And now ‘twill be seasonable for me to tell you, That I think, there may be a great difference betwixt a things being contrary to right Reason, or so much as to any true Philosophy, and its being contrary to the receiv’d Opinions of Philosophers, or to the Principles or Conclusions of this or that Sect of them.
For here I may justly apply to my present purpose, what Clemens Alexandrinus judiciously said on another Occasion, that Philosophy was neither Peripatetical, nor Stoical, nor Epicurean, but whatsoever among all those several parties was fit to be approv’d.
And indeed if we survey the Hypotheses and Opinions of the several Sects of Philosophers, especially in those points wherein they hold things repugnant to Theological Truths, we shall find many of them so slightly grounded, and so disagreeing among themselves, that a severe and inquisitive Examiner would see little cause to admit them upon the bare Account of his being a Philosopher, though he did not see any to reject them upon the Account of his being a Christian. And in particular, as to the Peripateticks, who by invading all the Schools of Europe (and some in Asia and Africk) have made their Sect almost Catholick, and have produc’d divers of the famous Questioners of Christianity in the last Age, and the first part of this; the World begins to be apace undeceiv’d as to many of their Doctrines, which were as confidently taught and believ’d for many Ages, as those that are repugnant to our Religion; and there is now scarce any of the modern Philosophers that allow themselves the free use of their Reason, who believes any longer, that there is an Element of Fire lodg’d under the suppos’d Sphere of the Moon; that Heaven consists of solid Orbs; that all Celestial Bodies are ingenerable and incorruptible; that the Heart, rather than the Brain, is the Origine of Nerves; that the torrid Zone is uninhabitable; and I know not how many other Doctrines of the Aristotelians, which our Corpuscularian Philosophers think so little worth being believ’d, that they would censure him, that should now think them worthy to be sollicitously confuted; upon which score, I presume you will allow me to leave those and divers others as weak Peripatetick conceits, to fall by their own groundlesness.
But you will tell me, that the Epicureans, and the Somatici, that will allow nothing but Body in the World, nor no Author of it but Chance, are more formidable Enemies to Religion than the Aristotelians. And indeed I am apt to think they are so, but they may well be so without deserving to have any of their Sects look’d upon as Philosophy it self, there being none of them that I know of, that maintain any Opinion inconsistent with Christianity, that I think may not be made appear to be also repugnant to Reason, or at least not demonstrable by it. You will not expect I should descend to particulars, especially having expresly discours’d against the Epicurean Hypothesis of the Origine of the World in another Paper; and therefore I shall observe to you in general, that the Cartesian Philosophers, who lay aside all Supernatural Revelation in their Inquiries into Natural things, do yet both think, and, as to the two first of them, very plausibly prove, the three grand Principles of Epicurus, That the little Bodies he calls Atoms are indivisible, That they all have their motion from themselves, and That there is a vacuum in rerum naturâ, to be as repugnant to meer Reason, as the Epicureans think the Notion of an Incorporeal Substance, or the Creation of the World, or the Immortality of the Soul. And as for the new Somatici, such as Mr. Hobbs (and some few others) by what I have yet seen of his, I am not much tempted to forsake any thing that I look’d upon as a Truth before, ev’n in Natural Philosophy it self, upon the score of what he (though never so confidently) delivers, by which hitherto I see not, that he hath made any great discovery either of new Truths, or old Errors. An Honourable Member of the Royal Society, hath elsewhere purposely shewn, how ill he has prov’d his own Opinions about the Air, and some other Physical Subjects, and how ill he has understood and oppos’d those of his Adversary. But to give you in this place a Specimen how little their repugnancy to his Principles or Natural Philosophy, ought to affright us from those Theological Doctrines they contradict, I shall here (but not in the Body of this Discourse, for fear of too much interrupting it) examine the fundamental Maxim of his whole Physicks, That nothing is removed but by a Body contiguous and moved; it having been already shewn (by the Gentleman newly mention’d) that, as to the next to it, which is, that there is no vacuum, whether it be true or no, he has not prov’d it.
If no Body can possibly be moved but by a Body contiguous and moved, as Mr. Hobbs teaches; I demand, How there comes to be Local motion in the World? For, either all the portions of matter that compos’d the Universe, have motion belonging to their Nature, which the Epicureans affirm’d for their Atoms; or some parts of Matter have this motive power, and some have not; or else none of them have it, but all of them are naturally devoid of Motion. If it be granted, that Motion does naturally belong to all parts of Matter, the dispute is at an end, the concession quite overthrowing the Hypothesis. If it be said, that naturally some portions of Matter have Motion, and others not, then the Assertion will not be Universally true: For though it may hold in the parts that are naturally moveless or quiescent, yet it will not do so in the others, there being nothing that may shew a necessity, why a Body, to which Motion is natural, should not be capable of moving without being put into motion by another contiguous and moved. And if there be no Body to which Motion is natural, but every Body needs an outward movent, it may well be demanded, How there comes to be any thing Locally mov’d in the World; which yet constant and obvious experience demonstrates, and Mr. Hobbs himself cannot deny. For if no part of Matter have any Motion but what it must owe to another that is contiguous to it, and being it self in Motion impels it; and if there be nothing but Matter in the World, how can there come to be any Motion amongst Bodies, since they neither have it upon the score of their own nature, nor can receive it from external Agents. If Mr. Hobbs should reply, that the Motion is impress’d upon any of the parts of the Matter by God, he will say that which I most readily grant to be true, but will not serve his turn, if he would speak congruously to his own Hypothesis. For I demand, Whether this Supreme Being, that the Assertion has recourse to, be a Corporeal or an Incorporeal Substance? If it be the latter, and yet be the efficient Cause of Motion in Bodies, then it will not be Universally true, that whatsoever Body is moved, is so by a Body contiguous and moved. For, in our supposition, the Bodies that God moves either immediately, or by the intervention of any other Immaterial Being, are not moved by a Body contiguous, but by an Incorporeal Spirit. But because Mr. Hobbs, in some Writings of his, is believed to think the very Notion of an Immaterial Substance to be absurd, and to involve a Contradiction, and because it may be subsum’d, that if God be not an Immaterial Substance, he must by Consequence be a Material and Corporeal one, there being no Medium Negationis, or third Substance that is none of those two: I answer, That, if this be said, and so that Mr. Hobbs’s Deity be a Corporeal one, the same difficulty will recurr, that I urg’d before. For this Body will not, by Mr. Hobbs’s calling or thinking it divine, cease to be a true Body, and consequently a portion of Divine Matter will not be able to move a portion of our Mundane Matter without it be it self contiguous and moved; which it cannot be but by another portion of Divine Matter so qualified to impress a Motion, nor this again but by another portion.
And besides, that it will breed a strange confusion in rendring the Physical Causes of things, unless an expedient be found to teach us how to distinguish accurately the Mundane Bodies from the Divine (which will perhaps prove no easie task;) I see not yet, how this Corporeal Deity will make good the Hypothesis I examine. For I demand, How this Divine Matter comes to have this Local Motion that is ascrib’d to it? If it be answer’d, That it hath it from its own Nature, without any other Cause; since the Epicureans affirm the same of their Atoms, or meerly Mundane Matter, I demand, How the Truth of Mr. Hobbs’s Opinion will appear to me, to whom it seems as likely by the Phaenomena of Nature that occur, that Mundane Matter should have a congenit Motion, as that any thing that is Corporeal can be God, and capable of moving it; which to be, it must, for ought we know, have its Subsistence divided into as many minute parts, as there are Corpuscles and Particles in the World that move separately from their neighbouring ones. And, to draw towards a Conclusion, I say, that these minute Divine Bodies, that thus moved those portions of Mundane Matter, concerning which Mr. Hobbs denies that they can be moved but by Bodies contiguous and moved, these Divine Substances, I say, are, according to the late supposition, true Bodies, and yet are moved themselves not by Bodies contiguous and moved, but by a Motion which must be Innate, deriv’d or flowing from their very essence or nature, since no such Body is pretended to have a Being as cannot be refer’d as a portion, either to the Mundane, or the Divine Matter. In short, since Local Motion is to be found in one, if not in both, of these two Matters, it must be natural to (at least some parts of) one of them in Mr. Hobbs’s Hypothesis; for, though he should grant an Immaterial Being, yet it could not produce a Motion in any Body, since, according to him, no Body can be moved but by another Body contiguous and mov’d.
As then to this grand Position of Mr. Hobbs, though, if it were cautiously propos’d as it is by Des Cartes, it may perhaps be safely admitted, because Cartesius acknowledges, the first Impulse that set Matter a moving, and the Conservation of Motion once begun, to come from God; yet, as ‘tis crudely propos’d by the favourers of Mr. Hobbs, I am so far from seeing any such cogent Proof for it, (as were to be wish’d for a Principle on which he builds so much, and which yet is not at all evident by its own light,) that I see no competent Reason to admit it.
I expect your Friend should here oppose to what I have been saying, that formerly recited Sentence, that is so commonly employ’d in the Schools as well of Divines as of Philosophers: That such or such an Opinion is true in Divinity, but false in Philosophy; or on the contrary, Philosophically true, but Theologically false.
Upon what Warrant those, that are wont to employ such Expressions, ground their Practice, I leave to them to make out; but as to the Objection it self, as it supposes these ways of speaking to be well grounded, give me leave to consider, That Philosophy may signifie two things, which I take to be very differing.
For first ‘tis most commonly employ’d to signifie a System or Body of the Opinions and other Doctrines of the particular Sect of those Philosophers that make use of the Word. As when an Aristotelian talks of Philosophy, he usually means the Peripatetick, as an Epicurean do’s the Atomical, or a Platonist the Platonick.
But we may also in a more general and no less just Acception of the term, understand by Philosophy, a Comprehension of all those Truths or Doctrines, which the natural Reason of man, freed from Prejudices and Partiality, and assisted by Learning, Attention, Exercise, Experiments, &c. can manifestly make out, or by necessary consequence deduce from clear and certain Principles.
This being briefly premis’d, I must in the next place put you in mind of what I formerly observ’d to you, that many Opinions are maintain’d by this or that Sect of Christians, or perhaps by the Divinity-Schools of more than one or two Sects, which either do not at all belong to the Christian Religion, or at least ought not to be look’d upon as parts of it, but upon supposition, that the Philosophical Principles and Ratiocinations, upon which, and not upon express or meer Revelation, they are presum’d to be founded, are agreable to right Reason.
And having premis’d these two things, I now answer more directly to the Objection; that, if Philosophy be taken in the first sense above-mention’d, its teaching things repugnant to Theology, especially taking this word in the more large and vulgar sense of it, will not cogently conclude any thing against the Christian Religion. But, if Philosophy be taken in the latter sense for true Philosophy, and Divinity only for a System of those Articles that are clearly reveal’d as Truths in the Scriptures; I shall not allow any thing to be false in Philosophy so understood that is true in Divinity so explain’d, till I see some clearer Proof of it than I have yet met with. I have had occasion in the foregoing Discourse, to say something, that may be apply’d to the Point under debate; and in the following part of this Letter I shall have Occasion to touch upon it again: And therefore I shall now say but this in short, That ‘tis not likely, that God, being the Author of Reason as well as Revelation, should make it mens Duty to believe as true that which there is just Reason to reject as false.
There is indeed a Sense, wherein the Phrases, I disapprove, may be tolerated. For if by saying, that such a thing is true in Divinity, but false in Philosophy, it were meant, that if the Doctrine were propos’d to a meer Philosopher, to be judg’d of according to the Principles of his Sect, or at most according to what he, being suppos’d not to have heard of the Christian Religion, or had it duly propos’d to him, would reject it, the Phrase might be allow’d, or at least indulg’d. But then we must consider, that the Reason why such a Philosopher would reject the Articles of Christian Faith, would not be, because they could by no Mediums be possibly prov’d, but because these Doctrines being founded upon a Revelation, which he is presum’d either not to have heard of, or not to have had sufficiently propos’d to him, he must, as a Rational man, refuse to believe them upon the score of their Prooflesness. And the same Philosopher, supposing him to be a true one, though he will be very wary, how he admits any thing as true that is not prov’d, if it fall properly under the cognizance of Philosophy; yet he will be as wary, how he pronounces things to be false or impossible in matters which he discerns to be beyond the reach of meer natural Reason, especially if Sober and Learned men do very confidently pretend to know something of those matters by Divine Revelation, which though he will not easily believe to be a true one, yet he will admit, in case it should be prov’d true, to be a fit Medium to evince Truths, which, upon the Account of meer natural Light, he could not discover or embrace. To be short, such a Philosopher would indeed reject some of the Articles of our Faith hypothetically; i. e. upon supposition that he need employ no other Touchstone to examine them by, than the Principles and Dictates of Natural Philosophy, that he is acquainted with (upon which score I shall hereafter shew, that divers strange Chymical Experiments, and other Discoveries would also be rejected;) but yet he would nor pronounce them false, but upon supposition that the Arguments, by which they lay claim to Divine Revelation, are incompetent in their kind. For as he will not easily believe any thing within the Sphere of Nature that agrees not with the Establish’d Laws of it; so he will not easily adventure to pronounce one way or other in matters that are beyond the Sphere of Nature: He will indeed (as he justly may,) expect as full a Proof of the Divine Testimony that is pretended, as the Nature of the thing requires and allows; but he will not be backward to acknowledge, that God to whom that Testimony is ascrib’d, is able to know and to do many more things than we can explicate How He can discover, or imagine How any Physical Agent can perform.
[Since I propos’d to you this fifth Consideration, I happen’d to light on a passage in Des Cartes’s Principles, which affords of what I have been discovering the Suffrage of a Philosopher,1 that is wont to be accus’d of excluding Theology too scrupulously out of his Philosophy. His words are so full to my present Purpose, that I need not, to accommodate them to it, alter one of them, and therefore shall transcribe them just as they lie: Si fortè nobis Deus de seipso, vel aliis, aliquid revelet, quod naturales Ingenii nostri vires excedat, qualia sunt mysteria Incarnationis & Trinitatis, non recusabimus illa credere, quamvis non clarè intelligamus, nec ullo modo mirabimur, multa esse tum in immensa ejus natura, tum etiam in rebus ab eo creatis, quae captum nostrum excedant.]
And let me add on this occasion, that whereas the main Scruples that are said to be suggested by Philosophy against some mysterious Articles of Religion, are grounded upon this, that the Modus, as they speak, of those things is not clearly conceivable, or at least is very hardly explicable; these objections are not always so weighty as perhaps by the confidence wherewith they are urg’d you may think them. For whereas I observ’d to you already, that there are divers things maintain’d by School Divines, which are not contained in the Scripture, that observation is chiefly applicable to the things we are considering; since in several of these nice Points, the Scripture affirms only the thing, and the Schoolmen are pleas’d to add the Modus: And as by their unwarrantable boldness the School Divines determine many things without Book; so the scruples and objections that are made against what the Scripture really delivers, are usually grounded upon the Erroneous or Precarious Assertions of the School Philosophers, who often give the Title of Metaphysical Truths to Conceits that do very little deserve that name, and to which a rigid Philosopher would perhaps think that of Sublime Nonsense more proper. But of this I elsewhere say enough, and therefore shall now proceed to the consideration I chiefly intended, viz. That from hence, That the Modus of a revealed Truth is either very hard, or not at all explicable, it will not necessarily follow, that the thing it self is irrational, provided the positive Proofs of its Truth be sufficient in their kind. For ev’n in Natural things Philosophers themselves do and must admit several things, whereof they cannot clearly explicate or perhaps conceive the Modus. I will not here mention the Origine of Substantial Forms as an instance in this kind, because though it may be a fit one as to the Peripatetick Philosophy; yet not admitting that there are any such Beings, I will take no further notice of them; especially because for a clear Instance to our present purpose, we need go no further than our selves, and consider the Union of the Soul and Body in man. For who can Physically explain, both how an immaterial Substance should be able to guide or determine, and excite the motions of a Body, and yet not be able to produce motion in it (as by dead Palsies, great Faintnesses, &c. it appears the Soul cannot,) and, which is far more difficult, how an incorporeal Substance should receive such Impressions from the motions of a Body, as to be thereby affected with real pain and pleasure; to which I elsewhere add some other properties of this Union, which, though not taken notice of, are perhaps no less difficult to be conceiv’d and accounted for. For how can we comprehend that there should be naturally such an intimate Union betwixt two such distant Substances as an (Incorporeal) Spirit and a Body, as that the former may not, when it pleases, quit the latter, which cannot possibly have any strings or chains that can tye or fasten to it that which has no Body on which they may take hold. And I there shew, that ‘tis full as difficult, Physically to explicate how these so differing Beings come to be united, as how they are kept from parting at pleasure, both the one and the other being to be resolv’d into the meer appointment of God. And if to avoid the abstruseness of the Modus of this Conjunction betwixt the Rational Soul and the Humane Body, it be said, as ‘tis by the Epicureans, that the former is but a certain Contexture of the finer and most subtle parts of the latter, the formerly propos’d abstruseness of the Union betwixt the Soul and the Body will indeed be shifted off; but ‘twill be by a Doctrine that will not much relieve us. For those that will allow no Soul in Man but what is Corporeal, have a Modus to explain, plain that I doubt they will alwayes leave a Riddle. For of such I desire, that they would explain to me, (who know no effects that Matter can produce but by Local Motion and Rest, and the consequences of it,) how meer Matter, (let them suppose it as fine as they please, and contrive it as well as they can) can make Syllogisms, and have Conceptions of Universals, and invent speculative Sciences and Demonstrations, and in a word do all those things which are done by Man, and by no other Animal; and he that shall intelligibly explicate to me the Modus of matters, framing Theories and Ratiocinations, will, I confess, not only instruct me, but surprize me too.
And now give me leave to make this short Reflection on what has been said in this Section, compar’d with what formerly I said in the first Section: That if on the one hand we lay aside all the Irrational Opinions that the Schoolmen and other bold Writers have unwarrantably father’d on Christian Religion, and on the other hand all the Erroneous Conceits repugnant to Christianity, which the Schoolmen and others have prooflesly father’d upon Philosophy, the seeming Contradictions betwixt solid Divinity and true Philosophy will appear to be but few, as I think the Real ones will be found to be none at all.
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Footnotes
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Princip. Philes. part. prima. Artic. 25. ↩