Revelation in their Inquiries into Natural things do yet both think and as to the two first of them very plausibly prove the three grand Principles of Epicurus That the little Bodies he calls Atoms are indivisible That they all have their motion from themselves and That there is a vacuum in rerum naturâ to be as repugnant to meer Reason as the Epicureans think the Notion of an Incorporeal Substance or the Creation of the World or the Immortality of the Soul And as for the new Somatici such as Mr. Hobbs and some few others by what I have yet seen of his I am not much tempted to forsake any thing that I look'd upon as a Truth before ev'n in Natural Philosophy it self upon the score of what he though never so confidently delivers by which hitherto I see not that he hath made any great discovery either of new Truths or old Errors An Honourable Member of the Royal Society hath elsewhere purposely shewn how ill he has prov'd his own Opinions about the Air and some other Physical Subjects and how ill he has understood and oppos'd those of his Adversary But to give you in this place a Specimen how little their repugnancy to his Principles or Natural Philosophy ought to affright us from those Theological Doctrines they contradict I shall here but not in the Body of this Discourse for fear of too much interrupting it examine the fundamental Maxim of his whole Physicks That nothing is removed but by a Body contiguous and moved it having been already shewn by the Gentleman newly mention'd that as to the next to it which is that there is no vacuum whether it be true or no he has not prov'd it If no Body can possibly be moved but by a Body contiguous and moved as Mr. Hobbs teaches I demand How there comes to be Local motion in the World For either all the portions of matter that compos'd the Universe have motion belonging to their Nature which the Epicureans affirm'd for their Atoms or some parts of Matter have this motive power and some have not or else none of them have it but all of them are naturally devoid of Motion If it be granted that Motion does naturally belong to all parts of Matter the dispute is at an end the concession quite overthrowing the Hypothesis If it be said that naturally some portions of Matter have Motion and others not then the Assertion will not be Universally true For though it may hold in the parts that are naturally moveless or quiescent yet it will not do so in the others there being nothing that may shew a necessity why a Body to which Motion is natural should not be capable of moving without being put into motion by another contiguous and moved And if there be no Body to which Motion is natural but every Body needs an outward movent it may well be demanded How there comes to be any thing Locally mov'd in the World which yet constant and obvious experience demonstrates and Mr. Hobbs himself cannot deny For if no part of Matter have any Motion but what it must owe to another that is contiguous to it and being it self in Motion impels it and if there be nothing but Matter in the World how can there come to be any Motion amongst Bodies since they neither have it upon the score of their own nature nor can receive it from external Agents If Mr. Hobbs should reply that the Motion is impress'd upon any of the parts of the Matter by God he will say that which I most readily grant to be true but will not serve his turn if he would speak congruously to his own Hypothesis For I demand Whether this Supreme Being that the Assertion has recourse to be a Corporeal or an Incorporeal Substance If it be the latter and yet be the efficient Cause of Motion in Bodies then it will not be Universally true that whatsoever Body is moved is so by a Body contiguous and moved For in our supposition the Bodies that God moves either immediately or by the intervention of any other Immaterial Being are not moved by a Body contiguous but by an Incorporeal Spirit But because Mr. Hobbs in some Writings of his is believed to think the very Notion of an Immaterial Substance to be absurd and to involve a Contradiction and because it may be subsum'd that if God be not an Immaterial Substance he must by Consequence be a Material and Corporeal one there being no Medium Negationis or third Substance that is none of those two I answer That if this be said and so that Mr. Hobbs's Deity be a Corporeal one the same difficulty will recurr that I urg'd before For this Body will not by Mr. Hobbs's calling or thinking it divine cease to be a true Body and consequently a portion of Divine Matter will not be able to move a portion of our Mundane Matter without it be it self contiguous and moved which it cannot be but by another portion of Divine Matter so qualified to impress a Motion nor this again but by another portion And besides that it will breed a strange confusion in rendring the Physical Causes of things unless an expedient be found to teach us how to distinguish accurately the Mundane Bodies from the Divine which will perhaps prove no easie task I see not yet how this Corporeal Deity will make good the Hypothesis I examine For I demand How this Divine Matter comes to have this Local Motion that is ascrib'd to it If it be answer'd That it hath it from its own Nature without any other Cause since the Epicureans affirm the same of their Atoms or meerly Mundane Matter I demand How the Truth of Mr. Hobbs's Opinion will appear to me to whom it seems as likely by the Phaenomena of Nature that occur that Mundane Matter should have a congenit Motion as that any thing that is Corporeal can be God and capable of moving it which to be it must for ought we know have its Subsistence divided into as many minute parts as there are Corpuscles and Particles in the World that move separately from their neighbouring ones And to draw towards a Conclusion I say that these minute Divine Bodies that thus moved those portions of Mundane Matter concerning which Mr. Hobbs denies that they can be moved but by Bodies contiguous and moved these Divine Substances I say are according to the late supposition true Bodies and yet are moved themselves not by Bodies contiguous and moved but by a Motion which must be Innate deriv'd or flowing from their very essence or nature since no such Body is pretended to have a Being as cannot be refer'd as a portion either to the Mundane or the Divine Matter In short since Local Motion is to be found in one if not in both of these two Matters it must be natural to at least some parts of one of them in Mr. Hobbs's Hypothesis for though he should grant an Immaterial Being
again to life Lazarus and Christ of the latter of which particularly we have Proofs cogent enough to satisfie any unprejudiced Person that desires but competent Arguments to convince him And that the miraculous Power of God will be as well as his Veracity is engaged in raising up the Dead and may suffice if 〈◊〉 be so we may not difficultly gatheâ— from that excellent Admonition of ouâ— Saviour to the Sadduces where he tellâ— them as I elsewhere noted that thâ— two Causes of their Errors are their noâ— knowing the Scriptures wherein God hath declared he will raise the Dead nor the Power of God by which he is able to effect it But the engagement of Gods Omnipotence is also in that place clearly intimated by St. Paul Act. 26.8 where he asks King Agrippa and his other Auditors why they should think it a thing not to be believed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that GOD should raise the Dead And the same Truth is yet more fully exprest by the same Apostle where speaking of Christ returning in the Glory and Power of his Father to judge all Mankind after he has said that this divine Judge shall transform or transfigure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our vile Bodies speaking of his own and those of other Saints to subjoin the Account on which this shall be done he adds that 't will be according to the powerful working 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereby he is able even to subdue all things to himself Phil. 3.21 And now 't will be seasonable to apply what has been deliver'd in the whole past Discourse to our present purpose Since then a Humane Body is not so confin'd to a determinate Bulk but that the same Soul being united to a portion of duly organized Matter is said to constitute the same Man notwithstanding the vast differences of bigness that there may be at several times between the portions of Matter whereto the Humane Soul is united Since a considerable part of the Humane Body consists of Bones which are Bodies of a very determinate Nature and not apt to be destroyed by the operation either of Earth or Fire Since of the less stable and especially the fluid parts of a Humane Body there is a far greater expence made by insensible Transpiration than even Philosophers would imagine Since the small Particles of a resolved Body may retain their own Nature under various alterations and disguises of which 't is possible they may be afterwards stript Since without making a Humane Body cease to be the same it may be repaired and augmented by the adaptation of congruously disposed Matter to that which pre-existed in it Since I say these things are so why should it be impossible that a most intelligent Agent whose Omnipotency extends to all that is not truly contradictory to the nature of things or to his own should be able so to order and watch the Particles of a Humane Body as that partly of those that remain in the Bones and partly of those that copiously flie away by insensible Transpiration and partly of those that are otherwise disposed of upon their resolution a competent number may be preserved or retrieved so that stripping them of their disguises or extricating them from other parts of Matter to which they may happen to be conjoined he may reunite them betwixt themselves and if need be with particles of Matter fit to be contexted with them and thereby restore or reproduce a Body which being united with the former Soul may in a sense consonant to the expressions of Scripture recompose the same Man whose Soul and Body were formerly disjoined by Death What has been hitherto discours'd supposes the Doctrine of the Resurrection to be taken in a more strict and literal sense because I would shew that even according to that the difficulties of answering what is mentioned against the possibility of it are not insuperable though I am not ignorant that it would much facilitate the defence and explication of so abstruse a thing if their opinion be admitted that allow themselves a greater latitude in expounding the Article of the Resurrection as if the substance of it were That in regard the Humane Soul is the form of Man so that whatever duly organized portion of Matter 't is united to it therewith constitutes the same Man the import of the Resurrection is fulfilled in this that after Death there shall be another state wherein the Soul shall no longer persevere in its separate condition or as it were Widowhood but shall be again united not to an etherial or the like fluid Matter but to such a substance as may with tolerable propriety of speech notwithstanding its differences from our houses of Clay as the Scripture speaks be call'd a Humane Body Job 4.19 They that assent to what has been hitherto discours'd of the Possibility of the Resurrection of the same Bodies will I presume be much more easiâ—y induc'd to admit the Possibility of the Qualifications the Christian Religion ascribes to the glorified Bodies of the raised Saints For supposing the Truth of the History of the Scriptures we may observe that the Power of God has already extended itself to the performance of such things as import as much as we need infer sometimes by suspending the natural actings of Bodies upon one another and sometimes by endowing humane and other Bodies with preternatural Qualities And indeed Lightness or rather Agility indifferent to Gravity and Levity Incorruption Transparency and Opacity Figure Colour c. being but Mechanical affections of Matter it cannot be incredible that the most free and powerful Author of those Laws of Nature according to which all the Phaenomena of Qualities are regulated may as he thinks fit introduce establish or change them in any assign'd portion of Matter and consequently in that whereof a Humane Body consists Thus though Iron be a Body above eight times heavier bulk for bulk than Water yet in the case of Elisha's helve its native Gravity was render'd ineffectual and it emerg'd from the bottom to the top of the water And the gravitation of St. Peters Body was suspended whilst his Master commanded him and by that command enabled him to come to him walking on the Sea Thus the Operation of the activest Body in Nature Flame was suspended in Nebuchadnezar's fiery Furnace whilst Daniels three Companions walked unharm'd in those Flames that in a trice consum'd the kindlers of them Thus did the Israelites Manna which was of so perishable a Nature that it would corrupt in little above a day when gather'd in any day of the Week but that which preceded the Sabbath keep good twice as long and when laid up before the Ark for a Memorial would last whole Ages uncorrupted And to add a Proof that comes more directly home to our purpose the Body of our Saviour after his Resurrection though it retained the very impressions that the Nails of the Cross had made in his hands and feet and the wound that the Spear had made in his side and was still call'd in the Scripture his Body as indeed it was and more so than according to our past discourse it is necessary that every Body should be that is rejoin'd to the Soul in the Resurrection And yet this glorified Body had the same Qualifications that are promised to the Saints in their state of Glory St. Paul informing us that our vile Bodies shall be transform'd into the likeness of his glorious Body which the History of the Gospel assures us was endow'd with far nobler Qualities than before its Death And whereas the Apostle adds as we formerly noted that this great change of Schematism in the Saints Bodies will be effected by the irresistible Power of Christ we shall not much scruple at the admission of such an effect from such an Agent if we consider how much the bare slight Mechanical alteration of the Texture of a Body may change its sensible Qualities for the better For without any visible additament I have several times chang'd dark and opacous Lead into finely colour'd transparent and specifically lighter glass And there is another instance which though because of its obviousness 't is less heeded is yet more considerable For who will distrust what advantageous changes such an Agent as God can work by changing the Texture of a portion of Matter if he but observe what happens meerly upon the account of such a Mechanical change in the lighting of a Candle that is newly blown out by the applying another to the ascending smoke For in the twinkling of an Eye an opacous dark languid an stinking smoke loses all its stink and is changed into a most active penetrant and shining Body FINIS
for a Christian to deny his Reason And then we shall proceed to examine Whether though he need not disclaim his Reason it be nevertheless his Duty so to do SECT I. To proceed then to the Considerations that make up the former Part of this Epistle I shall in the first place distinguish betwixt that which the Christian Religion it self teaches and that which is taught by this or that Church or Sect of Christians and much more by this or that particular Divine or Schoolman I Need not persuade you who cannot but know it so well already that there are many things taught about the Attributes and Decrees of God the Mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation and divers other Theological Subjects about which not only private Christians but Churches of Christians do not at all agree There are too many Men whose Ambition or Boldness or Self-conceit or Interest leads them to obtrude upon others as parts of Religion Things that are not only Strangers but oftentimes Enemies to it And there are others who out of an indiscreet Devotion are so sollicitous to increase the Number and the Wonderfulness of Mysteries that to hear them propose and Discourse of things one would judge that they think it is the office of Faith not to elevate but to trample upon Reason and that things are then fittest to be believ'd when they are not clearly to be proved or understood And indeed when on the one side I consider the charitable design of the Gospel and the candid simplicity that shines in what it proposes or commands and on the other side what strange and wild Speculations and Inferences have been father'd upon it not only in the Metaphysical Writings of some Schoolmen but in the Articles of Faith of some Churches I cannot but think that if all these Doctrines are parts of the Christian Religion the Apostles if they were now alive would be at best but Catechumini and I doubt not but many of the nice Points that are now much valued and urg'd by some would be as well disapproved by St. Paul as by Aristotle and should be as little entertain'd by an Orthodox Divine as a Rigid Philosopher I do not therefore allow all that for Gospel which is taught for such in a Preachers Pulpit or ev'n a Professors Chair And therefore if Scholastick Writers of what Church soever take the liberty of imposing upon the Christian Religion their Metaphysical Speculations or any other meerly humane Doctrines as matters of Faith I who not without some Examination think Metaphysicks themselves not to have been for the most part over-well understood and apply'd shall make bold to leave all such private Doctrines to be defended by their own Broachers or Abettors and shall deny that it will follow That in case of this multitude of Placets which some bold Men have been pleased to adopt into the Catalogue of Christian Verities any or all should be found inconsistent with right Reason the Christian Religion must be so too For by that name I understand onely that System of Reveal'd Truths that are clearly deliver'd in the Scriptures or by legitimate and manifest consequences deduc'd thence And by this one Declaration so many unnecessary and perhaps hurtful Retainers to Christianity will be at once thrown off that I doubt not but if you consider the Matter aright you will easily discern that by this first Distinction I have much lessen'd the work that is to be done by those that are to follow it SECT II. In the next place among the things that seem not rational in Religion I make a great difference between those in which unenlightned Reason is manifestly a competent Judge and those which Natural Reason it self may discern to be out of its Sphere You will allow me That Natural Theology is sufficient to evince the Existence of the Deity and we know that many of the old Philosophers that were unassisted by Revelation were by the force of Reason led to discover and confess a God that is a Being supremely perfect under which Notion divers of them expresly represent him Now if there be such a Being 't is but reasonable to conceive that there may be many things relating to his Nature his Will and his management of things that are without the Sphere of meer or unassisted Reason For if his Attributes and Perfections be not fully comprehensible to our Reason we can have but inadequate Conceptions of them and since God is a Being toto Caelo as they speak differing from all other Beings there may be some things in his Nature and in the manner of his Existence which is without all Example or perfect Analogy in inferior Beings For we see that ev'n in Man himself the Coexistence and intimate Union of the Soul and Body that is an Immaterial and a Corporeal substance is without all President or Parallel in Nature And though the truth of this Union may be prov'd yet the manner of it was never yet nor perhaps ever will be in this Life clearly understood to which purpose I shall elsewhere say more Moreover if we suppose God to be Omnipotent that is to be able to do whatever involves no Contradiction that it should be done we must allow him to be able to do many things that no other Agent can afford us any Examples of and some of them perhaps such as we who are but finite and are wont to judge of things by Analogy cannot conceive how they can be perform'd Of the last sort of things may be the recollecting a sufficient quantity of the scatter'd matter of a Dead humane Body and the contriving of it so that whether alone or with some addition of other Particles upon a reconjunction with the Soul it may again constitute a living Man and so effect that Wonder we call the Resurrection Of the latter sort is the Creation of Matter out of nothing and much more the like Production of those Rational and Intelligent Beings Humane Souls For as for Angels good or bad I doubt whether meer Philosophy can evince their Existence though I think it may the possibility thereof And since we allow the Deity a Wisdom equal to this boundless Power 't is but reasonable to conceive that these unlimited Attributes conspiring may produce Contrivances and frame Designs which we Men must be unable at least of our selves sufficiently to understand and to reach to the bottom of And by this way of arguing it may be made to appear That there may be many things relating to the Deity above the reach of unenlightned humane Reason Not that I affirm all these things to be in their own Nature incomprehensible to us though some of them may be so when they are once propos'd but that Reason by its own light could not discover them particularly and therefore it must owe its knowledge of them to Divine Revelation And if God vouchsafes to disclose those things to us since not only he must needs know about his own
that I need not to accommodate them to it alter one of them and therefore shall transcribe them just as they lie Si fortè nobis Deus de seipso vel aliis aliquid revelet quod naturales Ingenii nostri vires excedat qualia sunt mysteria Incarnationis Trinitatis non recusabimus illa credere quamvis non clarè intelligamus nec ullo modo mirabimur multa esse tum in immensa ejus natura tum etiam in rebus ab eo creatis quae captum nostrum excedant And let me add on this occasion that whereas the main Scruples that are said to be suggested by Philosophy against some mysterious Articles of Religion are grounded upon this that the Modus as they speak of those things is not clearly conceivable or at least is very hardly explicable these objections are not always so weighty as perhaps by the confidence wherewith they are urg'd you may think them For whereas I observ'd to you already that there are divers things maintain'd by School Divines which are not contained in the Scripture that observation is chiefly applicable to the things we are considering since in several of these nice Points the Scripture affirms only the thing and the Schoolmen are pleas'd to add the Modus And as by their unwarrantable boldness the School Divines determine many things without Book so the scruples and objections that are made against what the Scripture really delivers are usually grounded upon the Erroneous or Precarious Assertions of the School Philosophers who often give the Title of Metaphysical Truths to Conceits that do very little deserve that name and to which a rigid Philosopher would perhaps think that of Sublime Nonsense more proper But of this I elsewhere say enough and therefore shall now proceed to the consideration I chiefly intended viz. That from hence That the Modus of a revealed Truth is either very hard or not at all explicable it will not necessarily follow that the thing it self is irrational provided the positive Proofs of its Truth be sufficient in their kind For ev'n in Natural things Philosophers themselves do and must admit several things whereof they cannot clearly explicate or perhaps conceive the Modus I will not here mention the Origine of Substantial Forms as an instance in this kind because though it may be a fit one as to the Peripatetick Philosophy yet not admitting that there are any such Beings I will take no further notice of them especially because for a clear Instance to our present purpose we need go no further than our selves and consider the Union of the Soul and Body in man For who can Physically explain both how an immaterial Substance should be able to guide or determine and excite the motions of a Body and yet not be able to produce motion in it as by dead Palsies great Faintnesses c. it appears the Soul cannot and which is far more difficult how an incorporeal Substance should receive such Impressions from the motions of a Body as to be thereby affected with real pain and pleasure to which I elsewhere add some other properties of this Union which though not taken notice of are perhaps no less difficult to be conceiv'd and accounted for For how can we comprehend that there should be naturally such an intimate Union betwixt two such distant Substances as an Incorporeal Spirit and a Body as that the former may not when it pleases quit the latter which cannot possibly have any strings or chains that can tye or fasten to it that which has no Body on which they may take hold And I there shew that 't is full as difficult Physically to explicate how these so differing Beings come to be united as how they are kept from parting at pleasure both the one and the other being to be resolv'd into the meer appointment of God And if to avoid the abstruseness of the Modus of this Conjunction betwixt the Rational Soul and the Humane Body it be said as 't is by the Epicureans that the former is but a certain Contexture of the finer and most subtle parts of the latter the formerly propos'd abstruseness of the Union betwixt the Soul and the Body will indeed be shifted off but 't will be by a Doctrine that will not much relieve us For those that will allow no Soul in Man but what is Corporeal have a Modus to explain plain that I doubt they will alwayes leave a Riddle For of such I desire that they would explain to me who know no effects that Matter can produce but by Local Motion and Rest and the consequences of it how meer Matter let them suppose it as fine as they please and contrive it as well as they can can make Syllogisms and have Conceptions of Universals and invent speculative Sciences and Demonstrations and in a word do all those things which are done by Man and by no other Animal and he that shall intelligibly explicate to me the Modus of matters framing Theories and Ratiocinations will I confess not only instruct me but surprize me too And now give me leave to make this short Reflection on what has been said in this Section compar'd with what formerly I said in the first Section That if on the one hand we lay aside all the Irrational Opinions that the Schoolmen and other bold Writers have unwarrantably father'd on Christian Religion and on the other hand all the Erroneous Conceits repugnant to Christianity which the Schoolmen and others have prooflesly father'd upon Philosophy the seeming Contradictions betwixt solid Divinity and true Philosophy will appear to be but few as I think the Real ones will be found to be none at all SECT VI. The next Consideration I shall propose is That a thing may if singly or precisely consider'd appear Unreasonable which yet may be very Credible if consider'd as a Part of or a manifest Consequence from a Doctrine that is highly so Of this I could give you more Instances in several Arts and Sciences than I think fit to be here specifi'd and therefore I shall content my self to mention three or four When Astronomers tell us that the Sun which seems not to us a foot broad nor considerably bigger than the Moon is above a hundred and threescore times bigger than the whole Globe of the Earth which yet is forty times greater than the Moon the thing thus nakedly propos'd seems very Incredible But yet because Astronomers very skilful in their Art have by finding the Semidiameter of the Earth and observing the Parallaxes of the Planets concluded the proportion of these three Bodies to be such as has been mention'd or thereabout ev'n Learn'd and Judicious Men of all sorts Philosophers Divines and others think it not Credulity to admit what they affirm So the relations of Earthquakes that have reach'd divers hundreds of miles of Eruptions of fire that have at once overflown and burn'd vast Scopes of Land of the blowing up of Mountains by their
some time and having afterwards disappear'd has yet some years after that shew'd it self again And though as to this surprising Phaenomenon our Experimental Philosophers could have contributed nothing to the producing it and though 't is quite out of all the received Systems of the Heavens that Astronomers have hitherto deliver'd yet the Star it self may be a true Celestial light and may allow us to Philosophize upon it and draw Inferences from the Discoveries it makes us as well as we can from the Phaenomena of those Stars that are not extraordinary and of those Falling Stars that are within our own Ken and Region That the Supernatural things said to be perform'd by Witches and Evil Spirits might if true supply us with Hypotheses and Mediums whereby to constitute and prove Theories as well as the Phaenomena of meer nature seems tacitely indeed but yet sufficiently to be acknowledg'd by those modern Naturalists that care not to take any other way to decline the Consequences that may be drawn from such Relations than sollicitously to shew that the Relations themselves are all as I fear most of them are false and occasion'd by the Credulity or Imposture of Men. But not to do any more than glance at these matters let us proceed upon what is more unquestionable and consider that since ev'n our most Critical Philosophers do admit many of the astonishing Attributes of Magnetick Bodies which themselves never had occasion to see upon the Testimony of Gilbert and others who never were able to give the true causes of them because they look upon those Relators as honest Men and judicious enough not to be impos'd upon as to the matter of Fact Since I say such amazing things are believ'd by such severe Naturalists upon the Authority of Men who did not know the intimate nature of Magnetick Bodies and since these strange Phaenomena are not only assented to as true by the Philosophers we speak of but many Philosophical consequences are without haesitancy deduc'd from them without any blemish to the judgment of those that give their Assent both to the Things and the Inferences why should it be contrary to Reason to believe the Testimony of God either about his Nature which He can best and He alone can fully know or about the things which either he himself has done as the Creation of the World and of Man or which he means to do as the destroying the World whether the whole World or our great Vortex only I dispute not and the raising both of good and bad Men to life again to receive Rewards and Punishments according to their Demerits For methinks that Apostle argues very well who says If we receive the testimony of men 1 John v. 9. the testimony of God is greater especially about such things concerning his own Nature Will and Purposes as 't is evident that Reason by its own unassisted light cannot give us the knowledge of So that we Christians in assenting to Doctrines upon the account of Revelation need not nor do not reject the Authority of Reason but only appeal from Reason to it self i. e. from Reason as it is more slightly to its Dictates as 't is more fully inform'd Of which two sorts of Dictates there is nothing more rational than to prefer the latter to the former And for my part I am apt to think that if what has been represented in this Section were duly consider'd this alone would very much contribute to prevent or answer most of the Objections that make such of the Questioners of Religion as are not resolutely vitious entertain such hard thoughts of some Articles of the Christian Faith as if they were directly repugnant to Reason For as we were observing that is not to be look'd on as the judgment of Reason that is pronounc'd ev'n by a rational Man according to a Set of Notions though the Inferences from these would be rational in case there were nothing else fit to be taken into consideration by him that judges but that is rather to be look'd upon as the judgment of Reason which takes in the most Information procurable that is pertinent to the things under consideration And therefore Men though otherwise learn'd and witty shew themselves not equal Estimators of the case of those that believe the Articles we speak of when they pronounce them to assent Irrationally because the things they assent to cannot be demonstrated or maintain'd by meer natural Reason and would probably be rejected by Democritus Epicurus Aristotle or any other of the ancient Philosophers to whom they should be nakedly propos'd and whose judgment should be desir'd about them For although this Allegation would signifie much if we pretended to prove what we believe only by Arguments drawn from the nature of the thing assented to yet it will not signifie much in our case wherein we pretend to prove what we believe chiefly by Divine Testimony and therefore ought not to be concluded guilty of an Irrational Assent unless it can be shewn either that Divine Testimony is not duly challeng'd by us for the main of our Religion or that in the particular Articles we father something on that Testimony which is not contain'd in it or rightly deducible from it And to put us upon the proving our particular Articles of Faith sufficiently deliver'd in the Scriptures and not knowable without Revelation by Arguments meerly natural without taking notice of those we can bring for the proof of that Revelation on whose account we embrace those Articles is to challenge a Man to a Duel upon condition he shall make no use of his best weapons and is as unreasonable as if a Schoolman should challenge your Friend to prove that the Torrid Zone is inhabited against the Reasons that the Aristotelians are wont to give to prove it uninhabitable without allowing him to make use of the testimony of Navigators who assure us of the constant Brises that daily ventilate the Air and qualifie that heat which otherwise would not be supported and who furnish us with those other circumstances whereon to build our proofs which we that were never there can have but by Relation And indeed the limitations that Christian Religion puts to some of the dictates of Philosophy which were wont to be admitted in a more general and unrestrained Sense and the Doctrines about God and the Soul c. that it superadds to those which the light of Nature might lead Men to about the same Subjects though to some they may seem injurious to Philosophy and Reason are as little unkind to either as is the Gardener to a Crab-stock or some such other wild Plant when by cutting off some of the Branches and by making a slit in the Bark that he may graft on it a Pare-main or some other choice Apples by this seemingly hard usage he brings it to bear much nobler fruit than if left to its own natural condition it ever would have done I know not whether to all
pour the dissolved Camphire into a large proportion of that Liquor to whose upper parts it will immediately emerge white brittle strong-scented and inflameable Camphire as before One main Consideration I must add to the foregoing ones namely that Body and Body being but a parcel and a parcel of universal Matter Mechanically different either parcel may successively put on forms in a way of Circulation if I may so speak till it return to the form whence the reckoning was begun having only its Mechanical affections alter'd That all Bodies agree in one common Matter the Schools themselves teach making what they call the Materia Prima to be the common Basis of them all and their specifick differences to spring from their particular forms And since the true Notion of Body consists either alone in its Extension or in that and Impenetrability together it will follow that the differences which make the varieties of Bodies we see must not proceed from the Nature of Matter of which as such we have but one uniform Conception but from certain Attributes such as Motion Size Position c. that we are wont to call Mechanical Affections To this 't will be congruous that a determinate portion of Matter being given if we suppose that an intelligent and otherwise duly qualified Agent do watch this portion of Matter in its whole progress through the various forms it is made to put on till it come to the end of its course or series of changes if I say we suppose this and withal that this intelligent Agent lay hold of this portion of Matter cloath'd in its ultimate form and extricating it from any other parcels of Matter wherewith it may be mingled make it exchange its last Mechanical Affections for those which it had when the Agent first began to watch it in such case I say this portion of Matter how many changes and disguises soever it may have undergone in the mean time will return to be what it was and if it were before part of another Body to be reproduced it will become capable of having the same Relation to it that formerly it had To explain my meaning by a gross Example suppose a Man cut a large Globe or Sphere of soft Wax in two equal Parts or Hemispheres and of the one make Cones Cylinders Rings Screws c. and kneading the other with Dough make an appearance of Pie-crust Cakes Vermicell◠〈…〉 the Italians call Paste squeezed through a perforated Plate into the form of little Worms Wafers Biskets c. 't is plain that a Man may by dissolution and other ways separate the Wax from the Dough or Paste and reduce it in a Mould to the self-same Hemisphere of Wax it was before and so he may destroy all that made the other part of the Wax pass for several Bodies as Cones or Cylinders or Rings c. and may reduce it in a Mould to one distinct Semi-globe fit to be reconjoined to the other and so to recompose such a Sphere of Wax as they constituted before the Bisection was made And to give you an Example to the same purpose in a case that seems much more difficult if you look upon Precipitate carefully made per se you would think that Art has made a Body extreamly different from the common Mercury this being consistent like a Powder very red in colour and purgative and for the most part vomitive in operation though you give but four or five grains of it and yet if you but press this Pouder with a due heat by putting the component Particles into a new and fit motion you may reunite them together so as to re-obtain or re-produce the same running Mercury you had before the Precipitate per se was made of it Here I must beg your leave to recommend more fully to your thoughts that which soon after the beginning of this Discourse I did but purposely touch upon and invite you to consider with me that the Christian Doctrine doth not ascribe the Resurrection to Nature or any created Agent but to the peculiar and immediate operation of God who has declar'd that before the very last judgment he will raise the dead Wherefore when I lately mentioned some Chymical ways of recovering Bodies from their various disguises I was far from any desire it should be imagined that such ways were the only or the best that can possibly be employed to such an end For as the generality of Men without excepting Philosophers themselves would not have believed or thought that by easie Chymical ways Bodies that are reputed to have pass'd into a quite other nature should be reduc'd or restor'd to their former condition so till Chymistry and other parts of true Natural Philosophy be more throughly understood and farther promoted 't is probable that we can scarce now imagine what Expedients to reproduce Bodies a further discovery of the Mysteries of Art and Nature may lead us Mortals to And much less can our dim and narrow knowledge determine what means even Physical ones the most wise Author of Nature and absolute Governor of the World is able to employ to bring the Resurrection to pass since 't is a part of the imperfection of inferior Natures to have but an imperfect apprehension of the powers of one that is incomparably superior to them And even among us a Child though indowed with a reasonable Soul cannot conceive how a Geometrician can measure inaccessible heights and distances and much less how a Cosmographer can determine the whole compass of the Earth and Sea or an Astronomer investigate how far 't is from hence to the Moon and tell many years before what day and hour and to what degree she will be eclipsed And indeed in the Indies not only Children but rational illiterate Men could not perceive how 't was possible for the Europeans to converse with one another by the help of a piece of Paper at an hundred Miles distance and in a Moment produce Thunder and Lightning and kill Men a great way off as they saw Gunners and Musqueteers do and much less foretell an Eclipse of the Moon as Columbus did to his great advantage which things made the Indians even the chiefest of them look upon the Spaniards as persons of a more than humane Nature Now among those that have a true Notion of a Deity which is a Being both omnipotent and omniscient That he can do all and more than all that is possible to be performed by any way of disposing of Matter and Motion is a Truth that will be readily acknowledged since he was able at first to produce the world and contrive some part of the universal Matter of it into the Bodies of the first Man and Woman And that his power extends to the Re-union of a Soul and Body that have been separated by Death we may learn from the Experiments God has been pleased to give of it both in the Old Testament and the New especially in the raising