veable mover. motion the Peripatetics trace out a firft immoTM The Platonics make God author of all good, author of no evil, and unchangeable. According to Anaxagoras there was a confufed mafs of all things in one chaos, but mind fupervening, ab, diftinguished and divided them. Anaxagoras, it feems, afcribed the motive faculty to mind, which mind fome fubfequent philofophers have accurately difcriminated from foul and life,afcribing to it the fole faculty of intellection. 321. But ftill God was fuppofed the firft agent, the fource and original of all things, which he produceth, not occafionally or inftrumentally but with actual and real efficacy. Thus, the treatife, De fecretiore parte divinæ fapientiæ fecundum Ægyptios, in the tenth book, faith of God, that he is not only the firft agent, but alfo that he it is who truly acts or creates, qui verè efficit. ' 322. Varro, Tully, and St. Auguftin understand the foul to be vis, the power, or force that a&s, moves, enlivens. Now although, in our conception, vis, or fpirit might be diftinguished from mind, it would not thence follow, that it acts blindly or without mind, or that it is not clofely connected with intellect. If Plutarch is to be trufted in his account of the opinions of philofo phers, Thales held the mind of the world to be God: Democritus held the foul of the world to be an igniform deity (g): Pythagoras taught that God was the monad and the good, or 'a'yaliv! Socrates alfo and Plato pronounced him to 'bé thee (b), the fingle, felf originate one; effentially good. Each of which appellations and forms of fpeech directly tends to, and determines in mind, is tov vv arivdes faith Plutarch. d 323. Whence that author concludes, that in the fenfe (g) 165, 168, 277. (b) 287. of thofe philofophers God is a mind, ywersov ad not an abstract idea compounded of inconfiftencies and prefcinded from all real things, as fome moderns understand abftraction; but a really exifting fpirit, diftinct or feparate from all fenfible and corporeal beings. And although the Stoics are reprefented as holding a corporeal deity, or that the very fyftem of the world is God, yet it is certain they did not, at bottom, diffent from the forementioned doctrine; inafmuch as they fuppofed the world to be an animal, (a) consisting of foul or mind as well as body. 324. This notion was derived from the Pythagoreans, who held the world, as Timæus Locrus teacheth, to be one perfect animal, endued with foul and reafon : but then they believed it to have been generated: whereas the Stoics looked on the world as the fupreme God, including therein mind or intellect. For the elementary fire, or, if one may fo fpeak, the animal fpirit of the world, feemeth, according to them, to have been the vehicle of the foul (b), the vehicle of intellect or ves; fince they ftyled the Divinity aug voegòv (c), or intellectual fire. 325. The Ægyptians, if we may credit the Hermaic writings, maintained God to be all things, not only actual but poffible. He is styled by them, that which is made and that which is unmade. And therein it is faid, fhall I praise thee for those things thou haft made manifeft, or for the things thou haft hidden? therefore, in their fenfe, to manifeft, was to create; the things created having been before hidden in God. 326. Now whether the be abstracted from the fenfible world, and confidered by it felf, as diftinct from, and prefiding over the created fyf(a) 276. 279. (6) 277. 2845 (c) 272. tema tem, or whether the whole univerfe, including mind together with the mundane body, is conceived to be God (d), and the creatures to be partial manifeftations of the divine effence, there is no atheism in either cafe, whatever mifconceptions there may be; fo long as mind or intellect is understood to prefide over, govern, and conduct the whole frame of things. And this was the general prevailing opinion among the philofophers. 327. Nor if any one, with Ariftotle in his Metaphyfics, fhould deny that God knows any thing without himfelf; feeing that God comprehends all things, could this be justly pronounced an atheistical opinion. Nor even was the following notion of the fame author to be accounted atheifm, to wit, that there are fome things beneath the knowledge of God, as too mean, bafe, and vile; however wrong this notion may be, and unworthy of the divine perfection. 328. Might we not conceive that God may be. faid to be all in divers fenfes; as he is the cause and origine of all beings; as the vs is the volan a doctrine both of Platonics and Peripatetics (e); as the vas is the place of all forms, and as it is the fame which comprehends and orders (f) and fuftains the whole mundane fyftem. Ariftole declares, that the divine force or influence permeates the intire universe (g) and that what the pilot is in a fhip, the driver in a chariot, the præcentor in a choir, the law in a city, the general in an army, the fame God is in the world. This he amply fets forth in his book De mundo, a treatife which having been anciently afcribed to him, ought not to be fet afide from the difference of ftyle, which (as Patricius rightly obferves) being in a letter to (d) 300. (e) 309, 310. (f) 320. (g) 173. a king, might well be fuppofed to differ from the other dry and crabbed parts of his writings. 329. And although there are fome expreffions to be met with in the philofophers, even of the Platonic and Ariftotelic fects, which fpeak of God as mixing with, or pervading all nature and all the elements; yet this must be explained by force and not by extenfion, which was never attributed to the mind (b) either by Ariftotle or Plato. This they always affirmed to be incorporeal: and, as Plotinus remarks, incorporeal things are diftant each from other not by place, but (to use his expreffion) by alterity. 330. Thefe difquifitions will probably feem dry and ufelefs, to fuch readers as are accustomed to confider only fenfible objects. The employment of the mind on things purely intellectual is to most men irkfome: whereas the fenfitive powers, by conftant ufe acquire ftrength. Hence, the objects of fenfe more forcibly affect us (k), and are too often counted the chief good. For these things men fight, cheat and fcramble. Therefore, in order to tame mankind and introduce a fenfe of virtue, the best humane means is to exercise their understanding, to give them a glympfe of another world, fuperior to the fenfible, and while they take pains to cherish and maintain the animal life, to teach them not to neglect the intellectual. 331. Prevailing ftudies are of no fmall confequence to a ftate, the religion, manners and civil government of a country ever taking fome bias from it's philofophy, which affects not only the minds of its profeffors and ftudents, but also the opinions of all the better fort and the practise of the whole people, remotely and confequentially, indeed, though not inconfiderably. Have not the (k) 264, 294. (A) 290, 293, 297, 319. polemic polemic and fcholaftic philofophy been obferved to produce controverfies in law and religion? And have not Fatalifm and Sadducifm gained ground, during the general paffion for the corpufcularian and mechanical philofophy, which hath prevailed for about a century? This indeed might ufefully enough have employed fome fhare of the leifure and curiofity of inquifitive perfons. But when it entered the feminaries of learning as a neceffary accomplishment, and most important part of education, by engroffing men's thoughts, and fixing their minds fo much on corporeal objects, and the laws of motion, it hath, however undefignedly, indirectly, and by accident, yet not a little indifpofed them for fpiritual, moral, and intellectual matters. Certainly had the philofophy of Socrates and Pythagoras prevailed in this age, among those who think themfelves too wife to receive the dictates of the gofpel, we fhould not have feen intereft take fo general and faft hold on the minds of men, nor public fpirit reputed to be γενναῖαν ἐυήθειαν, a generous folly, among thofe who are reckoned to be the most knowing as well as the moft getting part of mankind. 332. It might very well be thought ferious trifling to tell my readers that the greatest men had ever an high efteem for Plato; whofe writings are the touchftone of a hafty and fhallow mind; whofe philofophy has been the admiration of ages; which fupplied patriots, magiftrates, and lawgivers to the molt flourishing states, as well as fathers to the church, and doctors to the schools. Albeit in thefe days, the depths of that old learning are rarely fathomed, and yet it were happy for thefe lands, if cur young nobi-. lity and gentry instead of modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. But in thefe free thinking times many an empty head is fhook |