ous. Ne idered as , relation of mind rticipation ›, speaketh T8 ; and of t ho held all generating maintained The diffe clitus, Proe of the for nd natural; lered To Ti, e world (e), e fenfible ob owing; but hen we may that they are at thofe, who w; a fixed or d the whole was only the of being to may perhaps tain reflexions ariofity. to find a dry rough remote s, whofe hoary ot propofed as en and exercile But beneath the at298, 301. tention tention of the ableft men. Thofe great men, Pythagoras, Plato, and Ariftotle, the moft confummate in politics, who founded ftates, or inftructed princes, of wrote moft accurately on publick government, were at the fame time moft acute at all abftracted and fublime 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. TO EV 351. According to the nice metaphyfics of those 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 existing in time was older and younger than it felf; therefore the conftant immutable To u did not exist in time; and if not in time, then in none of the differences of time paft, prefent, or to come; therefore we cannot fay that it was, is, or will be. But nevertheless it is admitted in the same Parmenides, that τὸ νῦν is every where prefent to τὸ ἕν: that is, instead of a temporary fucceffion of moments, there is one eternal now, or, punctum ftans, as it is termed by the schoolmen. d το εν 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 fay that the firft hypoftafis or perfon is aves and aλoyos, fenfelefs and irrational, and altogether devoid of mind and understanding? or would (f) 298, 301.) not not this be to introduce a kind of myster To which it may be anfwered, that who ledgeth the univerfe to be made and go eternal mind, cannot be justly deemed And this was the tenet of thofe ancient In the Platonic doctrine, the generatio Aoyos was not contingent but neceffary, but from everlafting. There never wa pofed wherein fubfifted without priority having been understood only a order or conception, but not a pri Therefore, the maintaining a diftincti between and vous doth not infer, ever exifted without the other. It follo that the father or may, in a certain to be aves without atheifm, or without notion of a deity; any more than it wo notion of a humane foul, if we should ftinction between felf and intellect, o life. To which we may farther add, trine of Platonics, and agrees with th nets, to fay that dev,or the firft hypofta excellence and perfection, whereof it fource, and is eminenter, as the fchoo left and life, as well as goodness; wh hypoftafis is effentially intellect, and b goodness and life; and the third, and by participation goodnefs and int 353. Therefore, the whole bei it will not feem juft, to fix the imputa upon those philofophers, who held whether it be taken in an abftr tive, a metaphysical or merely vulga that is, whether we prefcind unity fr intellect, fince metaphyfical diftinctio attributes do not in reality divide the we confider the univerfal fyftem of fince the union, connexion, and ord (8) 154, 276, 279, 287. (b) { heifm? cknow. Jby an heift (g.) Lofophers the v8s or emporary time fupellect, the priority of ty of age. of priority at the one , therefore, enfe, be faid troying the d deftroy the conceive a di intellect and at it is a doc ir master's te is,contains all is the original s fpeak, intel ile the fecond y participation lite effentially, ellect. g confidered, tion of atheilm the doctrine of acted or collec ar meaning (b) rom effence and ons of the divine em: or whether beings, as one, der of it's mem 300. bers, do manifeftly infer a mind or intellect to be the cause thereof. 354. THE ONE Or To may be conceived either by compofition or divifion. For as, on the one hand, we may lay the world or universe is one whole or one animal; fo we may on the other hand, confider THE ONE, To ev, by divifion or abftraction, as fomewhat in the order of things prior to mind. In either fenfe there is no atheism, fo long as mind is admitted to prefide and direct the animal; and fo long as the unum or To ev 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 tv 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 raife 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 feems 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... (b) 294, 295. Y Soul, TO Soul, faith it is the mind that maket be one, τὸ δὲ ἐν ποιόν τᾶτο ὁ νὸς ἕκασον done, Themiftius is more particular, as being conferreth effence, the mind fimplicity conferreth fimplicity upo beings. And, indeed, it feemeth th far forth as perfon, is individual (a) th the divine one by participation, an other things what itfelf participat This is agreeable to the doctine of th ever the contrary opinion of fuppofi an original primary quality in thing of the mind, may obtain among the 357. The Peripatetics taught, tha things there was fomewhat indivifil compounded things fomewhat fun derived from an act of the mind. fimple indivifible unite, nor any f unites. confequently no number, c from the things themfelves, and fro of the mind. Themiftius goeth fo that it cannot be feparated from the and, as it cannot be uttered without he, neither can it be conceived with much upon the whole may be concl tinct from the mind and her operat created beings neither unite nor nun 358. Of inferior beings the huma perfon is the moft fimple and undiv And the fupreme father is the moft per fore the fight of the mind towards the Platonics φυγὴ μόνο πρὸς μόνον. Τ ing, faith Plotinus, as he excludes ever alike prefent. And we are ther when, recollected and abftracted fro fenfible objects, we are moft free an from all variety. He adds, that in (a) 345, 346, 347・・・ (b) 347. Eh thing to number to be And neither th um of repeate an be feparat m the operati far as to affirm words or fign them, fo f out them. The luded, that, d tions, there is t mber. an mind, felf ivided effence perfe&one. There s God is called The fupreme be es alt diverfit, en prefent to him From the world and and difengaged in the intuition of 7. (c) 268. the fupreme deity the foul finds her wished for end and repofe; which that philofopher calls awaking' out of his body into himself. 359. In the tenth book of the arcane, or divine wildom of the Egyptians, we are taught that the fupreme being is not the caufe of any created thing; but that he produced or made the word; and that all created beings were made by the word, which is accordingly styled the caufe of all caufes: and that this was alfo the doctrine of the Chaldæans. Plato, likewife, in his letter to Hermias, Eraftus, and Corifcus, fpeaks of God the ruler and caufe of all things, as having a father: And in his Epinomis, he exprefly teacheth that the word or ayos made the world. Accordingly faint Auguftine in his commentary on the beginning of faint John's Gofpel, having declared that Chrift is the wifdom of God by which all things were made, obferves that this doctrine was alfo found in the writings of philofo-" phers, who taught that God had an only begotten Son by whom are all things. 360. Now, though Plato had joined with an imagination the most splendid and magnificent, an intelJect not lefs deep and clear; yet it is not to be fuppofed, that either he or any other philofophers of Greece or the eaft, had by the light of nature attained an adequate notion of the Holy Trinity, nor even that their imperfect notion, so far as it went, was exactly juft; nor perhaps that thofe fublime hints, which dart forth like flashes of light in the midst of a profound darkness, were originally ftruck from the hard rock of human reafon; but rather derived, at leaft in part, by a divine tradition (a) from the author of all things. It feems a remarkable confirmation of this, what Plotinus obferves in his fifth Ennead, that this doctrine of a Trinity, father, mind, and fouls was no late invention, but an ancient tenet. |