properties of substances and issues of events so firmly that we cannot conceive them altered.

4. But there is another limitation of omnipotence invented by our moderns in what they call the nature of things: for they say God could not make man impeccant, could not prevent moral and physical evil, the latter being a necessary consequence of the former, and that he must have a gradation of beings in all stages from nothing up to his own perfections. For my part, I can understand nothing else by the nature of things beside the properties of substances, the situations given them and motions impressed upon them, together with the mutual operations resulting therefrom: and these being given to the substances at or after their existence, could not control the acts of the Almighty whereto they were posterior. It is the nature of plants to vegetate, therefore before there were any plants or growing bodies there could be no such thing as vegetation: it is the nature of fire to burn, but before there was any fire there could be no such thing as burning. In like manner physical evil began with the capacity of sentient Beings to suffer by it, and moral evil depends upon this together with the constitution of man occasioning perpetual struggles between reason and appetite for if he were not liable to suffering he could not take his measures amiss, and if he were void of reason, he would not do wrong in following appetite, having nothing else to follow. That there is a scale of Beings I know, but that it reaches within one step of Divinity, I neither know nor believe: nor if it did could I ascribe it to anything prior to the good pleasure of their Creator; for I can see no necessity hindering that all beings might have been made of the same species. Therefore the capacity of man, his sensitive-rational constitution, the various orders of Beings, the properties, stations, and motions of substances, could not prescribe rules to the Almighty, from whose power and appointment they proceeded.

5. If it be alleged that we may conceive a nature of things abstracted from the things themselves, let us remember that our abstractions are all taken from our observation of substances, and their mutually affecting one another, and that the abstract is made by an arbitrary separation in our thoughts of what nature has exhibited in the concrete. It is said the rules of natural justice are unalterable, and so they may, because resulting from the nature of man, which does not change with time and place for he is made a sociable creature, capable of assisting or hurting his fellows, invested with reason and appetite. The brutes wanting reason have no justice belonging to them: nor would there be any rule of it in man had he no temptation to do wrong; or were

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he shut up alone like a maggot in a nutshell there would be no place for justice. I see no contradiction in imagining that God might have placed all his sentient creatures apart by themselves without any knowledge or perception of one another, in which case there would have been no such thing as justice in nature: therefore when he gave man his faculties, and placed him in a situation to have intercourse with his fellow-creatures, then he made justice, and then the nature of it began.

6. It is said that God cannot act arbitrarily, and therefore must have some rule or nature of things to guide him. If by Cannot, you mean that he never does, I have no objection; but let us consider what we understand by arbitrary action in men, which is when they act upon whim, or humor, or passion, all which must certainly be denied of him. But why must an action be arbitrary unless confined by some restriction from taking another turn? we find many instances of the contrary in ourselves. It is true if I promise to meet a company upon any occasion, whether of business or pleasure, though the appointment was voluntary at first, I am now under an obligation to keep it, so my liberty to do otherwise is gone but this is not always my case; I sometimes lay out a plan of several places I will go to, or several things I will do wherein no other mortal has any concern, and having a little steadiness in my temper I pursue it accordingly, without any restriction upon my liberty to depart from it at any time; and since I look upon this steadiness rather as an advantage to my character than otherwise, I am willing to ascribe it in the highest degree to the Almighty, the tenor of whose conduct I conceived fixed, not by law or rule, but by voluntary determination. Wherefore there is no occasion for attributing what we find unalterable to an antecedent nature of things limiting and prescribing laws to God, because we may ground it as well upon his immutability. This seems an idea more worthy of him, and more consistent with our notion of omnipotence; and we may draw as many good uses from the opinion that he will not as that he cannot order the course of nature otherwise than he has done. Provided we take along with us this caution, to be very careful in our judgment of what things are unalterable: a point wherein those, who talk most loudly of a nature of things, have been sometimes grossly mistaken.

7. Many divines, particularly Bishop Beveridge and Dean Sherlock, endeavor to heighten our idea of omnipotence by asserting, that God is not only the Creator, but likewise the continual support of all substances, who would lose their Being the moment he should withdraw his operation upon them. The bishop, after his usual manner, speaks positively as if he knew the thing by ocular

demonstration, and uses the comparison of a book, holden in one's hands, to explain his meaning. For, says he, if I take away my hands the book will fall to the ground without any act of mine to throw it down so I myself should instantly drop into nothing, were God to withdraw his sustaining power from under me, without his needing to do anything for thrusting me out of Being. Whether the case be so with us I shall not pretend to determine so positively as his Lordship, it being a matter beyond the reach of my understanding to penetrate; but I may say we have no direct evidence of the affirmative, there being rather an appearance of the contrary in the abiding quality of bodies, which, after all the divisions and separations that can be made by fermentation, putrefaction, dissolution, and burning, we still know are not lost out of nature. Nor does it much heighten our idea of omnipotence to imagine powers not derived therefrom, for substances, it seems, have an inherent power of annihilating themselves if omnipotence were not constantly at work to counteract them. There are inconveniences attending this hypothesis, which the Dean labors for many pages to remove: and though it may help to give us a full persuasion of our intimate dependence upon the Deity, the same might as well be attained by contemplation of his omnipresence. Nor would it a little weaken our assurance of our own immortality, built upon the individuality of spirit, to suppose individuals too perishable unless sustained by the immediate hand of God; for though he may still continue to support us, we can never be so sure of his future acts as of those he has already done, for the latter are our proofs of the former, therefore his having given us a durable nature is the strongest evidence we can have from the light of reason that it is his Will we should continue forever. And it is most agreeable to our ideas to conceive a permanency of existence in substances which nothing less than omnipotence can destroy: the powers of nature may form compounds, throw them into different combinations, increase, diminish, alter, or entirely dissipate them again; but cannot take existence from any single particle either of material or spiritual substance: this has been always esteemed a privilege reserved to omnipotence alone, and that it requires an exertion of the same power to annihilate as to create. Nor will our thinking in this manner lessen our apprehension of the divine sovereignty; for nobody doubts that he who made us may destroy us again with a word, nor that we receive the materials for our well being, without which Being were nothing worth, by his appointment, and in this sense he may truly be called our continual support.

8. God is incomprehensible in all his attributes, and if we go to fathom the depths of omnipotence we shall lose ourselves in darkness and perplexities: therefore, letting alone all the subtilities of absolute impossibilities, of an independent nature of things, and of the sustentation of existence in substances, let us fix our view upon a prospect we can clearly discern. Let us conceive of God as performing by second causes all the mighty works we see performed, and able to do whatever we can comprehend possible to be done. Let us consider him giving existence to substances, solidity to matter, perceptivity to spirit, and understanding to man limiting the ocean, spreading out the earth as a garment, and stretching forth the vast expanse of heaven: rolling the planets in their orbits, fixing the golden sun, and appointing the stars their stations: causing gravitation between large bodies, cohesion between small, elasticity in air and ether: giving motion to the wheels of fortune, stability to the laws of nature, and directing both their certain courses: forming the fibres of plants to fit them for vegetation, the vessels of animals to carry on circulation, and the mental organs to serve as instruments for the understanding making the earth yield her increase for our sustenance, feeding the cattle upon a thousand hills for our uses, supplying us with air to breathe, water to drink, clothes to put on, and innumerable objects all around to employ and entertain us: commanding the issues of life and death, and having the future condition of spirits at his disposal. The contemplation of these, and a multitude of other things, that a little thought might easily suggest, will, I apprehend, give us the fullest idea of omnipotence that we are capable of, and make us sensible the Lord is our continual support, and that in him we live, and move, and have our being.

CHAP. XV.

OMNISCIENCE.

We have remarked before, that intelligence is not the same thing in God as in ourselves, for our intelligence would not suit a First Cause we cannot work without motives and ideas suggested by objects previously affecting us, so that there must be something already existing from whence we may receive the information necessary to conduct us in our proceedings. Besides, intelligence is a particular mode of perception wherein the mind is

always passive, taking such judgments as are impressed upon it: for judgment properly is the act of the objects under contemplation, and not of the percipient, otherwise than by his bringing such of them into his thoughts from whence some judgment may result. We may fancy but not understand peaches growing upon an oak, rivers running upwards: nor in general can we understand anything different from what it appears after the most thorough examination. Therefore how imperfect notion soever we have of pure agency, such as is generally ascribed to God, we may see clearly that perception as in us being passive is incompatible with it for we cannot imagine him passive to receive impressions from the impulse of objects, nor yet can we deny him understanding before there was anything external to be understood, much less refuse him knowledge of the things he has created.

2. The vulgar have an advantage over the studious in some respects, for they discern not the difficulties which perplex the others: they make no boggle at creation, believing they see instances of it in striking fire, which they take to be something new, not existing before, but produced by the collision of flint and steel, for they think nothing of particles detached from the colliding bodies, nor of a subtile matter emitted from within their pores, nor of a circumambient ether, agitated by their vibrations, which being put into a certain violent motion appear in the form of fire. So likewise they seem to have experience of pure agency in their own meditations and voluntary reflections, wherein they imagine themselves acting within themselves, without instrument or material, without other object than their own acts. But our experience, that when our organs are indisposed we cannot think at may convince us that we have instruments to employ, and materials to work upon in our mental operations and upon a closer attention we shall find that even in the most abstracted thought, there must be something to be perceived numerically distinct from that which perceives. And in general the further we pry into the secrets of nature, we shall find her abounding in mysteries that do not occur to common apprehension. Since then it is the view of nature that must give us any conception of the Author of Nature, the more difficulties arise in the phenomena the less able shall we be to comprehend those attributes by which they are to be accounted for: so that it is no wonder Simonides asked still longer time the further he pushed his inquiries upon this subject.

all,

3. Our inability to conceive knowledge without prior means of information, together with the absurdity of refusing God that