bacchical Enthusiasme And they every where talk so like Prophets and Oracles as if they were inspired at least by a Bath-Col And 't is hugely pleasant to read their own Exorbitant Parades of the Exalted Divine and Extatick sublimity of Platonick Contemplation they boast so often of sequestring themselves from all Corporeal Commerce and soaring up into the Ethereal Regions that a man would expect News from the third Heaven every day If they were in good earnest we might expect strange discoveries indeed but alas these Sons of Imagination are as little troubled with Real Extasies as other men onely they are pleased to express the Frenzies of their fiery and subtle Fancies by these Allusions So that let them talk never so Seraphically of retiring from the trivial and common Entertainments of sense they do but sit down in the Theatre of Fancy and entertain themselves with the Idola Specus or Images of their own Complexion and though they take them for great Realities as other Sleepers do their Dreams yet when they awake out of their fanciful Visions and return to a strength and consistency of Reason they then discern them to have been only evanid Appearances represented as all Dreams are upon the Scene of Imagination Now 't is a great mistake of some men to think it necessary that we should be able to confute such vain and ungrounded Positions and that for this Reason because they are out of the Sphear of humane knowledge for though they may sometimes perchance like the Cartesian Vortices justle with some certain Truths belonging to our Sphear by reason of their Vicinity yet that happens by chance and is not necessary But being in their own Natures out of our View 't is not to be expected we should give any account of them because that would be to assert what we cannot know which is to commit the very fault we are now chastising 't is therefore sufficient to shew the absurdity of an assertion if I can evince it to be unevident though I can not to be untrue for it is not less unbecoming a Wise man to assent to an uncertainty than to an untruth because 't is not the real certainty of a Truth that is a sufficient motive of our assent but its evidence to us for all Truths are in themselves equally certain though not equally necessary and durable but 't is from the variety of evidence that the difference of our knowledge proceeds and howsoever assertions may be in themselves real and certain Truths yet unless they are evident as well as