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.