In the next place, among the things that seem not rational in Religion, I make a great difference between those, in which unenlightned Reason is manifestly a competent Judge, and those which Natural Reason it self may discern to be out of its Sphere.
You will allow me, That Natural Theology is sufficient to evince the Existence of the Deity; and we know that many of the old Philosophers, that were unassisted by Revelation, were, by the force of Reason, led to discover and confess a God, that is, a Being supremely perfect; under which Notion divers of them expresly represent him. Now, if there be such a Being, ‘tis but reasonable to conceive, that there may be many things relating to his Nature, his Will, and his management of things, that are without the Sphere of meer or unassisted Reason. For, if his Attributes and Perfections be not fully comprehensible to our Reason, we can have but inadequate Conceptions of them; and since God is a Being, toto Caelo, as they speak, differing from all other Beings, there may be some things in his Nature, and in the manner of his Existence, which is without all Example or perfect Analogy in inferior Beings. For we see, that ev’n in Man himself the Coexistence and intimate Union of the Soul and Body, that is, an Immaterial and a Corporeal substance, is without all President or Parallel in Nature. And though the truth of this Union may be prov’d; yet the manner of it was never yet, nor perhaps ever will be, in this Life clearly understood, (to which purpose I shall elsewhere say more.) Moreover, if we suppose God to be Omnipotent, (that is, to be able to do whatever involves no Contradiction that it should be done,) we must allow him to be able to do many things that no other Agent can afford us any Examples of, and some of them perhaps such, as we, who are but finite, and are wont to judge of things by Analogy, cannot conceive how they can be perform’d. Of the last sort of things may be the recollecting a sufficient quantity of the scatter’d matter of a Dead humane Body, and the contriving of it so, that (whether alone or with some addition of other Particles) upon a reconjunction with the Soul, it may again constitute a living Man, and so effect that Wonder we call the Resurrection. Of the latter sort is the Creation of Matter out of nothing, and much more the like Production of those Rational and Intelligent Beings, Humane Souls. For as for Angels (good or bad,) I doubt, whether meer Philosophy can evince their Existence, though I think it may the possibility thereof. And since we allow the Deity a Wisdom equal to this boundless Power, ‘tis but reasonable to conceive, that these unlimited Attributes conspiring may produce Contrivances and frame Designs, which we Men must be unable (at least of our selves) sufficiently to understand, and to reach to the bottom of. And by this way of arguing it may be made to appear, That there may be many things relating to the Deity above the reach of unenlightned humane Reason. Not that I affirm all these things to be in their own Nature incomprehensible to us (though some of them may be so,) when they are once propos’d; but that Reason by its own light could not discover them particularly, and therefore it must owe its knowledge of them to Divine Revelation. And if God vouchsafes to disclose those things to us, since not only he must needs know about his own Nature, Attributes, &c. what we cannot possibly know unless he tells us, and since we know, that whatever he tells us is infallibly true, we have abundant Reason to believe rather what he declares to us concerning Himself and Divine things, than what we should conclude or guess about them by Analogy to things of a nature infinitely distant from his, or by Maxims fram’d according to the nature of inferior Beings. If therefore he clearly reveal to us, That there is in the Godhead, Three distinct Persons, and yet that God is One, we, that think our selves bound to believe God’s Testimony in all other Cases, ought sure not to disbelieve it concerning himself, but to acknowledge, that in an unparallel’d and incomprehensible Being, there may be a manner of Existence not to be parallel’d in any other Being, though it should never be understood by us Men, who cannot clearly comprehend, how in our selves two such distant Natures as that of a gross Body and an immaterial Spirit, should be united so as to make up one Man. In such cases therefore as we are now speaking of, there must indeed be something that looks like captivating ones Reason, but ‘tis a submission that Reason it self obliges us to make; and he that in such points as these believes rather what the Divine Writings teach him, than what he would think if they had never inform’d him, does not renounce or inslave his Reason, but suffers it to be Pupil to an Omniscient and Infallible Instructer, who can teach him such things, as neither his own meer Reason, nor any others could ever have discovered to him.
I thought to have here dismiss’d this Proposition, but I must not omit to give it a confirmation afforded me by chance (or rather Providence:) For, since I writ the last Paragraph, resuming a Philosophical Enquiry, I met in prosecuting it with a couple of Testimonies of the truth of what I was lately telling you, which are given not by Divines or Schoolmen, but by a couple of famous Mathematicians, that have both led the way to many of the Modern Philosophers to shake off the reverence wont to be born to the Authority of great Names, and have advanc’d Reason in a few years more than such as Vaninus and Pomponatius would do in many Ages; and have always boldly, and sometimes successfully attempted to explain intelligibly those things, which others scrupled not either openly or tacitly to confess inexplicable.
The first of these Testimonies I met with in a little French Treatise put out by some Mathematician, who, though he conceals his Name, appears by his way of writing to be a great Virtuoso, and takes upon him to give his Readers in French the new thoughts of Galilaeo, by making that the Title of his Book. This Writer then speaking of a Paradox (which I but recite) of Galilaeo’s, that makes a point equal to a Circle, adds, Et per consequent l’on peut dire, (Pag. 22, 23) i. e. and consequently one may say, that all Circles are equal between themselves, since each of them is equal to a point. For though the imagination be overpower’d by this Idea or Notion; yet Reason will suffer it self to be persuaded of it. I know (continues he) divers other excellent Persons (besides Galilaeo) who conclude the same thing by other ways, but all are constrain’d to acknowledge, that indivisible and infinite are things that do so swallow up the mind of Man, that he scarce knows what to pitch on, when he contemplates them. For it will follow from Galilaeo’s Speculation, &c. which passage I have cited, to shew you, that Galilaeo is not the only Philosopher and Mathematician who has confess’d his Reason quite passed about the Attributes of what is Infinite.
The other Testimony I mention’d to you, is that of the excellent Des-Cartes in the second Part of his Principles of Philosophy,1 where speaking of the Circle to be made by Matter moving through places still lesser and lesser, he has this ingenious acknowledgment; Fatendum tamen est (sayes he) in motu isto aliquid reperiri, quod mens quidem nostra pereipit esse verum, sed tamen quo pacto fiat non comprehendit, nempe Divisionem quarundam particularum Materiae in infinitum, sive indefinitam, atque in tot partes ut nulla cogitatione determinare possimus tam exiguam, quin intelligamus ipsam in alias adhuc minores reipsa esse divisam. And in the Close of the next Paragraph, he gives this for a Reason, why, though we cannot comprehend this indefinite division, yet we ought not to doubt of the truth of it, That we discern it to be of that kind of things that cannot be compriz’d by our minds as being but finite.
If then such bold and piercing Wits, and such excellent Mathematicians are forc’d to confess, that not only their own Reason, but that of Mankind may be passed and non-plus’d about Quantity, which is an Object of contemplation Natural, nay, Mathematical, and which is the Subject of the rigid Demonstrations of pure Mathematicks; why should we think it unfit to be believ’d, and to be acknowledg’d, that in the Attributes of God, who is essentially an Infinite Being, and an Ens singularissimum, and in divers other Divine things, of which we can have no knowledge without Revelation, there should be some things, that our Finite understandings cannot, especially in this life, clearly comprehend.
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Footnotes
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Numb. 34. ↩