- It follows now that I give you an account what the ancient Philosophers and Sages among the Heathens thought and delivered concerning this Point. Two of the four principal Sects of Philosophers held a future Dissolution of the World, viz. The Epicureans and Stoicks.
As for the Epicureans, They held that as the World was at first composed by the fortuitous concourse of Atomes, so it should at last fall in pieces again by their fortuitous Separation, as Lucretius hath it, lib. 5. Principio maria ac terras coelúmque tuere, Horum naturum triplicem, tria corpora, Memmi, Tres species tam dissimiles, tria talia texta Vna dies dabit exitio, multósque per annos Sustentata ruet moles & machina mundi. But now to prove all this; first cast an Eye, And look on all below, on all on high, The solid Earth, the Seas, and arched Sky: One fatal hour must ruine all, This glorious Frame, that stood so long, must fall. This Opinion of theirs is consonant enough to their wild Principles, save only in that point of its suddenness, Vna dies dabit exitio, &c. one day shall destroy or make an end of it.
The Stoicks were also of Opinion that the World must be dissolved, as we may learn from the Seventh Book of Laertius in the Life of Zeno, Ἀρέσκει δ᾽ αὐτοῖς, &c. They hold that the World is corruptible for these Reasons; 1. Because it was generated, and had a beginning. 2. Because That is corruptible in the whole, whose parts are corruptible: But the parts of the World are corruptible, being daily transmuted one into another. 3. That which is capable of Mutation from better to worse is corruptible. But such is the World; sometimes being afflicted with long Heats and Droughts, sometimes with continued Showers and Inundations. To those we may add 4. according to some of their Opinions, Because the Sun and Stars being fed with Vapours exhaled from the Earth, all the moisture will at length be drawn out, and the World fly on fire. They were afraid1 Nè humore omni consumpto totus mundus ignesceret. The Poet Lucan, who seems to be of the Stoick Sect, in the beginning of his first Book, describing the Dissolution of the World, makes it to be a falling in pieces of the whole Frame of Heaven and Earth, and a jumbling and confounding of all their parts together. —Sic cùm compage soluta Secula tot mundi suprema coegerit hora; Antiquum repetent iterum Chaos omnia; mistis Sydera syderibus concurrent; ignea Pontum Astra petent, tellus extendere litora nolet, Excutietque fretum; fratri contraria Phoebe Ibit, & obliquum bigas agitare per orbem Indignata diem poscet sibi; tot áque discors Machina divulsi turbabit foedera mundi. —So when the last hour shall So many Ages end, and this disjointed, All To Chaos back return: then all the Stars shall be Blended together, then those burning Lights on high In Sea shall drench, Earth then her shores shall not extend, But to the Waves give way, the Moon her Course shall bend Cross to her Brothers, and disdaining still to drive Her Chariot wheel athwart the heavenly Orb, shall strive To rule the day; this Frame to discord bent The Worlds Peace shall disturb, and all in sunder rent. This Dissolution of the World they held should be by Water and by Fire alternately at certain periods, but especially by Fire, which they call ἐκπύρωσιν. Philo, Οἱ δὲ Στωϊκοὶ τῆς φθορᾶς τοῦ κόσμου αἰτίαν φασὶ τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι πυρὸς ἀκαμάτου δύναμιν, χρόνων μακραῖς περιόδοις ἀναλύουσαν τὰ πάντα εἰς ἑαυτόν. The Stoicks say that the cause of the destruction of the World is the irresistible force of Fire that is in things, which in long periods of time consumes and dissolves all things into it self. Euseb. Praep. l. 15. Ἀρέσκει δὲ τοῖς πρεσβυτάτοις τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς αἱρέσεως, ἐξαεροῦσθαι πάντα κατὰ περιόδους τινὰς μεγίστας, εἰς πῦρ αἰθερῶδες ἀναλυομένων πάντων. The most ancient of that Sect held, That at certain vast Periods of time all things were rarified into Air, being resolved into an Ethereal Fire. This Ἐκπύρωσις of the Stoicks we find mentioned by many, both Christian and Heathen Writers, as besides the fore-quoted Minutius Felix, Iustin Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus in 5. Strom. Plutarch, Seneca, and others. The time of this Conflagration Seneca determines not, but saith only, it shall be when God pleases. 3 Quaest. nat. cap. 20. 8. Cùm Deo visum, vetera finire, ordiri meliora; When it shall seem good to God to put an end to old things and to begin better. Some there be who tell us of the Annus Platonicus or magnus, by which they understand such a period of time, as in which all the heavenly Bodies shall be restored to the same site and distance they were once in, in respect of one another: As supposing that all the Seven Planets were at the moment of Creation in the first degree of Aries, till they come all to be in the same degree again, all that space of time is called the Great Year, Annus magnus: In this Year they tell us that the height of Summer is the Conflagration, and the depth of Winter the Inundation; and some Astrologers have been so vain as to assign the time both of the Inundation and Conflagration, Seneca 3 Quest. Nat. cap. 20. Berosus, qui Belum interpretaius est, dicit, cursu ista syderum fieri, & adeo quidem assirmat, ut conflagrationi atque diluvio tempus assignet. Arsura enim terrena contendit, quando omnia sydera in Cancro convenerint: inundationem futuram, quando eadem syderum turba in Capricorno convenerit. Berosus, who interpreted Belus, saith, That those things come to pass according to the course of the Stars: and he so confidently affirms it, that he assigns the time both for the Conflagration and Inundation. For that all earthly Bodies will be burnt up, when all the Stars shall meet in Cancer; and the Inundation will fall out, when the same shall be in conjunction in Capricorn. Concerning the manner of this Conflagration, they held it should be sudden. Senec. Natura subitò ad ruinam, & toto impeturuit; licet ad originem parcè utatur viribus, dispensetque se incrementis fallacibus. Momento fit cinis, diu sylva, &c. Nature doth suddenly and with all its force rush on to ruin, though to the rise and formation of things it useth its strength sparingly, dispensing its influence, and causing them to grow by insensible degrees; a Wood is long in growing up, but reduced to Ashes almost in a moment. And some of them were so absurd as to think, that the Stars should justle and be dashed one against another Senec. lib. de consolatione ad Marciam: Cùm tempus advenerit: quo se mundus revocaturus extinguat, viribus ista se suis caedent; & sydera syderilus incurrent; & omni flagrante materia, uno igne, quicquid nunc ex disposito lucet ardebit. When the time shall come that the World, again to restore and renew it self, shall perish, these things shall batter and mall themselves by their own strength, the Stars shall run or fall foul upon one another, and all the matter flaming whatsoever now according to its settled order and disposition shines, shall then burn in one fire. Here by the way we may with Dr. More [Souls Immortality, lib. 3. cap. 18.] take notice how coursly, not to say ridiculously, the Stoicks Philosophize, when they are turned out of their Roadway of Moral Sentences, and pretend to give an account of the Nature of Things. For what Errours can be more gross than they entertain of God, of the Soul, and of the Stars; they making the two former Corporeal Substances, and feeding the latter with the vapours of the Earth, affirming that the Sun sups the Water of the great Ocean to quench his Thirst, but that the Moon drinks off the lesser Rivers and Brooks, which is as true as that the Ass drank up the Moon. Such conceits are more sit for Anacreon in a drunken Fit to stumble upon, who to invite his Companions to Tiple, composed that Catch, Πίνει θάλασσα δ᾽ αὔρας, Ὁ δ᾽ ἥλιος θάλασσαν. The Sea drinks up the Vapours, And the Sun the Sea. then to be either found out or owned by a serious Philosopher. And yet Seneca mightily triumphs in this Notion of foddering the Stars with the thick Fogs of the Earth, and declares his Opinion with no mean Strains of Eloquence, &c.