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ftill recovering, and reaching on, and struggling inte the upper region, whereby our natural weakness and blindness may be in fome degree remedied, and a taste attained of truth and intellectual life. Befide the conftant prevailing opinion of the greatest men of antiquity, that there is both an universal spirit author of life and motion, and an univerfal mind enlightening and ordering all things, it was a received tener among them, that there is allo τὸ ἓν or τἀγαθὸν (α), which they looked on as the fons deitatis, the first hypoftafis in the divinity.

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342. The one or To ev, being immutable and indivifi+ ble, always the fame and entire, was therefore thought to exift truly and originally, and other things only fo far as they are one and the fame, by participation of the To Ev. This gives unity, stability,reality to things(b). Plato defcribes God, as Mofes, from his being. According to both, God is he who truly is, orTws ŵv. Change and divifion were esteemed defects or bad. Evil fcatters, divides, deftroys: Good, on the contrary, produceth concord and union, affembles, combines, perfects, and preferves entire, The feveral beings which compose the universe are parts of the fame fyftem, they combine to carry on one end, and perfect one whole. And this aptnefs and concurrence thereunto furnishes the partial particular idea of good in the diftinct creatures. Hence it might have come to pass, that rayatov and to v were regarded as one and the fame.

343. Light and fight (faith Plato in the fixth book of his Republic) are not the fun; even fo truth and knowledge are not the good itself, altho' they approach thereunto. And again, what the fun is in a vifible place with refpect to fight and things feen, that fame is rayatov or good in an intelligible place, with refpect to understanding and things understood,

(R) 329.

(b) 264, 306,

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Therefore the good or one is not the light that en lightens, 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 inspection 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 Hera+ clitus, 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 To v or unit the very flower of our effence, as Proclus expreffeth it, we touch the first one.

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· 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.s In man the monad or indivifible is the aurà To auTo the felf fame self or very felf, a thing, in the opinion of Socrates, much and narrowly to be inquired into and difcuffed, to the end that, knowing ourfelves, we may know what belongs to us and our happiness.

347. Upon mature reflexion the perfon or 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 universe (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 pores and of T ὅλου τασιώται, the Howing philofophers who held all things to be in a perpetual flux, always generating and never exifting; and thofe others who maintained the univerfe 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 to nav, not as the fenfible but as the intelligible world (e), abstracted from all fenfible things.

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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 τὸ πᾶν to be ἓν ἑςὡς 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) scattered in this effay are not propofed as principles, but barely as hints to awaken and exercise the inquisitive reader, on points not beneath the ate 287, 288. (c) 293, 294, 295. (f) 298, 301.

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tention of the ablest men. Those great men, Pythagoras, Plato, and Ariftotle, the moft confummate in politics, who founded states, or instructed princes, or wrote most accurately on publick government, were at the fame time moft acute at all abftracted and sublime speculations; the cleareft light being ever ne→ ceffary 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 most indubitably make a forry patriot and a forry statesman.

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351. According to the nice metaphyfics of thofe ancient philofophers, To v, being confidered as what was firft and fimpleft in the Deity, was prefcinded even fromentity to which it was thought prior and fuperior; and is therefore by the Platonics ftyled fuper-effential. And in the Parmenides it is faid, rò èv 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 exift 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 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.

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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 fay that the firft hypoftafis or perfon is aves and λoyos, fenfelefs and irrational, and altogether devoid of mind and understanding? or would (f) 298, 301:

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not this be to introduce a kind of mysterious atheism To which it may be answered, that whoever acknow, ledgeth the univerfe to be made and governed by an eternal mind, cannot be justly deemed an atheist (g.) And this was the tenet of thofe ancient philofophers In the Platonic doctrine, the generation of the vas of aóyos was not contingent but neceffary, not temporary but from everlasting. There never was a time fupposed 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 diftinction of priority between and vous doth not infer, that the one ever existed without the other. It follows, therefore, that the father or dev may, in a certain fense, be faid to be aves without atheism, or without destroying the notion of a deity; any more than it would destroy 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 tenets, to say that Tv, or the firft hypoftafis,contains all excellence and perfection, whereof it is the original fource, and is eminenter, as the schools speak, intellect 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.

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353. Therefore, the whole being confidered, it will not seem juft, to fix the imputation of atheism upon those philofophers, who held the doctrine of ; 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 (8) 154, 276, 279, 287. (b) 300.

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