Selected quad for the lemma: world_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
world_n	consequence_n	motion_n	vanish_v	40	3	16.2987	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A75307	A treatise concerning religions, in refutation of the opinion which accounts all indifferent· Wherein is also evinc'd the necessity of a particular revelation, and the verity and preeminence of the Christian religion above the pagan, Mahometan, and Jewish rationally demonstrated. / Rendred into English out of the French copy of Moyses Amyraldus late professor of divinity at Saumur in France.; Traitté des religions. English.	Amyraut, Moïse, 1596-1664.	1660 (1660)	Wing A3037; Thomason E1846_1; ESTC R207717	298,210	567

true Why did he refer all to the glory of God and nothing to his own Or if his project were to credit himself onely by misprising and debasing his own worth why did he not at least leave that authority to his children rather then to his domestick servant But he was so far from that that contrarily to what naturall affections dictate to men he made one of his attendants heir of his grandeur and left his own issue to fall into a low and contemptible condition in comparison of his own Certainly it must either be said that Moses was an impostor in forging both the history of the creation and others which he relates or if any credit be given to him in the narration of that History so remote from his own times then much rather ought he to be believed in his recital of things which befell himself of which there were so many witnesses either to confirm or convince them of falsity And surely they are abundantly confirmed in that they were never so much as accused or suspected Besides that their Posterity ha's received them from hand to hand as divine irrefragable truths and religiously maintained them for the space of many Ages Which they would never have done if the tradition of those ancient miracles had not from time to time been rendred authentique and worthy of perfect belief by extraordinary actions predictions judgements and deliverances in which appeared the singer of God I shall say something more since the matter leads me to it Namely that if the Philosophers against whom I dispute at present have vivacity and quicknes enough of understanding to be certainly perperswaded of the Creation of the World by reasons which their Wit is able to suggest to them and the Ancients did not observe I dare aver that would they take pains in reading the Books ot Moses with as much attention as they use in their own ratiocinations they would there more certainly remark that they are proceeded from divine inspiration then they could know of themselves that God ha's created and governs the World For there are not more lively and evident arguments in the World that God is the Author of it then there are in the Books of Moses alone to induce a belief that they are not of humane invention As I conceive if a man should have from the hand of Archimedes himself the description of those admirable Engines which he made and that he had replenish'd the same with as many tokens of his incomparable skill in the Mathematicks as there are traces of the Deity in the five books of Moses he would find therein as much or more cause to admire the extraordinary grandeur of that Personages Wit as in attentively considering his Machines and his Engines CHAP. IV. How much true Godliness is concern'd in the certain knowledge That the whole World is governed by a special Providence and That the same is no otherwise attainable but by Revelation HItherto we have discours'd largely of the Providence which governs the World and treated with the Philosophers of our Times as with persons that acknowledge it and yet we are not fully assured what their judgement is really concerning it although it be a thing highly important to our dispute For the Opinions of the Ancients have been very different about it and the Moderns hide themselves and do not willingly appear in publick in regard that the Christian Religion being universally receiv'd in Europe such as do not believe the same are look'd upon as Monsters so that it is very difficult to know distinctly what opinion they have of it If therefore they be of that perswasion which is attributed to Aristotle though some undertake to excuse him from it their piety towards the Deity must consequently be wholly cold and languid For Aristotle is accounted to have believ'd that the world being from eternity by emanation from God as the light proceeds from the Sun things are so necessarily disposed that God being the first Mover of the Heavens whether immediately or by the intervention of what he calls Intelligences he is also by consequence the Author of all things Because the other less universal motions depend on the Heavens and from those other less universal motions proceed all things which are produced in the World every cause acting sutable to its own Nature as the Water moves the wheel of a Mill and the wheel the Axeltree and that another less wheel and this also another till at length the motion arrives at the stone which bruises the corn and reduces the same into flower So that God is indeed authour of all things but as a universal cause which hath under it an infinite number of other subalternate and subordinate which are the proximate causes of effects which come into Being and which receive their power of acting from the influence of the first and most universal of all by the means of motion And forasmuch as things which are termed fortuitous and contingent do not depend on certain determined causes which are ligned by a sort of train to that superior universal one and consequently if they be administred by God they are administred by an Especial Providence they which discourse at that rate take no notice at all of them no more then of a thing which does not agree with their Principles Nor can it be denyed but that grand Philosopher seems very frequently to lay down the grounds of this Divinity although sometimes excellent sentences escape from him to the honor of a Particular Providence which is extended even to casual things or such as depend not on the concatenation of natural causes But it is to be fear'd that they are words spoken out of design to avoid the reproach which would have lain upon him of being too little religious or at most the eruptions and flashes of Nature which oftentimes surmounts the most deeply imprinted perverse opinions and causes a man to forget his own Maximes when they are contrary unto it how constant and resolved soever he be to maintain the same The Author of the Book De Mundo dedicated to Alexander seems to go a little higher and speaks of God and his Providence in more magnificent terms But in the first place the stile evidently shews that Aristotle never writ it and I should readily incline to their opinion who father it on Philo Judaeus whom the Books of Moses had imbued with many better and sounder opinions in relation to piety then all that ever was met with in Greece but he disguised himself on purpose and accommodated that elegant Treatise after the Greek mode Secondly in case it had proceeded from the hand of Aristotle yet it always terminates in this that God keeps himself in the Heavens onely and that it is not sutable to his glorious nature to be amongst frail and visible things and that he governs the World by means of subordinate causes in nature as the great King of Persia do's his Providences

of the Understanding of necessary consequence the Corporeal Gestures which proceed from the same must be extreamly different one from another So that as the Adoration of an infinite thing is an ingulphing of the cogitation in ravishment and admiration of it's object conjoyned with as profound humility as the soul of man is capable of without limitation restriction or reserve so the exterior comportments appendant to the same ought to be such as may most express the acknowledgement of our selves to be nothing and our deference of all honor and glory to that which we venerate But since the honor which is render'd to a finite thing is exactly confined and determined by our mind onely to so much as it is judged worthy of the same that is according to the measure of its Virtues humility also bounding it self where it deemes the extent of those Virtues to be so it must needs be that the Gestures of the Body likewise in representing our submission will represent that we do not offer it without some limitation and that we esteem not the thing beyond the value of its being Hence it is evident that in so great an incertainty of the Nature of God which we see according to the Doctrine of the Epicureans a man cannot boast to know assuredly it will be consequent that his Disciples be brought to render him such honor as is no more competent to him then that which one should assign to a beast in respect to the excellence of its Understanding and so mock him with impertinent service Or rather in stead of adoring him as God we shall honor him as a man like as if one should make the same account of a Grand Personage and a Handsome Horse which would be no Worship rendred to God but an outrage done to him and a Sacriledge Or lastly in case a man should happen to be in the right it would onely be by hazard And with what zeal can that service be accompanied or how can it be acceptable to God which is rendred inconsiderately and at a venture The second consideration requisite to be perpended concerning the Nature of God is whether he be corporeal or not of which they can in no wise be assured if they will hold themselves to their Principles For if there be nothing in the world that declares him clearly to them how come they to have so raised and sublime a spirit as to be able to divine of what his substance is composed But because heretofore their predecessors in disputing this Point against the other Philosophers found themselves wonderfully implicated what side soever they took they answered in a kind of illusion of the World that it was not a corporeal but in a manner a corporeal essence And although they assever that to injoy the Pleasures in which the Felicity of the Deity consists it is necessary the same should be instructed with some kind of Organes correspondent to the senses of our Bodies from whence it seems to result that they hold it to be really corporeal yet when they are press'd to speak affirmatively they have not the presumption to determine it so but recur to those illusions of words which place it between Bodies and Spirits as it were in an Imaginary Predicament Now this is of greater consequence then they deem it to be For if God be a substance that partakes nothing of the nature of Bodies to possess our imaginations with an Idea of him of corporeal shape how excellent soever it be is in stead of honouring him to defame his glorious Majesty in as much as a Nature absolutely simple and spiritual far surpassing in dignity the condition of Bodies whoever conceives the same under the Idea of a body debases it many degrees beneath the worth of its being Wherefore if besides the image they so frame of it in their thought they proceed further to represent the same in Marble or Copper by artifice of the hand what is this less then doing the same wrong which should be done to an Excellent Understanding in saying it resembled a Gourd And if he be corporeal and they do not conceive him so they will fall into the same inconvenience I mentioned above of worshiping not the truth of the thing to which they pretend to render honor but the dreams of their own fancy To what I have already evinced I shall further adjoyn that it is natural to men when they think upon any thing to transmit their Minds to the place in which they imagine such thing to be which is the reason why although we never were among the Mores and Toupinemboults yet we cannot restrain our selvs when we sometimes call them to remembrance srom sending our thoughts to the places of the Geographical Charts in which the Regions of their habitations are designed And if a Peasant happily hear mention of those remote people he presently fancies before his Fys the Sea that lyes nearest his habitation because he ha's understood it is necessary to pass over that to arrive at the place of the world where those Savages abide It is indeed nothing at all Incongruous or strange that Nature should have given us such inclinations because they serve in some measure to recreate and arrest ou●●inds whose thoughts being otherwise roving and without guidance would be lost and vanish of themselves as the irradiations of our eyes are dissipated in the wide Acr when there is nothing before us to arrest our view And notwithstanding we are conscious it is thus in all occasions yet it is more particularly remarkable when ever we find our selves agitated with some vehement passion of Love and Desire Fear or Hope Now if the Epicureans represent to themselves a Deity of a finite Nature whether Corporeal or Incorporeal it matters not I would demand of them to what side of him is it that their thoughts guide them Have they credible intelligence where God is in the Heaven or in the Air in the Sea or in the Center of the Earth For as for other men they indeed are perswaded that he is in the Heavens because they believe he hath there display'd at the beginning and doth likewise still display more Effects of his eternal Power and inexpressible Goodness But the Epicureans are persons that acknowledge no tract or appearance of these Attributes imagining that admirable and glorious Machine of the Celestial Fabrick to have been composed of so many Spheres in the fair order we behold onely by the accidental meeting of Atomes But if the Splendor of that Radiant Arche seems to them a more sutable residence for the Deity then habitation on the earth or in the recesses of the other Elements who hath informed them in which Hemisphere he is whether in ours or in that of the Antipodes Then if by that chance to which they ascribe all things they should hit so luckily or determine their sancies to think him on the side of our Hemisphere will not the Epicureans that are on

power then other men to conjoyn them actually and really together In which impossibility of amassing a supreme Good in the World of so many pieces and consolidating them so well together that their Union be never discompos'd who sees not the necessary despair there is of all humane power to obtain the same Which despair of obtaining cannot of consequence but cause the pursuit to be abandon'd So that as Nature hath given us the Desire to be happy Necessity will have bound us down to a perpetual despair of being so And the most excellent of all things in the world and for which all the rest seem to have been made shall never arrive to its end but shall appear as if it were purposely framed to be tormented continually with the dispair of never being able to reach it's injoyment In which respect that of Horace to a Miser will be as applicable to every man Tantalus a labris sitiens fugientia captat Flumina quid rides mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur I shall proceed yet something further The desires which men have are of two sorts Of which the first are conformable to Nature and do nothing at all encounter reason The second are extravagant and repugnant thereunto As if a man should desire to be all spirit and to have no Body at all this were an extravagance to which right reason cannot assent For t is to desire not onely a thing which will not but likewise which cannot be being involved in a manifest contradiction in as much as a man cannot be a man without having a body nor have a body and be all spirit together And if he should desire to be metamorphis'd into the nature of those simple Intelligences which we commonly called Angels and are not destinated to be conjoyned to Bodies his wish would not be less absurd Because in case he should become such a simple and immaterial Intelligence he were no longer the same person but should in effect desire the abolition of his own being for that in transmutations wherein the form it self of the thing as they speak perishes the thing perishes also Whence it would concern him as little to be an Angel as to be a Dog and to desire one as the other It is not from such desires as these that we are to deduce arguments to shew what is the nature of man and of his Soul because they which make them deviate from the rules of Nature The other sort of wishes which are suggested by her and are not thwarted or checked by reason which I say do not destroy the form of our being but ennoble and advance it are they which ought to be taken for manifest indices either of what we naturally are or at least of what we ought to be For whence should those desires happen to us if they be not inspir'd by Nature And to what end should they have been placed in us if that of which we received of them never intended to give us the satisfaction and injoyment they aim at Admitting it were possible for us to compass all those things which are necessary to make up the supream Good of Aristotle and that we were in full possession thereof besides that natural desire of the supreme Good which might seem to be contented in the injoyment there would be left another not less vehement or less inrooted in us which is that of the perpetuity of such felicity without any alteration or interruption whatsoever Now when we should with all imaginable care have cemented the parts together that compose it when we should have nailed linked and invested them so that there would be nothing but death able to dissolve the junctures yet it would last but for our Life our Life could not last to the end of an Age. And then what would become of those desires of injoying the same for millions of years even to perpetuity But some may here arrest my course and demand whether experience shows not that it is impossible to obtain a beatitude durable for ever For who is he that is exempted from Death Wherefore since wise persons do not onely not consult about things absolutely impossible but do not so much as desire them or if they happen to let a wish escape from them by some suddain impetus of nature they presently bring the discourse of reason to repress it it follows necessarily that such desire of a perpetual felicity is out of the limits of reason and by consequence ought to be check'd by it rather then cherish'd and encouraged For death which happens universally without priviledge to any renders not the injoyment of a perpetual Good more impossible to all men then the weaknes of our minds the inclination which we have naturally to vice and the infinite multitude of inevitable miseries attending humane condition renders impossible the possession of the Happiness which Aristotle describes and terminates within the duration of our Lives And nevertheless none ever condemned that desire in man of his felicity none ever accounted it but both natural and reasonable Moreover it is manifest that all the World desires Immortality and the things which we have already deduced demonstrate the same Yet there never was any person that attain'd it Must it therefore be concluded that the desire of it is absurd and besides the rules of reason and Nature Epicurus himself did not account it so who amidst the gripings of the Stone and upon the very confines of death comforts himself with the immortal glory which his Philosophical contemplations had acquired and should preserve for him to perpetuity Cicero professeth Death is terrible to them who leave nothing of themselves after departure out of this life but not to those whose praises cannot dye Alexander esteemed Achilles happy in that he had Homer to celebrate his Virtues and high atchievments of Armes being his memory would remain consecrated to eternity in the Poem of the Iliads And himself made profession that he did not at all fear death because he beliv'd his victories would render him immortal And not so much but Ennius the Poet presag'd he should live for ever in the mouthes and memories of men by means of his Verses Ovid and Horace promise themselves nothing less from their Works then that they shall continue their names throughout all successions of time speaking of them as trophies erected to exempt them from the Power of the Fatal Sisters Such as cannot hope the same from their works or great exploits expect at least to survive in their children and would be very effectually comforted against death if they could be assured that by help of their Pictures or Front of their Houses their posterity should retain the remembrance of their countenances from age to age Therefore as the impossibility of obtaining from this Life the supreme Good described by Aristotle do's not hinder but that man was framed by nature to possess it and as the impossibility of obtaining immortality do's as