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Therefore the good or one is not the light that enlightens, but the fource of that light.

344. Every moment produceth fome change in the parts of this visible creation. Something is added or diminished, or altered in effence, quantity, quality, or habitude. Wherefore all generated beings were faid by the ancients to be in a perpetual flux (c). And that which, on a confufed and general view, feems one fingle conftant being, fhall upon a nearer infpection appear a continued feries of different beings. But God remains for ever one and the fame. Therefore

God alone exifts. This was the doctrine of Heraclitus, Plato, and other ancients.

345. It is the opinion of Plato and his followers, that in the foul of man, prior and fuperior to intellect, there is somewhat of an higher nature, by virtue of which we are one; and that by means of our one or unit, we are most closely joined to the deity. And, as by our intellect we touch the divine intellect, even fo by our ro v or unit the very flower of our effence, as Proclus expreffeth it, we touch the first one.

346. According to the Platonic philofophy, ens and unum are the fame. And confequently our minds participate fo far of existence as they do of unity. But it fhould feem that perfonality is the indivifible center of the foul or mind, which is a monad fo far forth as fhe is a perfon. Therefore perfon is really that which exists, inasmuch as it participates of the divine unity. In man the monad or indivifible is the durò To avrò the felf fame felf or very felf, a thing, in the opinion of Socrates, much and narrowly to be inquired into and difcuffed, to the end that, knowing ourselves, we may know what belongs to us and our happiness.

347. Upon mature reflexion the mind of all created beings feemeth alone indivifible, and to partake most of unity. But fenfible things are rather confidered as one than truly fo, they being in a perpe (c) 304, 336.

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tual flux or fucceffion, ever differing and various. Nevertheless, all things together may be confidered as one univerfe (d), one by the connection, relation and order of it's parts, which is the work of mind whofe unit is by Platonic, fuppofed a participation of the first To Ev.

348. Socrates, in the Theatetus of Plato, fpeaketh of two parties of philofophers, the portes and ei tõ ὅλου ςασιῶται, the flowing philofophers who held all things to be in a perpetual flux, always generating and never exifting; and those others who maintained the universe to be fixed and immoveable.

The difference feems to have been this, that Heraclitus, Protagoras, Empedocles, and in general thofe of the former fect, confidered things fenfible and natural; whereas Parmenides and his party confidered τὸ πᾶν, not as the fenfible but as the intelligible world (e), abftracted from all fenfible things.

349. In effect if we mean by things the fenfible objects, thefe, it is evident, are always flowing; but if we mean things purely intelligible, then we may fay on the other hand, with equal truth, that they are immoveable and unchangeable. So that thofe, who thought the whole or to av to be tv sws a fixed or permanent one, feem to have understood the whole of real beings, which, in their fenfe, was only the intellectual world, not allowing reality of being to things not permanent.

350. The difpleasure of fome readers may perhaps be incurred, by furprising them into certain reflexions and inquiries for which they have no curiofity. But perhaps fome others may be pleased, to find a dry fubject varied by digreffions, traced through remote inferences, and carried into ancient times, whofe hoary maxims (f) fcattered in this effay are not propofed as principles, but barely as hints to awaken and exercife the inquifitive reader, on points not beneath the at

(d) 287, 288. (e) 293, 294, 295. (f) 298, 301.

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Thofe great men, Pytha

tention of the ablest men. goras, Plato, and Ariftotle, the moft confummate in politics, who founded states, or inftructed princes, or wrote moft accurately on publick government, were at the fame time moft acute at all abftracted and sublime fpeculations; the cleareft light being ever neceffary to guide the most important actions. And whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the humane mind, and the Summum bonum, may poffibly make a thriving earthworm, but will moft indubitably make a forry patriot and a forry statesman.

351. According to the nice metaphyfics of thofe ancient philofophers, To v, being confidered as what was first and fimpleft in the Deity, was prefcinded even from entity to which it was thought prior and fuperior; and is therefore by the Platonics ftyled fuper-effential. And in the Parmenides it is faid, To v doth not exist; which might feem to imply a negation of the divine being. The truth is, Zeno and Parmenides argued, that a thing exifting in time was older and younger than it felf; therefore the conftant immutable To did not exist in time; and if not in time, then in none of the differences of time past, prefent, or to come; therefore we cannot fay that it was, is, or will be. But nevertheless it is admitted in the fame Parmenides, that is every where prefent to Tov: that is, inftead of a temporary fucceffion of moments, there is one eternal now, or, punctum ftans, as it is termed by the fchoolmen.

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352. The fimplicity of (the father in the Pythagoric and Platonic trinity) is conceived fuch as to exclude intellect or mind, to which it is fuppofed prior. And that hath created a fufpicion of atheism in this opinion. For, faith the learned doctor Cudworth, fhall we say that the firft hypoftafis or perfon is aves and anyos, fenfelefs and irrational, and altogether devoid of mind and understanding? or would (ƒ) 298, 301.

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not this be to introduce a kind of mysterious atheism? To which it may be answered, that whoever acknowledgeth the universe to be made and governed by an eternal mind, cannot be justly deemed an atheift (g). And this was the tenet of thofe ancient philofophers. In the Platonic doctrine, the generation of the 8, or ayos was not contingent but neceffary, not temporary but from everlasting. There never was a time fuppofed wherein fubfifted without intellect, the priority having been understood only as a priority of order or conception, but not a priority of age. Therefore, the maintaining a distinction of priority between and vous doth not infer, that the one ever exifted without the other. It follows, therefore, that the father or may, in a certain sense, be faid to be aves without a theifm, or without deftroying the notion of a deity; any more than it would deftroy the notion of a humane foul, if we fhould conceive a diftinction between felf and intellect, or intellect and life. To which we may farther add, that it is a doctrine of Platonics, and agrees with their master's tènets, to say that ev, or the first hypoftafis,contains all excellence and perfection, whereof it is the original fource, and is eminenter, as the schools speak, intelleft and life, as well as goodness; while the fecond hypoftafis is effentially intellect, and by participation goodness and life; and the third, life effentially, and by participation goodness and intellect.

353. Therefore, the whole being confidered, it will not feem juft, to fix the imputation of atheifm upon those philofophers, who held the doctrine of To whether it be taken in an abstracted or collective, a metaphyfical or merely vulgar meaning (b); that is, whether we prefcind unity from effence and intellect, fince metaphyfical diftinctions of the divine attributes do not in reality divide them: or whether we confider the univerfal fyftem of beings, as one, fince the union, connexion, and order of it's mem(g) 154, 276, 279, 287. (b) 300.

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bers, do manifeftly infer a mind or intellect to be the cause thereof.

354. To may be conceived either by compofition or divifion. For as, on the one hand, we may lay the world or univerfe is one whole or one animal; fo we may, on the other hand, confider THE ONE, To, by divifion or abstraction, as fomewhat in the order of things prior to mind. In either sense there is no atheism, fo long as mind is admitted to preside and direct the animal; and fo long as the unum or TO E is fuppofed not to exift without mind (a). So that neither Heraclitus nor Parmenides, nor Pythagoras, nor Plato, neither the Ægyptians nor Stoics, with their doctrine of a divine whole or animal, nor Xenophanes with his ev xal nav, are justly to be accounted atheists. Therefore modern atheism, be it of Hobbes, Spinofa, Collins, or whom you will, is not to be countenanced by the learning and great names of antiquity.

355. Plato teacheth, that the doctrine concerning the one or unite is a means to lead and raise the mind (b) to the knowledge of him who truly is. And it is a tenet both of Ariftotle and Plato, that identity is a certain unity. The Pythageorans alfo, as well as the Platonic philofophers, held unum and ens to be the fame. Confiftently with which that only can be faid to exift, which is one and the fame. In things fenfible and imaginable, as fuch, there seems to be no unity, nothing that can be called one prior to all act of the mind; fince they being in themfelves aggregates, confifting of parts or compounded of elements, are in effect many. Accordingly it is remarked by Themiftius, the learned interpreter of Ariftotle, that to collect many notions into one, and to confider them as one, is the work of intellect, and not of fenfe or fancy.

356. Ariftotle himself, in his third book of the

(a) 287, 288.

(6) 294, 295.

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