Chapter 3: The Wisdom of God Proven from Creation

Wisdom asserted to belong to this being. The production of this world by a mighty agent destitute of wisdom impossible. On consideration of: 1. What would be adverse to this production. 2. What would be wanting — some effects to which a designing cause will, on all hands, be confessed necessary, as having manifest characters of skill and design upon them. Absurd here to except the works of nature. Wherein at least equal characters of wisdom and design are to be seen, as in any the most confessed pieces of art, instanced in the frame and motion of heavenly bodies. A mean, unphilosophical temper to be more taken with novelties than common things of greater importance. Further instance in the composition of the bodies of animals. Two contrary causes of men not acknowledging the wisdom of their Maker herein. Progress is made from the consideration of the parts and frame, to powers and functions of terrestrial creatures. Growth, nutrition, propagation of kind, spontaneous motion, sensation. The pretence considered, that the bodies of animals are machines. 1. How improbable it is. 2. How little to the purpose. The powers of the human soul. It appears, notwithstanding them, it had a cause; by them, a wise and intelligent cause. It is not matter. That not capable of reason. They are not here reflected on who think reasonable souls made of refined matter by the Creator. Not being matter, nor arising from it, it must have a cause that is intelligent. 9. Goodness also belonging to this being.

We therefore add, that this being is wise and intelligent as well as powerful; upon the very view of this world it will appear so vast a power was guided by equal wisdom in the framing of it. Though this is accustomed to be the principal labor in proving the existence of a Deity, namely the proving that this universe owes its rise to a wise and designing cause — as may be seen in Cicero's excellent performance in this kind, and in various later writers — yet the placing so much of their endeavor herein seems in great part to have proceeded from this: that this has been chosen for the great medium to prove that it had a cause different from itself. But if that once be done a shorter way, and it fully appear that this world is not itself a necessary being, having the power of all the action and motion to be found in it, of itself (which already seems plain enough), and it does most evidently appear to have had a cause foreign to, or distinct from itself; though we shall not therefore the more carelessly consider this subject, yet no place of doubt seems to remain, but that this was an intelligent cause, and that this world was the product of wisdom and counsel, and not of mere power alone. For what imagination can be more grossly absurd, than to suppose this orderly frame of things to have been the result of so mighty a power, not accompanied or guided by wisdom and counsel? That is (as the case must now unavoidably be understood) that there is some being necessarily existent, of an essentially active nature, of inconceivably vast and mighty power and vigor, destitute of all understanding and knowledge, and consequently of any self-moderating principle, but acting always by the necessity of its own nature, and therefore to its very uttermost — that raised up all the alterable matter of the universe (to whose nature it is plainly repugnant to be of itself, or exist necessarily) out of nothing; and by the utmost exertion of that ungoverned power, put all the parts and particles of that matter into a wild hurry of impetuous motion, by which they have been compacted and digested into particular beings in that variety and order which we now behold. And surely to give this account of the world's origin is, as Cicero speaks, not to consider, but to cast lots what to say. And it were as mad a supposition as if one should suppose the twenty-one letters, formed (as the same author elsewhere speaks) in great numbers, of gold, or whatever else, and cast in any careless fashion together, and that of these loosely shaken out upon the ground, Ennius his Annals should result, so as to be distinctly legible, as now we see them. Nay, it were the supposition of a thing a thousand times more manifestly impossible.

2. For before we consider the gross absurdity of such a supposed production — that is, that a thing should be brought to pass by so mere a casualty, that so evidently requires an exquisitely formed and continued design, even though there were nothing positively to resist or hinder it — let it be considered what there will be that cannot but most certainly hinder any such production. To this purpose we are to consider, that it is a vast power which so generally moves the diffused matter of the universe.

Make an estimate of this by considering what is requisite to the continual whirling about of such huge bulks as this whole massive globe of earth (according to some), or, which is much more strange, the sun (according to others) with that inconceivably swift motion which this supposition makes necessary, together with the other planets, and the innumerable heavenly bodies besides, that are subject to the laws of a continual motion. Adding to this how mighty a power it is which must be sufficient to all the productions, motions, and actions of all other things.

Again, consider that all this motion, and motive power must have some source and fountain different from the dull and sluggish matter moved thereby, to which it already has appeared impossible it should originally and essentially belong.

Next, that the mighty active being which has been proved necessarily existent, and to which it must first belong, if we suppose it destitute of the self-moderating principle of wisdom and counsel, cannot but be always exerting its motive power, invariably and to the same degree — that is, to its very utmost — and can never cease or fail to do so. For its act knows no limit but that of its power (if this can have any) and its power is essential to it, and its essence is necessary.

Further, that the motion impressed upon the matter of the universe must upon this necessarily have received a continual increase, ever since it came into being.

That supposing this motive power to have been exerted from eternity, it must have been increased long ago to an infinite excess.

That hence the coalition of the particles of matter for the forming of anything had been altogether impossible. For let us suppose this exerted motive power to have been at any instant but barely sufficient for such a formation; because that could not be accomplished in an instant, it would by its continual moment-by-moment increase be grown so over-sufficient as in the next instant to dissipate the particles but now beginning to unite.

At least it would be most apparent, that if ever such a frame of things as we now behold could have been produced; that motive power, increased to so infinite an excess, must have shattered the whole frame in pieces many an age ago; or rather never have permitted that such a thing as we call an age, could possibly have been.

Our experience gives us not to observe any so destructive or remarkable changes in the course of nature. And this (as was long ago foretold) is the great argument of the atheistical scoffers in these latter days, that things are as they were from the beginning of the Creation to this day. But let it be soberly weighed how it is possible the general consistency which we observe things are at throughout the universe, and their steady orderly posture can stand with this momently increase of motion.

And that such an increase could not (upon the supposition we are now opposing) but have been, is most evident. For, not to insist that nothing of impressed motion is ever lost, but only imparted to other things (which they that suppose it do not therefore suppose, as if they thought being once impressed it could continue of itself, but that there is a constant equal supply from the first mover) we will admit that there is a continual decrease or loss, but never to the degree of its continual increase. For we see when we throw a stone out of our hand, whatever of the impressed force it does impart to the air through which it makes its way, it yet retains apart a considerable time, that carries it all the length of its journey, and all does not vanish and die away on the sudden. Therefore when we here consider the continual momently renewal of the same force, always necessarily going forth from the same mighty Agent without any moderation or restraint, every following impetus does so immediately overtake the former, that whatever we can suppose lost, is yet so abundantly over-supplied, that upon the whole it cannot fail to be ever growing, and to have grown to that all-destroying excess before-mentioned. From where therefore that famed restorer, and improver of some principles of the ancient Philosophy, has seen a necessity to acknowledge it, as a manifest thing, That God himself is the universal and primary cause of all the motions that are in the world, who in the beginning created matter, together with motion and rest; and does now by his ordinary concourse only, continue so much of motion and rest in it as he first put into it. For (says he) we understand it as a perfection in God, not only that he is unchangeable in himself, but that he works after a most constant and unchangeable manner. So that, excepting those changes, which either evident experience, or Divine Revelation renders certain, and which we know or believe to be without change in the Creator, we ought to suppose none in his works, lest thereby any inconstancy should be argued in himself. Therefore he grounds the laws and rules concerning motion which he afterwards lays down, of which we referred to one a little above.

It is therefore evident, that as without the supposition of a self-active being there could be no such thing as motion. So without the supposition of an intelligent being (that is, that the same being be both self-active and intelligent) there could be no regular motion, such as is absolutely necessary to the forming and continuing of any the compacted bodily substances which our eyes behold every day: Indeed, or of any whatever, suppose we their figures or shapes to be as rude, deformed, and useless, as we can imagine; much less such as the exquisite compositions, and the exact order of things in the Universe do evidently require, and discover.

And if there were no such thing carried in this supposition, as is positively adverse to the thing supposed, so as most certainly to hinder it (as we see plainly there is) yet the mere want of what is necessary to such a production is enough to render it impossible, and the supposition of it absurd. For it is not only absurd to suppose a production, which somewhat shall certainly resist and hinder, but which wants a cause to effect it: And it is not less absurd to suppose it effected by a manifestly insufficient and unproportionable cause, than by none at all. For as nothing can be produced without a cause, so no cause can work above or beyond its own capacity, and natural aptitude. Whatever therefore is ascribed to any cause, above and beyond its ability, all that surplusage is ascribed to no cause at all. And so an effect, in that part at least, were supposed without a cause. And if then it follows when an effect is produced that it had a cause; why does it not equally follow, when an effect is produced, having manifest characters of wisdom and design upon it, that it had a wise and designing cause? If it be said, there be some fortuitous or casual (at least undesigned) productions that look like the effects of wisdom and contrivance, but indeed are not, as the birds so orderly and seasonable making their nests, the bees their comb, and the spider its web, which are capable of no design. That exception needs to be well proved before it be admitted; and that it be plainly demonstrated both that these creatures are not capable of design; and that there is not a universal designing cause, from whose directive as well as operative influence no imaginable effect or event can be exempted; (In which case it will no more be necessary that every creature that is observed steadily to work towards an end should itself design and know it, than that an artificer's tools should know what he is doing with them, but if they do not, it is plain he must.) And surely it lies upon them who so except, to prove in this case what they say, and not be so precarious as to beg, or think us so easy as to grant so much, only because they have thought fit to say it, or would fain have it so. That is, that this or that strange event happened, without any designing cause.

But however I would demand of such as make this exception, whether they think there be any effect at all, to which a designing cause was necessary? Or which they will judge impossible to have been otherwise produced than by the direction and contrivance of wisdom and counsel? I little doubt but there are thousands of things, labored and wrought by the hand of man, concerning which they would presently, upon first sight, pronounce, they were the effects of skill, and not of chance: indeed, if they only considered their frame and shape, though they yet understood not their use and end. They would surely think (at least) some effects or other sufficient to argue to us a designing cause. And would they but soberly consider and resolve, what characters or footsteps of wisdom, and design might be reckoned sufficient to put us out of doubt, would they not, upon comparing, be brought to acknowledge; there are nowhere any, more conspicuous and manifest; than in the things daily in view, that go ordinarily with us under the name of the works of nature? From where it is plainly consequent, that what men commonly call universal Nature, if they would be content no longer to lurk in the darkness of an obscure and uninterpreted word, they must confess is nothing else but common Providence, that is the universal power which is everywhere active in the world, in conjunction with the unerring wisdom, which guides and moderates all its exertions and operations; or the wisdom which directs and governs that power. Otherwise when they see cause to acknowledge that such an exact order and disposition of parts, in very neat and elegant compositions, does plainly argue wisdom and skill in the contrivance; only they will distinguish and say, it is so in the effects of art, but not of nature. What is this but to deny in particular what they granted in general? To make what they have said signify nothing, more than if they had said, such exquisite order of parts is the effect of wisdom, where it is the effect of wisdom, but it is not the effect of wisdom, where it is not the effect of wisdom? And to trifle instead of giving a reason why things are so and so? And from where do they take their advantage for this trifling, or do hope to hide their folly in it; but that they think while what is meant by art is known, what is meant by nature cannot be known? But if it be not known, how can they tell but their distinguishing members are co-incident, and run into one? Indeed, and if they would allow the thing itself to speak, and the effect to confess, and dictate the name of its own cause; how plain is it that they do run into one, and that the expression imports no impropriety which we somewhere find in Cicero, The art of Nature, or rather that nature is nothing else but Divine Art, at least in as near an analogy as there can be, between any things Divine and Human? For, that this matter (even the thing itself, waiving for the present the consideration of names) may be a little more narrowly discussed, and searched into: Let some curious piece of workmanship be offered to such a skeptic's view, the making of which he did not see, nor of any thing like it, and we will suppose him not told that this was made by the hand of any man, nor that he has any thing to guide his judgment about the way of its becoming what it is; but only his own view of the thing itself; and yet he shall presently without hesitation pronounce, This was the effect of much skill. I would here inquire why do you so pronounce? Or what is the reason of this your judgment? Surely he would not say he has no reason at all, for this so confident, and unwavering determination. For then he would not be determined, but speak by chance, and be indifferent to say that or any thing else. Something or other there must be that when he is asked, is this the effect of skill? shall so suddenly, and irresistibly captivate him into an assent that it is, that he cannot think otherwise. In fact, if a thousand men were asked the same question, they would as undoubtingly say the same thing? And then since there is a reason for this judgment, what can be devised to be the reason, but that there are so manifest characters and evidences of skill in the composure, as are not attributable to any thing else? Now here I would further demand, is there any thing in this reason, yes or no? Does it signify any thing, or is it of any value to the purpose for which it is alleged? Surely it is of very great, in as much as when it is considered, it leaves it not in a man's power to think any thing else; and what can be said more potently and efficaciously to demonstrate? But now if this reason signify any thing, it signifies thus much; that wherever there are equal characters and evidences of skill (at least where there are equal) a skillful Agent must be acknowledged. And so it will (in spite of cavil) conclude universally (and abstractly from what we can suppose distinctly signified by the terms of Art and Nature) that whatever effect has such or equal characters of skill upon it, did proceed from a skillful cause. That is, that if this effect be said to be from a skillful cause, as such, (namely, as having manifest characters of skill upon it) then, every such effect (namely, that has equally manifest characters of skill upon it) must be with equal reason concluded to be from a skillful cause.

We will acknowledge skill to act, and wit to contrive, very distinguishable things, and in reference to some works (as the making some curious automaton or self-moving engine) are commonly lodged in divers subjects, that is the contrivance exercises the wit and invention of one, and the making, the manual dexterity and skill of others. But the manifest characters of both will be seen in the effect. That is the curious elaborateness of each several part shows the later, and the order and dependence of parts, and their conspiracy to one common end, the former. Each betokens design (or at least the smith or carpenter must be understood to design his own part, that is, to do, as he was directed.) Both together do plainly bespeak an agent that knew what he did. And that the thing was not done by chance, or was not the casual product, of only being busy at random, or making a careless stir without aiming at any thing. And this no man that is in his wits would upon sight of the whole frame, more doubt to assent to, than that two and two make four. And he would certainly be thought mad, that should profess to think that only by some one's making a blustering stir among several small fragments of brass, iron, and wood, these parts happened to be thus curiously formed, and came together into this frame of their own accord.

Or lest this should be thought to intimate too rude a representation of their conceit, who think this world to have fallen into this frame and order wherein it is by the agitation of the moving parts or particles of matter without the direction of a wise mover; and that we may also make the case as plain as is possible to the most ordinary capacity. We will suppose (for instance) that one who had never before seen a watch, or any thing of that sort, has now this little engine first offered to his view; can we doubt, but he would upon the mere sight of its figure, structure, and the very curious workmanship which we will suppose appearing in it, presently acknowledge the artificer's hand? But if he were also made to understand the use and purpose for which it serves; and it were distinctly shown him, how each thing contributes, and all things in this little fabric, concur to this purpose, the exact measuring and dividing of time, by minutes, hours, and months, he would certainly both confess and praise the great ingenuity of the first inventor. But now if a bystander, beholding him in this admiration, would undertake to show a profounder reach and strain of wit, and should say, Sir, you are mistaken concerning the composition of this so much admired piece; it was not made or designed by the hand or skill of any one; there were only an innumerable company of little atoms, or very small bodies, much too small to be perceived by your sense, that were busily frisking and plying to and fro about the place of its nativity; and by a strange chance (or a stranger fate, and the necessary laws of that motion which they were unavoidably put into, by a certain boisterous, undesigning mover) they fell together into this small bulk, so as to compose it into this very shape and figure, and with this same number and order of parts, which you now behold. One squadron of these busy particles (little thinking what they were about) agreeing to make up one wheel, and another, some other, in that proportion which you see. Others of them also falling and becoming fixed in so happy a posture and situation as to describe the several figures by which the little moving fingers, point out the hour of the day, and day of the month. And all conspired to fall together, each into its own place, in so lucky a juncture, as that the regular motion failed not to ensue, which we see is now observed in it. What man is either so wise or so foolish (for it is hard to determine whether the excess or defect should best qualify him to be of this faith) as to be capable of being made believe this piece of natural history? And if one should give this account of the production of such a trifle, would he not be thought in jest? But if he persist and solemnly profess that thus he takes it to have been, would he not be thought in good earnest mad? And let but any sober reason judge whether we have not unspeakably more manifest madness to contend against in such as suppose this world, and the bodies of living creatures to have fallen into this frame and orderly disposition of parts wherein they are, without the direction of a wise and designing cause? And whether there be not an incomparably greater number of most wild and arbitrary suppositions, in their fiction, than in this? Besides the innumerable supposed repetitions of the same strange chances all the world over; even as numberless, not only as productions, but as the changes that continually happen to all the things produced. And if the concourse of atoms could make this world, why not (for it is but little to mention such a thing as this) a porch, or a temple, or a house, or a city, (as Tully speaks in the before recited place) which were less operous and much more easy performances?

It is not to be supposed that all should be astronomers, anatomists, or natural philosophers that shall read these lines. And therefore it is intended not to insist upon particulars, and to make as little use as is possible of terms, that would only be agreeable to that supposition. But surely such general easy reflections on the frame of the universe, and the order of parts in the bodies of all sorts of living creatures, as the meanest ordinary understanding is capable of, would soon discover incomparably greater evidence of wisdom, and design in the contrivance of these, than in that of a watch or a clock. And if there were any whose understandings are but of that size and measure, as to suppose that the whole frame of the heavens serves to no other purpose than to be of some such use as that to us mortals here on earth; if they would but allow themselves leisure to think and consider, might discern the most convincing and amazing discoveries of wise contrivance and design (as well as of vastest might and power) in disposing things into so apt a subserviency to that meaner end. And that so exact a knowledge is had thereby of times and seasons, days and years, as that the simplest idiot in a country may be able to tell you, when the light of the Sun is withdrawn from his eyes, at what time it will return, and when it will look in at such a window, and when at the other. And by what degrees his days and nights shall either increase, or be diminished. And what proportion of time he shall have for his labors in this season of the year, and what in that; without the least suspicion or fear that it shall ever fall out, otherwise.

But that some in later days whose more enlarged minds have by diligent search, and artificial helps got clearer notices (even then most of the more learned of former times) concerning the true frame and vastness of the universe, the matter, nature, and condition of the heavenly bodies, their situation, order, and laws of motion; and the great probability of their serving to nobler purposes than the greater part of learned men have ever dreamt of before; that I say any of these should have chosen it for the employment of their great intellects, to devise ways of excluding intellectual power from the contrivance of this frame of things, having so great advantages beyond the most of mankind besides, to contemplate and adore the great Author and Lord of all; is one of the greatest wonders that comes under our notice. And might tempt even a sober mind to prefer vulgar and popular ignorance before their learned philosophical deliration.

Though yet, indeed, not their philosophy, by which they would be distinguished from the common sort, but what they have in common with them ought in justice to bear the blame. For it is not evident, however much they reckon themselves exalted above the vulgar sort; that their miserable shifting in this matter proceeds only from what is most meanly so, that is, their laboring under the most vulgar and meanest diseases of the mind, disregard of what is common, and an aptness to place more in the strangeness of new, unexpected, and surprising events, than in things unspeakably more considerable, that are of every day's observation? Than which nothing argues a more abject, unphilosophical temper.

For let us but suppose (what no man can pretend is more impossible, and what any man must confess is less considerable, than what our eyes daily see) that in some part of the air, near this earth, and within such limits as that the whole scene might be conveniently beheld at one view, there should suddenly appear a little globe of pure flaming light resembling that of the Sun, and suppose it fixed as a center to another body, or moving about that other, as its center (as this or that hypothesis best pleases us) which we could plainly perceive to be a proportionably-little earth, beautified with little trees and woods, flowery fields, and flowing rivulets; with larger lakes into which these discharge themselves. And suppose we the other planets all of proportionable bigness to the narrow limits assigned them, placed at their due distances, and playing about this supposed earth or Sun, so as to measure their shorter, and soon absolved days, months, and years, or two, twelve, or thirty years, according to their supposed lesser circuits. Would they not presently, and with great amazement, confess an intelligent contriver and maker of this whole frame, above a Posidonius, or any mortal? And have we not in the present frame of things, a demonstration of wisdom and counsel, as far exceeding that which is now supposed, as the making some toy or bauble to please a child, is less an argument of wisdom, than the contrivance of somewhat that is of apparent and universal use? Or, if we could suppose this present state of things to have but newly begun, and ourselves preexistent, so that we could take notice of the very passing of things out of horrid confusion into the comely order they are now in, would not this put the matter out of doubt? (And that this state had once a beginning needs not be proved over again.) But might, what would yesterday have been the effect of wisdom, better have been brought about by chance five or six thousand years, or any longer time ago? It speaks not want of evidence in the thing, but want of consideration, and of exercising our understandings, if what were new would not only convince but astonish, and what is old, of the same importance, does not so much as convince.

And let them that understand any thing of the composition of a human body (or indeed of any living creature) but bethink themselves whether there be not equal contrivance, at least, appearing in the composure of that admirable fabric, as of any the most admired machine or engine devised and made by human wit and skill. If we pitch upon any thing of known and common use, as suppose again a Clock or Watch, which is no sooner seen than it is acknowledged (as has been said) the effect of a designing cause; will we not confess as much of the body of a man? Indeed, what comparison is there when in the structure of some one single member, as a hand, a foot, an eye, or ear, there appears, upon a diligent search, unspeakably greater curiosity, whether we consider the variety of parts, their exquisite figuration, or their apt disposition to the distinct uses and ends these members serve for, than is to be seen in any Clock or Watch? Concerning which uses of the several parts in man's body, Galen so largely discoursing in seventeen books inserts on the by, this Epiphonema, upon the mention of one particular instance of our most wise Maker's provident care; To whom (says he) I compose these Commentaries (meaning his present work of unfolding the useful figuration of the human body) as certain Hymns (or Songs of praise) esteeming true Piety more to consist in this, that I first may know, and then declare to others, his Wisdom, Power, Providence and Goodness, than in sacrificing to him many Hecatombs. And in the ignorance of which there is greatest impiety, rather than in abstaining from Sacrifice. Nor (as he adds in the close of that excellent work) is the most perfect natural Artifice to be seen in man only, but you may find the like industrious design and wisdom of the Author, in any living creature which you shall please to dissect. And by how much the less it is, so much the greater admiration shall it raise in you, which those Artists show that describe some great thing (contractedly) in a very small space: As that person (says he) who lately engraved Phaeton carried, in his Chariot, with his four horses, upon a little Ring. A most incredible sight! But there is nothing in matters of this nature, more strange than in the structure of the leg of a Flea? (How much more might it be said of all its inward parts?) Therefore (as he adds) The greatest commodity of such a work, accrues not to Physicians, but to them who are studious of nature, namely the knowledge of our Maker's perfection, and that (as he had said a little above) it establishes the principle of the most perfect Theology; which Theology (says he) is much more excellent than all Medicine.

It were too great an undertaking, and beyond the designed limits of this discourse (though it would be to excellent purpose, if it could be done without confusing terms, and in that easy, familiar way as to be capable of common use) to pursue, and trace distinctly the prints and footsteps of the admirable Wisdom, which appears in the structure and frame of this outer Temple. (For even our bodies themselves are said to be the Temples of the Holy Ghost.) And to dwell, a while, in the contemplation, and discovery of those numerous instances of most apparent, ungainsayable sagacity and providence which offer themselves to view in every part and particle of this fabric. How most commodiously all things are ordered in it? With how strangely cautious circumspection, and foresight, not only destructive, but even (perpetually) vexatious and afflicting incongruities are avoided and provided against? To pose ourselves upon the sundry obvious questions that might be put for the evincing of such provident foresight. As for instance, how comes it to pass that the several parts which we find to be double in our bodies, are not single only? Is this altogether by chance? That there are two eyes, ears, nostrils, hands, feet, etc. what a miserable shiftless creature had man been, if there had only been allowed him one foot? A seeing, hearing, talking, unmoving statue! That the hand is divided into fingers? Those so conveniently situated, one in so fitly opposite a posture to the rest?

And what if some one pair or other of these parts had been universally wanting? The hands, the feet, the eyes, the ears. How great a misery had it inferred upon mankind? And is it only a casualty that it is not so? That the backbone is composed of so many joints (24, besides those of that which is the basis and sustainer of the whole) and is not all of a piece, by which stooping, or any motion of the head or neck, various from that of the whole body, had been altogether impossible? That there is such variety and curiosity in the ways of joining the bones together in that and other parts of the body? That in some parts they are joined by mere adherence of one to another, either with or without an intervening medium, and both these ways so diversely. That others are fastened together by proper jointing, so as to suit, and be accompanied with motion, either more obscure, or more manifest. And this, either by a deeper, or more superficial insertion of one bone into another, or by a mutual insertion, and that so different ways. And that all these should be so exactly accommodated to the various parts and uses to which they belong and serve. Was all this without design? Who that views the curious and apt texture of the eye, can think it was not made on purpose to see with, and the ear, upon the like view, for hearing? When so many things must concur that these actions might be performed by these organs, and are found to do so? Or who can think that the various little engines belonging to the eye were not made with design to move it upwards, downwards, to this side, or that, or whirl it about, as there should be occasion; without which instruments, and their appendages, no such motion could have been? Who, that is not stupidly perverse, can think that the various inward parts (which it would require a volume distinctly to speak of, and but to mention them and their uses would too disproportionately swell this part of this discourse) were not made, purposely, by a designing agent, for the ends they so aptly and constantly serve for; the want of some one among various whereof, or but a little misplacing, or if things had been but a little otherwise than they are, had inferred an impossibility, that such a creature as man could have subsisted, or been propagated upon the face of the earth. As what if there had not been such a receptacle prepared as the stomach is, and so formed, and placed as it is, to receive and digest necessary nourishment? Had not the whole frame of man besides been in vain? Or what if the passage from it downward, had not been made somewhat, a little way, ascending, so as to detain a convenient time what is received, but that what was taken in were suddenly transmitted? It is evident the whole structure had been ruined as soon as made. What (to instance in what seems so small a matter) if that little cover had been wanting at the entrance of that passage through which we breathe? (The depression whereof by the weight of what we eat or drink shuts it, and prevents meat and drink from going down that way) had not unavoidable suffocation ensued? And who can number the instances that might be given besides? Now when there is a concurrence of so many things absolutely necessary (concerning which the common saying is as applicable, more frequently accustomed to be applied to matters of morality, Goodness is from the concurrence of all causes, evil from any defect) each so aptly and opportunely serving its own proper use, and all, one common end: certainly to say that so manifold, so regular, and stated a subserviency to that end, and the end itself were undesigned, and things casually fell out thus, is to say we know or care not what.

We will only before we close this consideration, concerning the mere frame of a human body (which has been so hastily and superficially proposed) offer a supposition which is no more strange (excluding the vulgar notion by which nothing is strange, but what is not common) than the thing itself as it actually is, namely, that the whole more external covering of the body of a man were made, instead of skin and flesh, of some very transparent substance, flexible, but clear as very crystal; through which and the other more inward (and as transparent) integuments or unfoldings, we could plainly perceive the situation and order of all the internal parts, and how they each of them perform their distinct offices. If we could discern the continual motion of the blood, how it is conveyed by its proper conduits from its first source and fountain, partly downwards to the lower entrails (if rather it ascend not from there, as at least what afterwards becomes blood does) partly upwards, to its admirable elaboratory, the heart: where it is refined and furnished with fresh vital spirits, and so transmitted from there by the distinct vessels prepared for this purpose; could we perceive the curious contrivance of those little doors by which it is let in and out, on this side and on that; the order and course of its circulation, its most convenient distribution, by two social channels, or conduit-pipes that everywhere accompany one another throughout the body. Could we discern the curious artifice of the brain, its ways of purgation; and were it possible to pry into the secret chambers and receptacles of the less or more pure spirits there; perceive their manifold conveyances, and the rare texture of that net commonly called the wonderful one. Could we behold the veins, arteries, and nerves, all of them arising from their proper and distinct originals; and their orderly dispersion for the most part by pairs and conjugations on this side and that, from the middle of the back, with the curiously wrought branches, which supposing these to appear duly diversified, as so many more dusky strokes in this transparent frame, they would be found to make throughout the whole of it, were every smaller fiber thus made at once discernible; especially those innumerable threads into which the spinal marrow is distributed at the bottom of the back. And could we through the same medium perceive those numerous little machines made to serve voluntary motions (which in the whole body are computed by some to the number of four hundred and thirty, or thereabouts, or so many of them as according to the present supposition could possibly come in view) and discern their composition; their various and elegant figures, round, square, long, triangular, etc. and behold them do their offices, and see how they ply to and fro, and work in their respective places, as any motion is to be performed by them. Were all these things, I say, thus made liable to an easy and distinct view; who would not admiringly cry out, how fearfully and wonderfully am I made? And sure there is no man sober, who would not upon such a sight pronounce that man mad that should suppose such a production to have been a mere undesigned casualty. At least if there be anything in the world, that may be thought to carry sufficiently convincing evidences in it of its having been made industriously, and on purpose, not by chance, would not this composition, thus offered to view, be esteemed to do so much more? Indeed, and if it did only bear upon it characters equally evidential of wisdom and design, with what does certainly so, though in the lowest degree, it were sufficient to prove our present purpose. For if one such instance as this would bring the matter no higher than to a bare equality, that would at least argue a maker of man's body, as wise, and as properly designing as the artificer of any such slighter piece of workmanship, that may yet, certainly, be concluded the effect of skill and design. And then enough might be said from other instances to manifest him unspeakably superior. And that the matter would be brought, at least, to an equality upon the supposition now made, there can be no doubt, if any one be judge that has not abjured his understanding and his eyes together. And what then, if we lay aside that supposition (which only somewhat gratifies fancy and imagination) does that alter the case? Or is there the less of wisdom and contrivance expressed in this work of forming man's body, only for that it is not so easily and suddenly obvious to our sight? Then we might with the same reason say concerning some curious piece of carved work, that is thought fit to be kept locked up in a cabinet, when we see it, that there was admirable workmanship shown in doing it; but as soon as it is again shut up in its repository, that there was none at all. Inasmuch as we speak of the objective characters of wisdom and design that are in the thing itself (though they must some way or other come under our notice, otherwise we can be capable of arguing nothing from them, yet) since we have sufficient assurance, that there really are such characters in the structure of the body of man, as have been mentioned, and a thousand more than have been thought necessary to be mentioned here: it is plain that the greater or less facility of finding them out; so that we be at a certainty that they are, (whether by the slower and more gradual search of our own eyes; or by relying upon the testimony of such as have purchased themselves that satisfaction, by their own labor and diligence) is merely accidental to the thing itself we are discoursing of: and neither adds to, nor detracts from the rational evidence of the present argument. Or if it does either, the more abstruse paths of divine wisdom in this (as in other things) do rather recommend it the more to our adoration and reverence, than if everything were obvious, and lay open to the first glance of a more careless eye. The things which we are sure (or may be, if we do not shut our eyes) the wise maker of this world has done, do sufficiently serve to assure us that he could have done this also, that is, have made everything in the frame and shape of our bodies conspicuous in the way but now supposed, if he had thought it fit. He has done greater things. And since he has not thought that fit, we may be bold to say the doing of it would signify more trifling, and less design. It gives us a more amiable and comely representation of the Being we are treating of, that his works are less for ostentation than use. And that his wisdom and other attributes appear in them rather to the instruction of sober, than the gratification of vain minds.

We may therefore confidently conclude that the figuration of the human body carries with it, as manifest unquestionable evidences of design, as any piece of human artifice, that most confessedly in the judgment of any man does so. And therefore, had, as certainly, a designing cause. We may challenge the world to show a disparity; unless it be that the advantage is unconceivably great on our side. For would not any one that has not abandoned at once both his reason and his modesty, be ashamed to confess and admire the skill that is shown in making a statue, or the picture of a man, that (as one ingeniously says) is but the shadow of his skin, and deny the wisdom that appears in the composure of his body itself, that contains so numerous and so various engines and instruments for sundry purposes in it, as that it is become an art, and a very laudable one, but to discover and find out the art and skill that is shown in the contrivance and formation of them.

It is in the mean time strange to consider from how different and contrary causes it proceeds, that the wise contriver of this fabric has not his due acknowledgments on the account of it. For with some it proceeds from their supine and drowsy ignorance, and that they little know or think what prints and footsteps of a Deity they carry about them, in their bone and flesh, in every part and vein and limb. With others (as if too much learning had made them mad, or an excess of light had struck them into a mopish blindness) these things are so well known, and seem so common and obvious that they are the less regarded. And because they can give a very punctual account that things are so, they think it, now, not worth the considering how they come to be so. They can trace all these hidden paths and footsteps, and therefore all seems very easy; and they give over wondering. As they that would detract from Columbus's acquisition of glory by the discovery he had made of America; by pretending the achievement was easy; whom he ingeniously rebuked, by challenging them to make an egg stand erect, alone, upon a plain table; which when none of them could do, he only by a gentle bruising of one end of it, makes it stand on the table without other support, and then tells them this was more easy than his voyage into America, now they had seen it done; before, they knew not how to go about it. Some may think the contrivance of the body of a man, or other animal, easy, now they know it; but had they been to project such a model without a pattern, or any thing leading thereto; how miserable a loss had they been at? How easy a confession had been drawn from them of the finger of God; and how silent a submission to his just triumph over their, and all human wit! When as the most admired performances in this kind by any mortal have been only faint and infinitely distant imitations of the works of God. As is to be seen in the so much celebrated exploits of Posidonius, Regiomontanus, and others of this sort.

And now if any should be either so incurably blind as not to perceive, or so perversely willful as not to acknowledge an appearance of wisdom in the frame and figuration of the body of an animal (peculiarly of man) more than equal to what appears in any the most exquisite piece of human artifice, and which no wit of man can ever fully imitate; although as has been said an acknowledged equality would suffice to evince a wise maker thereof; yet because it is the existence of God we are now speaking of; and that it is therefore not enough to evince, but to magnify the wisdom we would ascribe to him: we shall pass from the parts and frame to the consideration of the more principal powers and functions of terrestrial creatures; ascending from such as agree to the less perfect orders of these, to those of the more perfect, namely, of man himself. And surely to have been the Author of faculties that shall enable to such functions, will evidence a wisdom that defies our imitation, and will dismay the attempt of it.

We begin with that of growth. Many sorts of rare engines we acknowledge contrived by the wit of man, but who has ever made one that could grow? Or that had in it a self-improving power? A tree, an herb, a pile of grass may upon this account challenge all the world to make such a thing. That is to implant the power of growing into any thing to which it does not natively belong, or to make a thing to which it does.

By what art would they make a seed? And which way would they inspire it with a seminal form? And they that think this whole globe of the earth was compacted by the casual (or fatal) coalition of particles of matter, by what magic would they conjure so many to come together as should make one clod? We vainly hunt with a lingering mind after miracles, if we did not (more vainly) mean by them nothing else but novelties, we are compassed about with such. And the greatest miracle is, that we see them not. You with whom the daily productions of nature (as you call it) are so cheap, see if you can do the like. Try your skill upon a rose. Indeed, but you must have pre-existent matter? But can you ever prove the Maker of the world had so? Or even defend the possibility of uncreated matter? And suppose they had the free grant of all the matter between the crown of their head and the moon, could they tell what to do with it? Or how to manage it, so as to make it yield them one single flower, that they might glory in as their own production?

And what mortal man that has reason enough about him to be serious, and to think a while, would not even be amazed at the miracle of nutrition? Or that there are things in the world capable of nourishment, or who would attempt an imitation here? Or not despair to perform any thing like it. That is to make any nourishable thing? Are we not here infinitely out-done? Do not we see ourselves compassed about with wonders, and are we not ourselves such, in that we see, and are creatures from all whose parts there is a continual defluxion, and yet that receive a constant gradual supply and renovation by which they are continued in the same state! As the bush burning, but not consumed. It is easy to give an artificial frame to a thing that shall gradually decay and waste, till it quite be gone and disappear. You can raise a structure of snow that would soon do that. But can your manual skill compose a thing that like our bodies shall be continually melting away, and be continually repaired through so long a tract of time? Indeed, but you can tell how it is done, you know in what method, and by what instruments food is received, concocted, separated, and so much as must serve for nourishment turned into chyle, and that into blood, first grosser, and then more refined, and that distributed into all parts for this purpose. Yes, and what then? Therefore you are as wise as your Maker? Could you have made such a thing as the stomach, a liver, a heart, a vein, an artery? Or are you so very sure what the digestive quality is? Or if you are, and know what things best serve to maintain, to repair, or strengthen it, who implanted that quality? Both where it is so immediately useful, or in the other things you would use for the service of that? Or how, if such things had not been prepared to your hand, would you have devised to persuade the particles of matter into so useful and happy a conjuncture, as that such a quality might result? Or (to speak more suitably to the most) how, if you had not been shown the way, would you have thought it were to be done, or which way would you have gone to work, to turn meat and drink into flesh and blood?

Nor is propagation of their own kind by the creatures that have that faculty implanted in them, less admirable, or more possible to be imitated by any human device. Such productions stay in their first descent. Who can by his own contrivance find out a way of making any thing that can produce another like itself. What machine did ever man invent that had this power? And the ways and means by which it is done, are such (though he that can do all things well knew how to compass his ends by them) as do exceed not our understanding only, but our wonder.

And what shall we say of spontaneous motion wherewith we find also creatures endowed that are so mean and despicable in our eyes (as well as ourselves) — that is, that so silly a thing as a fly, a gnat, etc. should have a power in it to move itself, or stop its own motion, at its own pleasure! How far have all attempted imitations in this kind fallen short of this perfection? And how much more excellent a thing is the smallest and most contemptible insect, than the most admired machine we ever heard or read of (as Archytas Tarintinus his Dove so anciently celebrated, or more lately Regiomontanus his Fly, or his Eagle, or any the like.) Not only as having this peculiar power above any thing of this sort, but as having the sundry other powers besides meeting in it, whereof these are wholly destitute.

And should we go on to instance further in the several powers of sensation, both external and internal, the various instincts, appetitions, passions, sympathies, antipathies, the powers of memory, and (we might add) of speech, that we find the inferior orders of creatures, either necessarily furnished with, or some of them as to this last disposed to. How should we even over-do the present business? And too needlessly insult over human wit (which we must suppose to have already yielded the cause) in challenging it to produce and offer to view, a hearing, seeing-engine, that can imagine, talk, is capable of hunger, thirst, of desire, anger, fear, grief, etc. as its own creature, concerning which it may glory and say, I have done this?

Is it so admirable a performance, and so undeniable an evidence of skill and wisdom, with much labor and long travel of mind, a busy, restless, agitation of working thoughts, the often renewal of frustrated attempts, the varying of defeated trials; this way and that, at length to hit upon, and by much pains, and with a slow gradual progress, by the use of who can tell how many sundry sorts of instruments or tools, managed by more (possibly) than a few hands, by long hewing, hammering, turning, filing, to compose one only single machine of such a frame and structure, as that by the frequent re-inforcement of a skillful hand, it may be capable of some (and that, otherwise, but a very short-lived) motion? And is it no argument, or effect of wisdom so easily and certainly, without labor, error, or disappointment to frame both so infinite a variety of kinds, and so innumerable individuals of every such kind of living creatures, that cannot only with the greatest facility move themselves with so many sorts of motion, downwards, upwards (many of them) to, and fro, this way or that, with a progressive, or circular, a swifter or a slower motion at their own pleasure, but can also grow, propagate, see, hear, desire, joy, etc.? Is this no work of wisdom, but only blind either, fate or chance? Of how strangely perverse and odd a complexion is that understanding (if yet it may be called an understanding) that can make this judgment!

And they think they have found out a rare knack, and that gives a great relief to their diseased minds, who have learned to call the bodies of living creatures (even the human not excepted) by way of diminution machines or engines too.

But how little cause there is to embrace or be fond of this fancy would plainly appear,

If first, we would allow ourselves leisure to examine with how small pretense this appellation is so placed, and applied. And next if it be applied rightly, to how little purpose it is alleged, or that it signifies nothing to the exclusion of divine wisdom from the formation of them.

And for the first, because we know not a better, let it be considered how defective and unsatisfying the account is, which the great and (justly admired) master in this faculty, gives, how divers of those things which he would have to be so, are performed only in the mechanical way.

For though his ingenuity must be acknowledged in his modest exception of some nobler operations belonging to ourselves from coming under those rigid necessitating laws, yet certainly to the severe inquiry of one not partially addicted to the sentiments of so great a wit because they were his, it would appear there are great defects, and many things yet wanting, in the account which is given us of some of the meaner of those functions which he would attribute only to organized matter, or (to use his own expression) to the conformation of the members of the body, and the course of the spirits excited by the heat of the heart, etc.

For however accurately he describes the instruments and the way, his account seems very little satisfying of the principle, either of spontaneous motion, or of sensation.

As to the former, though it be very apparent that the muscles seated in that opposite posture wherein they are mostly found paired throughout the body, the nerves, and the animal spirits in the brain, and (suppose we) that glandule seated in the inmost parts of it, are the instruments of the motion of the limbs, and the whole body; yet what are all these to the prime causation or much more, to the spontaneity of this motion? And whereas, with us (who are acknowledged to have such a faculty independent on the body) an act of will does so manifestly contribute, so that, when we will our body is moved with so admirable facility, and we feel not the cumbersome weight of an arm to be lifted up, or of our whole corporeal bulk to be moved this way or that, by a slower or swifter motion. Indeed, and when as also, if we will, we can on the sudden in a very instant start up out of the most composed sedentary posture, and put ourselves, upon occasion, into the most violent course of motion or action. But if we have no such will, though we have the same agile spirits about us, we find no difficulty to keep in a posture of rest; and are, for the most part, not sensible of any endeavor or urgency of those active particles, as if they were hardly to be restrained from putting us into motion; and against a reluctant act of our will, we are not moved but with great difficulty to them that will give themselves and us the trouble. This being, I say, the case with us; and it being also obvious to our observation, that it is so very much alike in these mentioned respects, with brute creatures, how inconceivable is it that the directive principle of their motions and ours should be so vastly, and altogether unlike? (whatever greater perfection is required with us, as to those more noble and perfect functions and operations which are found to belong to us,) That is, that in us, an act of will should signify so very much, and be for the most part necessary to the beginning, the continuing, the stopping, or the varying of our motions; and in them, nothing like it, nor anything else, besides only that corporeal principle, which he assigns as common to them and us, the continual heat in the heart (which he calls a sort of fire) nourished by the blood of the veins; the instruments of motion, already mentioned, and the various representations and impressions of external objects as there and elsewhere he expresses himself! Upon which last (though much is undoubtedly to be attributed to it) that so main a stress should be laid as to the diversifying of motion seems strange; when we may observe so various motions of some silly creatures, as of a fly in our window, while we cannot perceive, and can scarce imagine any change in external objects about them: indeed, a swarm of flies, so variously frisking, and plying to and fro, some this way, others that; with a thousand diversities and interferings in their motion: and some resting while things are in the same state externally to them all. So that what should cause or cease, or so strangely vary such motions, is, from there, or anything else he has said, left unimaginable. As it is much more, how, in creatures of much strength, as a bear or a lion, a paw should be moved sometimes so gently, and sometimes with so mighty force, only by mere mechanism, without any directive principle that is not altogether corporeal. But most of all how the strange regularity of motion in some creatures, as of the spider in making its web, and the like should be owing to no other than such causes as he has assigned of the motions in general of brute creatures. And what though some motions of our own seem wholly involuntary (as that of our eyelids, in the case which he supposes) does it therefore follow they must proceed from a principle only corporeal? As if our soul had no other act belonging to it, but that of willing? which he does not downright say; but that it is its only, or its chief act; and if it be its chief act only, what hinders but that such a motion may proceed from an act that is not chief? Or that it may have a power that may sometimes step forth into act (and in greater matters than that) without any formal deliberated command or direction of our will. So little reason is there to conclude that all our motions common to us with beasts, or even their motions themselves depend on nothing else than the conformation of the members, and the course which the spirits, excited by the heat of the heart, do naturally follow, in the brain, the nerves, and the muscles, after the same manner with the motion of an automaton, etc.

But as to the matter of sensation, his account seems much more defective and unintelligible, that is, how it should be performed (as he supposes every thing common to us with beasts may be) without a soul. For, admit that it be (as who doubts but it is) by the instruments which he assigns, we are still to seek what is the sentient, or what uses these instruments, and does sentire, or exercise sense by them? That is, suppose it be performed in the brain, and that (as he says) by the help of the nerves, which from there like small strings are stretched forth to all the other members; suppose we have the three things to consider in the nerves which he recites; Their interior substance, which extends itself like very slender threads from the brain to the extremities of all the other members into which they are knit. The very thin little skins which enclose these, and which being continued with those that inwrap the brain do compose the little pipes which contain these threads; and lastly, the animal spirits which are conveyed down from the brain through these pipes. Yet which of these is most subservient to sense? That he undertakes elsewhere to declare, namely, that we are not to think (which we also suppose) some nerves to serve for sense, others for motion only, as some have thought, but that the enclosed spirits serve for the motion of the members, and those little threads (also enclosed) for sense. Are we yet any nearer our purpose? Do these small threads sentire? Are these the things that ultimately receive and discern the various impressions of objects? And since they are all of one sort of substance, how comes it to pass that some of them are seeing threads, others hearing threads, others tasting, etc. Is it from the diverse and commodious figuration of the organs to which these descend from the brain? But though we acknowledge and admire the curious and exquisite formation of those organs, and their most apt usefulness (as organs or instruments) to the purposes for which they are designed; yet what do they signify without a proportionably apt and able agent to use them, or percipient to entertain and judge of the several notices which by them are only transmitted from external things? That is, suppose we a drop of never so pure and transparent liquor, or let it be three, diversely tinctured or colored, and (lest they mingle) kept asunder by their distinct enfolding coats, let these encompass one the other, and, together, compose one little shining globe: are we satisfied that now this curious pretty ball can see? Nay, suppose we it never so conveniently situated, suppose we the aforementioned strings fastened to it, and these, being hollow, well replenished with as pure air, or wind, or gentle flame as you can imagine; indeed, and all the before described little threads to boot, can it yet do the feat? Nay, suppose we all things else to concur, that we can suppose, except a living principle (call that by what name you will) and is it not still as incapable of the act of seeing, as a ball of clay, or a pebble stone? Or can the substance of the brain itself perform that or any other act of sense (for it is superfluous to speak distinctly of the rest) any more than the pulp of an apple, or a dish of curds? So that trace this matter wherever you will within the compass of your assigned limits, and you are still at the same loss, range through the whole body and what can you find but flesh, and bones, marrow, and blood, strings and threads, humor and vapor; and which of these is capable of sense? These are your materials and such like, order them as you will, put them into what method you can devise, and except you can make it live, you cannot make it so much as feel, much less perform all other acts of sense besides, to which these tools alone seem as unproportionable as a plowshare to the most curious sculpture, or a pair of tongs to the most melodious music.

But how much more inconceivable it is that the figuration and concurrence of the aforementioned organs can alone suffice to produce the several passions of love, fear, anger, etc. of which we find so evident indications in brute creatures, it is enough but to hint. And (but that all persons do not read the same books) it were altogether unnecessary to have said so much; after so plain demonstration already extant that matter, however modified, is incapable of sense.

Nor would it seem necessary to attempt any thing in this kind, in particular and direct opposition to the very peculiar sentiments of this most ingenious author (as he will undoubtedly be reckoned in all succeeding time) who when he undertakes to show what sense is, and how it is performed, makes it the proper business of the Soul, comprehends it under the name of Cogitation, naming himself a thinking thing, adds by way of question, what is that? And answers, a thing doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, willing, unwilling, and also imagining, and exercising sense, says expressly it is evident to all that it is the Soul that exercises sense, not the body, in as direct words as the so much celebrated poet of old. The only wonder is that under this general name of Cogitation he denies it to brutes; under which name he may be thought less fitly to have included it, than to have affirmed them incapable of any thing to which that name ought to be applied, as he does not only affirm, but esteems himself by most firm reasons to have proved.

And yet that particular reason seems a great deal more pious, than it is cogent; which he gives for his choosing this particular way of differencing brutes from human creatures, namely, lest any prejudice should be done to the doctrine of the human soul's immortality: there being nothing, as he truly says, that does more easily turn off weak minds from the path of virtue, than if they should think the souls of brutes to be of the same nature with our own; and therefore that nothing remains to be hoped or feared after this life, more by us than by flies or ants. For, sure there were other ways of providing against that danger; besides that of denying them so much as sense (other than merely organical as he somewhere alleviates the harshness of that position, but without telling us what use these organs serve) and the making them nothing else but well formed machines.

But yet if we should admit the propriety of this appellation, and acknowledge (the thing itself intended to be signified by it) that all the powers belonging to mere brutal nature are purely mechanical and no more; to what purpose is it here alleged? Or what can it be understood to signify? What is lost from our cause by it? And what have atheists of which to glory? For was the contrivance of these machines theirs? Were they the authors of this rare invention, or of anything like it? Or can they show any product of human device and wit, that shall be capable of vying with the strange powers of those machines? Or can they imagine what so highly exceeds all human skill to have fallen by chance, and without any contrivance or design at all, into a frame capable of such powers and operations?

If they be machines they are (as that free-spirited author speaks) to be considered as a sort of machine made by the hand of God, which is by infinite degrees better ordered, and has in it more admirable motions, than any that could ever have been formed by the art of man. Indeed, and we might add, so little disadvantage would accrue to the present cause (whatever might to some other) by this concession, that rather (if it were not a wrong to the cause which justly disdains we should allege anything false or uncertain for its support) this would add much, we will not say to its victory, but to its triumph, that we did acknowledge them nothing else than mere mechanical contrivances. For, since they must certainly either be such, or have each of them a soul to animate and enable them to their several functions; it seems a much more easy performance, and is more conceivable, and within the nearer reach of human apprehension that they should be furnished with such a one, than be made capable of so admirable operations without it; and the former (though it were not a surer) were a more amazing, unsearchable, and less comprehensible discovery of the most transcendent wisdom, than the latter.

But because whatever comes under the name of cogitation is assigned to some higher cause than mechanism; and that there are operations belonging to man which lay claim to a reasonable soul as the immediate principle and author of them, we have yet this further step to advance; that is to consider the most apparent evidence we have of a wise designing Agent, in the powers and nature of this more excellent, and (among things more obvious to our notice) the noblest of his productions.

And were it not for the slothful neglect of the most to study themselves; we should not here need to recount, to men, the common and well-known abilities and excellencies, which peculiarly belong to their own nature; they might take notice without being told, that first as to their intellectual faculty, they have somewhat about them that can think, understand, frame notions of things, that can rectify or supply the false or defective representations which are made to them by their external senses, and fancies, that can conceive of things far above the reach, and sphere of sense, the moral good or evil of actions or inclinations, what there is in them of rectitude or pravity; whereby they can animadvert and cast their eye inward upon themselves. Observe the good or evil acts or inclinations, the knowledge, ignorance, dullness, vigor, tranquility, trouble, and generally, the perfections or imperfections of their own minds. That can apprehend the general natures of things, the future existence of what yet is not, with the future appearance of that to us which as yet appears not.

Of which last sort of power, the confident assertion no man can have a conception of the future, needs not, against our experience, make us doubt; especially being enforced by no better than that pleasant reason there subjoined, for, the future is not yet; that is to say, because it is future; and so (which is all this reason amounts to) we cannot conceive it, because we cannot. For though our conceptions of former things guide us in forming notions of what is future, yet sure our conception of any thing as future, is much another sort of conception, from what we have of the same thing as past, as appears from its different effects; for if an object be apprehended good, we conceive of it as past with sorrow, as future with hope and joy. If evil, with joy as past, with fear and sorrow, as future.

And (which above all the rest discovers and magnifies the intellectual power of the human soul) that they can form a conception (however imperfect) of this absolute perfect Being, of which we are discoursing. Which even they that acknowledge not its existence cannot deny, except they will profess themselves blindly and at a venture to deny they know not what? Or what they have not so much as thought of?

They may take notice of their power of comparing things, of discerning and making a judgment of their agreements and disagreements, their proportions and disproportions to one another. Of affirming, or denying this or that concerning such or such things; and of pronouncing with more or less confidence concerning the truth or falsehood of such affirmations or negations.

And moreover of their power of arguing and inferring one thing from another, so as from one plain and evident principle to draw forth a long chain of consequences that may be discerned to be linked therewith.

They have withal to consider the liberty and the large capacity of the human will; which, when it is itself, rejects the dominion of any other than the supreme Lord; and refuses satisfaction in any other than the supreme and most comprehensive good.

And upon, even, so hasty, and transient a view, of a thing furnished with such powers and faculties; we have sufficient occasion to bethink ourselves; how came such a thing as this into being? From where did it spring, or to what original does it owe itself?

More particularly we have here two things to be discoursed:

First, that notwithstanding so high excellencies, the soul of man does yet appear to be a caused being, that sometime had a beginning.

Secondly, that by them, it is sufficiently evident that it owes itself to a wise and intelligent cause.

As to the former of these we need say the less, because that sort of Atheists with whom we have chiefly now to do, deny not human souls to have had a beginning, as supposing them to be produced by the bodies they animate by the same generation, and that such generation did sometimes begin. That only rude and wildly moving matter was from eternity, and that by infinite alterations and mixtures in that eternity, it fell at last into this orderly frame and state wherein things now are, and became prolific, so as to give beginning to the several sorts of living things, which do now continue to propagate themselves. The mad folly of which random fancy we have been so largely contending against until now. The other sort who were for an eternal succession of generations have been sufficiently refuted by diverse others, and partly by what has been already said in this discourse; and we may further meet with them before long. We in the meantime find not any professing Atheism to make human souls as such necessary and self-original beings.

Yet it is requisite to consider not only what persons of Atheistical persuasions have said, but what also they, possibly, may say. And moreover some that have been remote from Atheism have been prone upon the contemplation of the excellencies of the human soul to over-magnify, indeed and even no less than deify it. 'Tis therefore needful to say somewhat in this matter. For if nothing of direct and downright Atheism had been: the rash hyperboles (as we will charitably call them) and unwarrantable rhetorical flourishes of these latter, should they obtain to be looked upon and received as severe and strict assertions of truth, were equally destructive of religion, as the other more strangely bold and avowed opposition to it.

Such, I mean, as have spoken of the souls of men, as parts of God, one thing with him; a particle of divine breath; an extract, or derivation of himself. That have not feared to apply to them his most peculiar attributes, or say that of them which is most appropriate, and incommunicably belonging to him alone. Indeed, to give them his very name, and say in plain words they were God.

Now it would render a temple alike insignificant to suppose no worshipper, as to suppose none who should be worshipped. And what should be the worshipper when our souls are thought the same thing with what should be the object of our worship?

But I think when we consider their necessitous indigent state, their wants and cravings, their pressures and groans, their grievances and complaints, we should find enough to convince us they are not the self-originate or self-sufficient being. And might even despair anything should be plain and easy to them with whom it is a difficulty to distinguish themselves from God. Why are they in a state which they dislike? Therefore are they not full and satisfied? Why do they wish, and complain — is this God-like? But if any have a doubt hanging in their minds concerning the unity of souls with one another, or with the soul of the world, let them read what is already extant. And supposing them thereupon, distinct beings; there needs no more to prove them not to be necessary, independent, uncaused ones, than their subjection to so frequent changes; their ignorance, doubts, irresolution, and gradual progress to knowledge, certainty, and stability in their purposes; their very being united with these bodies in which they have been but a little while, as we all know; whereby they undergo no small change (admitting them, to have been, pre-existent) and wherein they experience so many. Indeed, whether those changes import any immutation of their very essence or no; the repugnancy being so plainly manifest of the very terms, necessary and changeable. And inasmuch as it is so evident that a necessary being can receive no accession to itself; than it must always have or keep itself, after the same manner, and in the same state; that if it be necessarily such, or such, (as we cannot conceive it to be, but we must, in our own thoughts, affix to it some determinate state or other) it must be eternally such, and ever in that particular unchanged state.

Therefore be the perfection of our souls as great as our most certain knowledge of them can possibly allow us to suppose it, 'tis not yet so great, but that we must be constrained to confess them no necessary self-originate beings, and by consequence, dependent ones, that owe themselves to some cause.

Nor yet (that we may pass over to the other strangely distant extreme) is the perfection of our souls so little, as to require less than an intelligent cause, endowed with the wisdom which we assert and attribute to the truly necessary uncaused being.

Which, because he has no other rival or competitor for the glory of this production, than only the fortuitous jumble of the blindly moving particles of matter, our inquiry here will only be whose image the thing produced bears; or which it more resembles, stupid, senseless, inactive matter (or at the best only supposed moving, though no man upon the Atheists' terms, can imagine how it came to be so) or the active intelligent being, whom we affirm the cause of all things, and who has peculiarly entitled himself the Father of spirits.

That is, we are to consider whether the powers and operations belonging to the reasonable soul do not plainly argue,

1. That it neither rises from nor is mere matter; from which it will follow that it must have an efficient cause diverse from matter?

2. That it owes itself to an intelligent efficient cause.

As to the former, we need not deal distinctly and separately concerning their origin and their nature. For if they are not mere matter, it will be evident enough they do not arise from there.

So that here all will be summed up in this inquiry, whether reason can agree to matter? We shall therefore set aside the consideration of their conceits, concerning the manner of the first origination of men, as that their whole being was only a production of the earth. Concerning which the philosophical account deserves as much laughter, instead of refutation, as any the most fabulously poetical. That is, how they were formed (as also the other animals) in certain little bags or wombs of the earth, out of which, when they grew ripe, they broke forth, and so on.

And only consider what is said of the constitution and nature of the human soul itself, which is said to be composed of very well polished, the smoothest and the roundest atoms; and which are of the neatest fashion, and every way, you must suppose, the best conditioned the whole country could afford; of a more excellent make, as there is added, than those of the fire itself. And these are the things you must know, which think, study, contemplate, frame syllogisms, make theorems, lay plots, contrive business, act the philosopher, the logician, the mathematician, statesman, and everything else (only you may except the priest, for of him there was no need.)

This therefore is our present theme, whether such things as these be capable of such, or any acts of reason, yes or no?

And if such a matter may admit of serious discourse; in this way it may be convenient to proceed, namely, either any such small particle, or atom (for our business is not now with Descartes but Epicurus) alone, is rational, or a good convenient number of them assembled, and most happily met together. It is much to be feared the former way will not do. For we have nothing to consider in any of these atoms, in its solitary condition, besides its magnitude, its figure, and its weight, and you may add also its motion (if you could devise how it should come by it.)

And now because it is not to be thought that all atoms are rational (for then the stump of a tree, or a bundle of straw might serve to make a soul of, for anything we know, as good as the best) it is to be considered by which of those properties, an atom shall be entitled to the privilege of being rational, and the rational atoms be distinguished from the rest. Is it their peculiar magnitude or size that so far ennobles them? Epicurus would here have us believe that the least are the fittest for this turn. Now if you consider how little we must suppose them generally to be, according to his account of them; that is, that looking upon any of those little motes a stream of which you may perceive when the sun shines in at a window, and he doubts not but many myriads of even ordinary atoms go to the composition of any one of these scarcely discernible motes; how fanciful a contemplation were it, to suppose one of those furnished with all the powers of a reasonable soul (though it is likely they would not laugh at the jest that think thousands of souls might be conveniently placed upon the point of a needle.) And yet, which makes the matter more admirable, that very few, except they be very carefully picked and chosen, can be found among those many myriads, but will be too big to be capable of rationality. Here sure the fate is very hard, of those that come nearest the size, but only, by a very little too much corpulency, happen to be excluded, as unworthy to be counted among the rational atoms. But sure if all sober reason be not utterly lost and squandered away among these little entities, it must needs be judged altogether incomprehensible, why, if, upon the account of mere littleness, any atom should be capable of reason, all should not be so. (And then we could not but have a very rational world.) At least, the difference, in this point, being so very small among them; and they being all so very little, methinks they should all be capable of some reason, and have only less or more of it, according as they are bigger and less. But there is little doubt that single property, of less magnitude, will not be stood upon as the characteristic difference of rational and irrational atoms; and because their more or less gravity is reckoned necessarily (and so immediately) to depend on that (for those atoms cannot be thought porous, but very closely compacted each one within itself) this, it is likely, will as little be depended on. And so their peculiar figure must be the more trusted to, as the differencing thing. And because there is in this respect so great a variety among this little sort of people, or nation as this author somewhere calls them, of which he gives so detailed an account, as if he had been the Generalissimo of all their armies, and were accustomed to view them at their rendezvous, to form them into regiments and squadrons, and appoint them to the distinct services he found them most suited for. No doubt it was a difficulty to determine which sort of figure was to be settled on to make up the rational regiment. But since this power was absolute, and there was none to gainsay or contradict, the round figure was judged best, and most deserving this honor. Otherwise a reason might have been asked (and it might have been a greater difficulty to have given a good one) why some other figure might not have done as well; unless respect were had to fellow atoms, and that it was thought, they of this figure could better associate for the present purpose; and that we shall consider of by and by; we now proceed on the supposition that, possibly, a single atom by the advantage of this figure, might be judged capable of this high achievement. And in that case, it would not be impertinent to inquire, whether if an atom were perfectly round, and so, very rational; but by an unexpected misadventure, it comes to have one little corner somewhere attached to it, it be hereby quite spoiled of its rationality? And again, whether one that comes somewhat near that figure, only it has some little protuberances upon it, might not by a little filing, or the friendly rubs of other atoms become rational? And yet, now we think on it, of this improvement he leaves no hope, because he tells us, though they have parts, yet they are so solidly compacted that they are by no force capable of dissolution. And so whatever their fate is in this particular, they must abide it without expectation of change. And yet, though we cannot really alter it for the better with any of them, yet we may think as favorably of the matter as we please; and for anything that yet appears, whatever peculiar claim the round ones lay to rationality, we may judge as well (and shall not easily be disproved) of any of the rest.

Upon the whole matter no one of these properties up to now alone is likely to make a rational Atom: what they will all do meeting together may yet seem a doubt. That is, supposing we could hit upon one single Atom, that is at once of a very little size, and consequently very light and nimble, and most perfectly and unexceptionably round (and possibly there may be found a good many such) will not this do the business? May we not now hope to have a rational sort of people among them, that is, those of the peculiar family or tribe? And yet still the matter will be found to go very hard; for if we cannot imagine or devise how any one of these properties should contribute anything (as upon our utmost disquisition we certainly cannot) towards the power of reasoning, it is left us altogether unimaginable how all together should make a rational Atom. There is only one relief remaining, that is, what if we add to these other properties some peculiarly-brisk sort of actual motion: For to be barely movable will not serve, inasmuch as all are so; But will not actual motion (added to its being irreprehensibly little, light, and round) especially if it be a very freakish one, and made up of many odd unexpected windings and turns effect the business? Possibly it might do something to actual reasoning, supposing the power were there before; for who can tell but the little thing was fallen asleep, and by this means its power might be awakened into some exercise? But that it should give the power itself, is above all comprehension. And there is nothing else to give it. These that have been mentioned being all the prime qualities that are assigned to Atoms singly considered. All other that can be supposed, belonging to concrete bodies, that are composed of many of them meeting together.

And therefore here in the next place our inquiry must be directed, whether any number of Atoms (definite or indefinite) being in themselves severally irrational, can become rational by association, or compose and make up a rational soul?

Up to now it must be acknowledged we have not fought with any adversary; not having met with any that have asserted the rationality of single corporeal Atoms; yet because we know not what time may produce, and where the distress and exigency of a desperate cause may drive the maintainers of it; it was not therefore fit to say nothing to that (supposable or possible) assertion (I mean possible to be asserted, however impossible it is to be true.) Nor yet could it well admit of anything to be said to it, but in that ludicrous and sportful way. If we will suppose any to be so foolish, they are to be dealt with according to their folly.

But now as to this other conceit, that Atoms (provided they be of the right stamp or kind) may, a competent number of them, assembled together, compose a reasonable soul is an express article of the Epicurean creed. And therefore here we are to deal more cautiously; not that this is any whit a wiser fancy than the other; but that the truth in this matter is surer to meet with opposition in the minds of some persons already formed to that wild apprehension and tinctured with it.

Therefore such must be desired to consider in the first place, if they will be true disciples of Epicurus throughout, what he affirms of all Atoms universally, that they must be simple uncompounded bodies (or if you will corpuscles) not capable of division or section, by no force dissoluble, and therefore immutable, or in themselves void of any mutation.

Hereupon let it be next considered, if there were in them (those that are of the right size, shape, and weight) severally, some certain sparks or seeds of reason (that we may make the supposition as advantageous as we can) or dispositions thereto, yet how shall it be possible to them to communicate? Or have that communion with one another, as together, to constitute an actually and completely rational, or thinking thing. If every one could bring somewhat to a common stock, that might be serviceable to that purpose; how shall each one's proportion or share be imparted? They can none of them emit anything, there can possibly be no such thing as an effluvium from any of them, inasmuch as they are incapable of diminution; and are themselves each of them as little as the least imaginable effluvium that we would suppose to proceed from this or that particular Atom. They can at the most but touch one another, penetrate, or get into one another they cannot. Insomuch as if any one have a treasure in it, which is in readiness for the making up an intellective faculty or power among them, that should be common to them all; yet each one remains so locked up within itself, and is so reserved and incommunicative, that no other, much less the whole body of them, can be any bit the wiser. So that this is like to be a very dull assembly.

But then, if there be nothing of reason to be communicated, we are yet at a greater loss. For, if it be said having nothing else to communicate, they communicate themselves, but what is that self? Is it a rational self? Or is every single atom, that enters this composition, reason? Or is it a principle of reason? Is it a seed? Or is it a part? Is it a thought? What shall we suppose? Or what is there in the properties assigned to this sort of atoms that can bespeak it any of these? And if none of these can be supposed; what does their association signify towards ratiocination? They are little, what does that contribute? Therefore there may need the more of them to make a good large soul; but why must a little thing, devoid of reason, contribute more towards it than another somewhat bigger? They are light, does that mend the matter? They are the sooner blown away, they can the less cohere, or keep together; they are the more easily capable of dissipation, the less of keeping their places in solemn counsel. They are round, and exactly smooth. But why do they the more conveniently associate upon that account for this purpose? They cannot therefore come so close together as they might have done, had they been of various figures. They cannot, indeed, give or receive so rude touches. This signifies somewhat towards the keeping of state, but what does it to the exercise of reason? Their being so perfectly and smoothly round makes them the more incapable of keeping a steady station, they are the more in [reconstructed: danger] of rolling away from one another, they can upon this account lay no hold of each other. Their counsels and resolves are likely to be the more slippery, and liable to an uncertain volubility. It is not to be imagined what a collection of individuals only thus qualified can do when they are come together, an assembly thus constituted. Are we hence to expect oracles, philosophical determinations? Maxims of state? And since they are supposed to be so much alike, how are the mathematical atoms to be distinguished from the moral? Those from the political? The contemplative from the active? Or when the assembly thinks fit to entertain itself with matters of this or that kind, what must be its different composure or posture? Into what mold or figure must it cast itself for one purpose? And into what for another? It is hard to imagine that these little globular bodies, that we may well suppose to be as like as one egg can be to another, should by the mere alteration of their situation in respect of one another (and no alteration besides can be so much as imagined among them) make so great a change in the complexion of this assembly; so that now it shall be disposed to seriousness, and by some transposition of the spherical particles, to mirth, now to business, and by and by to pleasure. And seeing all human souls are supposed made of the same sort of material, how are the atoms modeled in one man, and how in another? What atoms are there to dispose to this sect more, and what to another? Or if a good reason can be assigned for their difference, what shall be given for their agreement? From where it is that there are so unquestionable common notions every where received? Why are not all things transposed in some minds, when such a posture of the atoms as might infer it, is as supposable as any other? Indeed, and since men are found not always to be of one mind, with themselves, it is strange and incomprehensible that such a situation of these atoms that constitute his soul should dispose him to be of one opinion, and another of another. How are they to be ranged when for the affirmative? How for the negative? And yet a great deal more strange, that since their situation is so soon changed, and so continually changing (the very substance of the soul being supposed nothing else than a thing very like, but a little finer than a busy and continually moving flame of fire) any man should ever continue to be of the same opinion with himself one quarter of an hour together; that all notions are not confounded and jumbled; that the same thing is not thought and unthought, resolved and unresolved a thousand times in a day. That is, if anything could be thought or resolved at all. Or if this were a subject capable of framing or receiving any sort of notion.

But still that is the greatest difficulty, how there cannot be such a thing as thinking, or forming of notions. The case is plain of such notions as have no relation to matter, or dependence upon external sense (as what does that contribute to my contemplation of my own mind, and its acts and powers to my animadversion, or knowing that I think or will this or that?).

But besides, and more generally what proportion is there between a thought, and the motion of an atom? Will we appeal to our faculties, to our reason itself? And where else will we? Is there any kinship between the ideas we have of these things, the casual agitation of a small particle of matter (be it as little or as round as we please to imagine) and an act of intellection or judgment? And what if there be divers of them together? What can they do more towards the composing an intelligent thing, than many ciphers to the arithmetical composition of a number. It would be as rational to suppose an heap of dust by long lying together might at last become rational. Yes, these are things that have (some way or other) the power of motion; and what can they effect by that? They can frisk about, and ply to and fro, and interfere among themselves, and hit, and jostle and tumble over one another, and that will contribute a great deal; about as much, we may suppose, as the shaking of such dust well in a bag, by which means it might possibly become finer and smaller something; and by continuing that action, at length rational!

No; but these atoms, of which the soul is made, have a great advantage by their being disposed into a so well-contrived and fitly-organized receptacle as the body is. It is indeed true and admirable that the body is (as has been before observed) so fitly framed for the purposes to which the whole of it, and its several parts are designed. But how unfitly is that commodious structure of it, so much as mentioned by such as will not allow themselves to own and adore the wisdom and power of its great Architect.

And what if the composure of the body be so apt and useful, so excellent in its own kind; is it so in every kind, or to all imaginable purposes? Or what purpose can we possibly imagine more remote, or foreign to the composition of the body, than that the power of ratiocination should be derived from there? It might as well be said it was so made, to whirl about the Sun, or to govern the motions of the Moon and Stars; as to confer the power of reason, or enable the soul to think, to understand, to deliberate, to will, etc. Indeed, its organs, some of them, are much more proportionable to those actions, than any of them to these. Which though a well habited body (while the soul remains in this imprisoned state) does less hinder, yet how does it help? And that it might perform these acts without bodily organs, is much more apprehensible than how they can properly be said to be performed by them. And that, though they are done in the body, they would be done much better out of it.

But shall it be granted that these soul-constituting atoms till they be (or otherwise than as they are) united with a duly organized body, are utterly destitute of any reasoning or intelligent power? Or are they, by themselves, apart from this grosser body irrational? If this be not granted, the thing we intend must be argued out. Either then they are, or they are not. If the latter be said, then they have it of themselves, without dependence on the organized body; and so we are fairly agreed to quit that pretense, without more ado, of their partaking reason from there. And are only left to weigh over again what has been already said to evince the contrary, that is, how manifestly absurd it is, to imagine that particles of matter by their peculiar size, or weight, or shape, or motion, or all of these together, and that whether single or associated, should be capable of reasoning. If the former be the thing which is resolved to be stuck to, that is, that they are of themselves irrational, but they become reasonable by their being united in such a prepared and organized body. This requires to be a little further considered: and to this purpose it is necessary to obviate a pitiful shift that it is possible some may think fit to use for the avoiding the force of this dilemma, and may rely upon as a ground why they may judge this choice the more secure; that is, that they say they are rational by dependence on the body they animate; because they are only found so united with one another there; that there, they have the first coalition; there, they are severed from such as serve not this turn; there, they are pent in and held together as long as its due temperament lasts; which when it fails they are dissipated, and so lose their great advantage for the acts of reason which they had in such a body. Whatever pleasure this may yield, it will soon appear it does them little service.

For it only implies that they have their rationality of themselves, so be it that they were together; and not immediately from the body, or any otherwise than that they are somewhat beholden to it, for a fair occasion of being together; as if it were else an unlawful assembly; or that they knew not otherwise how to meet and hold together. They will not say that the body gives them being, for they are eternal, and self-subsisting, as they will have it. Indeed, and of themselves (though the case be otherwise with the Cartesian particles) undiminishable as to their size, and, as to their figure and weight, unalterable. So that they have neither their littleness, their roundness, nor their lightness from the body, but only their so happy meeting. Admit this, and only suppose them to be met out of the body. And why may not this be thought supposable? If they be not rational till they be met, they cannot have wit enough to scruple meeting, at least, somewhere else than in the body. And who knows but such a chance may happen; as great as this are by these persons supposed to have happened before the world could have come to this pass it is now at, who can tell but such a number of the same sort of atoms (it being natural for things so much of a complexion and temper to associate and find out another) might ignorantly, and thinking no harm come together? And having done so, why might they not keep together? Do they need to be pent in? How are they pent in while in the body? If they be disposed, they have ways enough to get out. And if they must needs be inclined to scatter when the crasis of the body fails, surely a way might be found to hem them in, if that be all; at the time of expiration more tightly and closely than they could be in the body. And what reason can be devised why being become rational by their having been assembled in the body, they may not agree to hold together, and do so in spite of fate, or despite all ordinary accidents, when they find it convenient to leave it. And then upon these no-way impossible suppositions (according to their principles, so far as can be understood, with whom we have to do) will they now be rational out of the body? Being still endowed (as they cannot but be) with the same high privileges of being little, round, and light, and being still also together; and somewhat more, it may be, at liberty, to roll and tumble, and mingle with one another, than in the body? If it be now affirmed they will in this case be rational, at least as long as they hold together, then we are but where we were. And this shift has but diverted us a little, but so as it was easy to bring the matter, again, about, to the same point we were at before. Therefore the shelter of the body being thus quite again forsaken, this poor expelled crew, of dislodging atoms are exposed to fight, in the open air, for their rationality, against all that was said before.

But if this refuge and sanctuary of the body be not merely pretended to, but really and plainly trusted in and stuck to. Then are we sincerely and honestly to consider what a body so variously organized can do, to make such a party of atoms (that of themselves are not so, singly, nor together) become rational. And surely if the cause were not saved before, it is now hopeless and lost without remedy. For what do they find here that can thus beyond all expectation improve them to so high an excellency? Is it flesh, or blood, or bones that puts this stamp upon them? Think, what is the substance of the nobler parts, the liver, or heart, or brain, that they should turn these, before, rational atoms, when they fall into them, into irrational, any more than if they were well soaked in a quagmire, or did insinuate themselves into a piece of soft dough? But here they meet with a benign and kindly heat and warmth which comfortably fosters and cherishes them, till at length it has hatched them into rational. But methinks they should be warm enough of themselves, since they are supposed so much to resemble fire. And however, wherein do we find a flame of fire more rational than a piece of ice? Indeed, but here they find a due temper of moisture as well as heat. And that surely does not signify much; for if the common maxim be true, that the dry soul is the wisest, they might have been much wiser if they had kept themselves out of the body. And since its necessary the soul should consist of that peculiar sort of atoms before described; and the organical body (which must be said for distinction sake, the soul being all this while supposed a body also) consists of atoms too, that are of a much coarser alloy, methinks a mixture should not be necessary, but a hindrance and great debasement rather to this rational composition. Besides that it cannot be understood, if it were necessary these atoms should receive any tincture from the body in order to their being rational, what they can receive, or how they can receive any thing. They have not pores that can admit an adventitious moisture though it were of the divinest nectar, and the body could never so plentifully furnish them with it. Wherein then lies the great advantage these atoms have by being in the body to their commencing rational? If there be such advantage, why can it not be understood? Why is it not assigned? Why should we further spend our guesses what may possibly be said? But yet, may not much be attributed to the convenient and well-fenced cavity of the brain's receptacle, or the more secret chambers within that? Where the studious atoms may be very private and free from disturbance? Yet sure it is hard to say, why they that are wont to do it here, might not as well philosophize in some well-chosen cavern or hole of a rock; nor were it impossible to provide them there, of as soft a bed. And yet would it not be some relief to speak of the fine slender pipes, winding to and fro, wherein they may be conveyed, so conveniently, from place to place; that if they do not fall into a reasoning humor in one place, they may in another? Why what can this do? It seems somewhat like Balaam's project to get into a vein of incantation by changing stations. And transplace them as you will, it requires more magic than ever he was master of, to make those innocent harmless things masters of reason.

For do but consider, what if you had a large phial capable of as great a quantity as you can think needful, of very fine particles, and, replenished with them, closely stopped, and well luted; suppose these as pure and fit for the purpose as you can imagine, only not yet rational; will their faring to and fro through very close and staunch tubes from one such receptacle to another, make them at last become so? It seems then, do what you will with them, toss and tumble them here and there, rack them from vessel to vessel, try what methods you can devise of sublimation or improvement, every thing looks like a vain and hopeless essay. For indeed, do what you please or can think of, they are such immutable entities, you can never make them less or finer than they originally were: And rational they were not before their meeting in the body; therefore it were a strange wonder if that should so far alter the case with them, that they should become rational by it.

And now, I must, upon the whole profess not to be well pleased with the strain of this discourse; not that I think it unsuitable to its subject (for I see not how it is fitly to be dealt with in a more serious way) but that I dislike the subject. And were it not that it is too obvious how prone the minds of some are to run themselves into any the grossest absurdities rather than admit the plain and easy sentiments of religion: It were miserable trifling to talk at this rate, and a loss of time not to be endured. But when an unaccountable aversion to the acknowledgement and adoration of the ever-blessed Deity hurries away men, affrighted and offended at the lustre of his so manifest appearances, to take a bad, but the only, shelter the case can admit, under the wings of any the most silly foolish figment; though the ill temper and dangerous state of the persons is to be thought on with much pity; yet the things which they pretend being in themselves ridiculous, if we will entertain them into our thoughts at all, can not fitly be entertained but with derision. Nor does it more unbecome a serious person to laugh at what is ridiculous, than gravely to weigh and ponder what is weighty and considerable. Provided he do not seek occasions of that former sort, on purpose to gratify a vain humor; but only allow himself to discourse suitably to them, when they occur. And their dotage who would fain serve themselves of so wildly extravagant and impossible suppositions; for the fostering their horrid misbelief, that they have no God to worship, would certainly justify as sharp ironies, as the Prophet Elijah bestows upon them who worshipped Baal, instead of the true God.

Nor is anything here said intended as a reflection on such as being unfurnished with a notion of created intelligent spirits that might distinguish them from the most subtle matter, have therefore thought them capable of being involved in the same common notion with it, thinking them material; and yet, in the meantime doubted not their immortality, much less the existence of a Deity, the Author and Former of them and all things. For they are in no way guilty of that blasphemous nonsense, to make them consist of necessary self-subsistent matter, every minute particle of which is judged eternal and immutable, and in themselves, for anything we can find asserted, destitute of reason, and which yet acquire it by no one knows what coalition, without the help of a wise efficient that shall direct and order it to so unimaginable an improvement. The persons do only think more refined matter capable of that impression and stamp; or of having such a power put into it by the Creator's all-disposing hand, wherein, to do them right, though they should impose somewhat hardly upon themselves if they will make this estimate of the natural capacity of matter; or if they think the acts and power of reason in man altogether unnatural to him. Yet they do in effect the more befriend the cause we are pleading for (as much as it can be befriended by a misapprehension; which yet is a thing of that untoward genius, and does so ill consort with truth, that it's never admitted as a friend in any one respect, but it repays it with a mischievous revenge in some other, as might many ways be shown in this instance, if it were within the compass of our present design.) It being evident that if any portion of matter shall indeed be certainly found the actual subject of such powers, and to have such operations belonging to it, there is the plainer and more undeniable necessity and demonstration of his power and wisdom, who can make anything of anything, and who shall then have done that which is so altogether impossible, except to him to whom all things are possible. There is the more manifest need of his hand to heighten dull matter to a fitness for performances so much above its nature; to make the loose and independent parts of so fluid matter cohere and hold together, that, if it were once made capable of knowledge, and the actual subject of it; whatever notions were impressed on it, might not be in a moment confounded and lost. As indeed they could not but be if the particles of matter were the immediate seat of reason; and so steady a hand did not hold them in a settled composure, that they be not disordered, and men have, from that, the necessity of beginning fresh to know anything every hour of the day. Though yet it seems a great deal more reasonable to suppose the souls of men to be of a substance in itself more consistent; and more agreeable to our experience, who find a continual ebbing and flowing of spirits, without being sensible of any so notable and sudden changes in our knowledge, as we could not but on that basis observe in ourselves, if they, or any as fluid finer matter, were the immediate subjects of it.

It is therefore however sufficiently evident, and out of question that the human soul (be its own substance what it will) must have an efficient different from matter, which it was our present intention to demonstrate. And so our way is clear to proceed to.

The second inquiry is whether it be not also manifest from the powers and operations which belong to it as it is reasonable, that it must have had an intelligent efficient? That is, since we find and are assured that there is a sort of being in the world (indeed something of ourselves, and that has best right of anything else about us to be called ourselves) that can think, understand, deliberate, argue, etc. And which we can most certainly assure ourselves (whether it were pre-existent in any former state or not) is not an independent or uncaused being; and has therefore been the effect of some cause, whether it be not apparently the effect of a wise cause.

And this upon supposition of what has been before proved seems not liable to any the least rational doubt. For it is already apparent that it is not itself matter; and if it were, it is however the more apparent, that its cause is not matter. Inasmuch as if it be itself matter, its powers and operations are so much above the natural capacity of matter, as that it must have had a cause so much more noble, and of a more perfect nature than that, as to be able to raise and improve it beyond the natural capacity of matter: which it was impossible for that itself to do. From this it is plain, it must have a cause different from matter.

Therefore this its immaterial cause must either be wise and intelligent, or not so. But is it possible any man should ever be guilty of a greater absurdity than to acknowledge, some certain immaterial Agent destitute of Wisdom, the only cause and fountain of all that wisdom, that is, or has ever been in the whole race of mankind. That is as much as to say that all the wisdom of mankind has been caused without a cause. For it is the same thing after we have acknowledged any thing to be caused, to say it was caused by no cause, as to say it was caused by such a cause as has nothing of that in it, of which we find somewhat to be in the effect. Nor can it avail any thing, to speak of the disproportion or superior excellency in some effects to their second, or to their only partial causes. As that there are sometimes learned children of unlearned parents. For who did ever, in that case, say the parents were the productive causes of that learning? Or of them as they were learned? Sure that learning comes from some other cause. But shall it then be said the souls of men have received their being from some such immaterial Agent destitute of wisdom; and afterward their wisdom and intellectual ability came some other way; by their own observation, or by institution and precept from others? From where then came their capacity of observing, or of receiving such instruction? Can any thing naturally destitute even of seminal reason (as we may call it) or of any aptitude or capacity tending thereto, ever be able to make observations, or receive instructions, whereby at length it may become rational? And is not that capacity of the soul of man a real something? Or is there no difference between being capable of reason and incapable? What then, did this real something proceed from nothing? Or was the soul itself caused, and this its capacity uncaused? Or was its cause only capable of intellectual perfection, but not actually furnished therewith? But if it were only capable, surely its advantages for the actual attainment thereof have been much greater than ours. From where it were strange if that capacity should never have come into act. And more strange that we should know or have any ground to pretend that it has not. But that there was an actual exercise of wisdom in the production of the reasonable soul is most evident. For is it a necessary being? That we have proved it is not. It is therefore a contingent, and its being depended on a free cause, into whose pleasure, only, it was resolvable, that it should be or not be. And which therefore had a dominion over its own acts. If this does not bespeak an intelligent Agent, what does?

And though this might also be said concerning every thing else which is not necessarily; and so might yield a more general argument to evince a free designing cause; yet it concludes with greater evidence concerning the reasonable soul; whose powers and operations it is so manifestly impossible should have proceeded from matter. And therefore even that vain (and refuted) pretense itself, that other things might, by the necessary laws of its motion, become what they are, can have less place here. From where it is more apparent that the reasonable soul must have had a free and intelligent cause that used liberty and counsel in determining that it should be, and especially that it should be such a sort of thing as we find it is. For when we see how aptly its powers and faculties serve for their proper and peculiar operations, who that is not besides himself can think that such a thing was made by one that knew not what he was doing? Or that such powers were not given on purpose for such operations? And what is the capacity but a power that should sometime be reduced into act, and arrive to the exercise of reason itself?

Now was it possible any thing should give that power that had it not any way? That is in the same kind, or in some more excellent and noble kind? For we contend not that this Agent of which we speak is in the strict and proper sense rational, taking that term to import an ability or faculty of inferring what is less known from what is more. For we suppose all things equally known to him (which so far as is requisite to our present design that is the representing him the proper object of Religion, or of that honor which the dedication of a Temple to him imports, we may in due time come more expressly to assert.) And that the knowledge, which is, with us, the end of reasoning, is in him, in its highest perfection without being at all beholden to that means; that all the connection of things with one another lie open to one comprehensive view; and are known to be connected; but not because they are so. We say, is it conceivable that man's knowing power should proceed from a cause that has it not, in the same, or this more perfect kind? And may use those words to this purpose, not for their authority (which we expect not should be here significant) but the convincing evidence they carry with them, He that teaches man knowledge, shall not he know? That we may derive this matter to an issue, it is evident, the soul of man is not a necessary self-originate thing: And had therefore some cause. We find it to have knowledge, or the power of knowing belonging to it. Therefore we say, so had its cause. We rely not here upon the credit of common maxims (of which divers might be mentioned) but the reason of them; or of the thing itself we allege. And do now speak of the whole entire cause of this being, the human soul, or of whatever is causal of it; or of any perfection naturally appertaining to it. It is of an intelligent nature. Did this intelligent nature proceed from an unintelligent, as the whole and only cause of it? That were to speak against our own eyes, and most natural common sentiments. And were the same thing as to say that something came of nothing. For it is all one to say so, and to say that any thing communicated what it had not to communicate. Or (which is alike madly absurd) to say that the same thing was such and not such, intelligent and not intelligent, able to communicate an intelligent nature (for sure what it does it is able to do) and not able (for it is not able to communicate what it has not) at the same time.

It is hardly here worth the while to spend time in countermining that contemptible refuge (which is as incapable of offending us, as of being defended) that human souls may perhaps only have proceeded in the ordinary course of generation from one another. For that none have ever said anything to that purpose deserving a confutation, except that some sober and pious persons, for the avoiding of some other difficulties, have thought it more safe to assert the traduction of human souls; who yet were far enough from imagining that they could be total, or first causes to one another. And they doubted not but they had the constant necessary assistance of that same Being we are pleading for, acting in his own sphere as the first cause in all such (as well as any other) productions. Wherein they nothing oppose the main design of this discourse. And therefore it is not in our way to offer any opposition to them.

But if any have a mind to indulge themselves the liberty of so much dotage as to say the souls of men were first and only causes to one another, either they must suppose them to be material beings. And then we refer them to what has been already said, showing that their powers and operations cannot belong to matter, nor arise from it. Or immaterial, and then they cannot produce one another in the way of generation. For of what pre-existent substance are they made? Theirs who beget them? Of that they can part with nothing, separability, at least, of parts being a most confessed property of matter. Or some other? Where will they find that other spiritual substance, that belonged not inseparably to some individual being before? And besides, if it were pre-existent, as it must be if a soul be generated out of it, then they were not the first and only causes of this production.

And in another way than that of generation, how will any go about to make a soul? Let experience and the making of trial convince the undertakers. By what power, or by what art will they make a reasonable soul spring up out of nothing?

It might be hoped that thus, without disputing the possibility of an eternal successive production of souls, this shift may appear vain. But if any will persist and say that how or in what way soever they are produced, it is strange if they need any nobler cause than themselves; for may not any living thing well enough be thought capable of producing another of the same kind, or no more than equal perfection with itself? To this we say, besides that no one living thing is the only cause of another such. Yet if that were admitted possible, what will it avail? For has every soul that has ever existed or been in being been produced in this way by another? This it were ridiculous to say; for if every one were so produced, there was then some one before every one, inasmuch as that which produces must surely have been before that which is produced by it. But how can every one have one before it? A manifest contradiction in the very terms! For then there will be one without the compass of every one, and how is it then said to be every one? There is then, it seems, one besides or more than all. And so all is not all. And if this be thought a sophism, let the matter be soberly considered thus. The soul of man is either a thing of that nature universally (and consequently every individual soul) as that it does exist of itself necessarily and independently, or not? If it be, then we have however a wise intelligent being necessarily existing — the thing we have been proving all this while. Yet this concession we will not accept, for though it is most certain there is such a being, we have also proved the human soul is not it. From where it is evidently a dependent being in its own nature that could never have been of itself, had it not been put into being by something else. And being so in its own nature, it must be thus with every one that partakes of this nature. And consequently it must be something of another nature that did put the souls of men into being. Otherwise the whole stock and lineage of human souls is said to have been dependent on a productive cause, and yet had nothing whereon to depend, and so is both caused by another, and not caused. And therefore since it is hereby evident it was something else, and of another nature, than a human soul by which all human souls were produced into being, we again say that distinct being either was a dependent caused being, or not. If not, it being proved that the soul of man cannot but have had an intelligent or wise cause, we have now what we seek: an independent necessary intelligent being. If it does depend, or any will be so idle to say so, that however will infallibly and very speedily lead us to the same mark. For though some have been pleased to dream of an infinite succession of individuals of this or that kind, I suppose we have no dream as yet ready formed to come under confutation of infinite kinds or orders of beings gradually superior, one above another — the inferior still depending on the superior, and all upon nothing.

And therefore I conceive we may fairly take leave of this argument from the human soul, as having gained from it sufficient evidence of the existence of a necessary being that is intelligent and designingly active, being guided by wisdom and counsel in what it does.

We might also, if it were needful, further argue the same thing from a power or ability manifestly superior to, and that exceeds the utmost perfection of human nature, namely, that of prophecy, or the prediction of future contingencies; indeed, and from another that exceeds the whole sphere of all created nature, and which crosses and countermands the known and stated laws thereof, namely, that of working miracles — both of them exercised with manifest design. As might evidently be made to appear, by manifold instances, to as many as can believe anything to be true, more than what they have seen with their own eyes, and that do not take present sense (indeed and their own only) to be the alone measure of all reality. But it is not necessary we insist upon every thing that may be said, so that enough be said to serve our present purpose.

And that our purpose may yet be more fully served, and such a being evidenced to exist as we may with satisfaction esteem to merit a temple with us, and the religion of it, it is necessary that we add something concerning

9. The divine goodness; for to that eternal being, whose existence we have hitherto asserted, goodness also cannot but appertain together with those his other attributes we have spoken of.

It is not needful here to be curious about the usual scholastical notions of goodness, or what it imports, as it is accustomed to be attributed to being in the general, what, as it belongs, in a peculiar sense, to intellectual beings, or what more special import it may have in reference to this.

That which we at present chiefly intend by it is a propension to do good with delight; or most freely without other inducement, than the agreeableness of it to his nature who does it; and a certain delectation and complacency, which, hence, is taken in so doing. The name of goodness (though thus it more peculiarly signify the particular virtue of liberality) is of a significancy large enough, even in the moral acceptation, to comprehend all other perfections or virtues, that belong to, or may any way commend the will of a free agent. These therefore we exclude not; and particularly whatever is accustomed to be signified (as attributable to God) by the names of Holiness [as a steady inclination to what is intellectually pure, and comely, with an aversion to the contrary] Justice as that signifies [an inclination to deal equally] which is included in the former, yet as more expressly denoting what is more proper to a governor over others, namely [a resolution not to let the transgression of laws made for the preservation of common order, pass without due animadversion and punishment:] Truth, whose signification also may be wholly contained under those former more general terms, but more directly contains [sincerity, unaptness to deceive, and constancy to one's word.] For these may properly be styled good things in a moral sense. As many other things might in another notion of goodness, which it belongs not to our present design to make mention of. But these are mentioned as more directly tending to represent to us an amiable object of religion. And are referred here, as they fitly enough may, out of an unwillingness to multiply without necessity, particular heads or subjects of discourse.

In the mean time, as was said, what we principally intend, is, that the being whose existence we have been endeavouring to evince is good, as that imports a ready inclination of will to communicate to others what may be good to them; creating first its own object, and then issuing forth to it in acts of free beneficence, suitable to the nature of every thing created by it. Which though it be the primary or first thing carried in the notion of this goodness, yet because that inclination is not otherwise good, than as it consists with holiness, justice and truth; these therefore may be esteemed secondarily, at least, to belong to it, as inseparable qualifications thereof.

Therefore it is not a merely natural, and necessary emanation we here intend, that prevents any act or exercise of counsel or design; which would no way consist with the liberty of the divine will: and would make the Deity as well a necessary agent, as a necessary being; indeed, and would therefore make all the creatures merely natural and necessary emanations; and so destroy the distinction of necessary and contingent beings. And, by consequence, bid fair to the making all things God. It would infer not only the eternity of the world, but would seem to infer either the absolute infinity of it, or the perfection of it, and of every creature in it, to that degree, as that nothing could be more perfect in its own kind than it is; or would infer the finiteness of the divine being. For it would make what he has done the adequate measure of what he can do. And would make all his administrations necessary, yea, and all the actions of men, and consequently take away all law and government out of the world, and all measures of right and wrong, and make all punitive justice barbarous cruelty. And consequently give us a notion of goodness at length plainly inconsistent with itself.

All this is provided against by our having first asserted the wisdom of that being, to which we also attribute goodness. Which guides all the issues of it according to those measures or rules which the essential rectitude of the divine will gives, or rather is, to it. Whereby also a foundation is laid of answering such cavils against the divine goodness, as they are apt to raise to themselves, who are accustomed to magnify this attribute to the suppression of others. Which is indeed, in the end, to magnify it to nothing.

And such goodness needs no other demonstration than the visible instances and effects we have of it, in the creation and conservation of this world; and particularly, in his large munificent bounty and kindness towards man, whereof his designing him for his temple, and residence, will be a full and manifest proof.

And of all this, his own self-sufficient fullness leaves it impossible to us to imagine another reason, than the delight he takes in dispensing his own free and large communications. Besides, that when we see some semblances and imitations of this goodness in the natures of some men, which we are sure are not nothing, they must needs proceed from something, and have some fountain and original, which can be no other than the common cause and author of all things. In whom, therefore, this goodness does firstly and most perfectly reside.