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from man upwards, through many orders of created intellectual beings, is immeasurably long; though that uppermost link of this chain is not supposed to be fastened to the throne of infinite wisdom, nor to be nearer to it than the lowermost. Again: Since our planet is inhabited by corporeal intellectual beings, the hypothesis that assumes the other planets to be so likewise, is much more conceivable, than that of legions of angels, of demons and genii, and of pure and impure spirits, which pagan theology invented, and Jews and Christians adopted. Whether we suppose these beings immaterial, according to the present mode of opinion; or whether we suppose them, as the ancients both heathens and Christians did generally, to be fine material substances, like that whereof they made the human soul, or wherewith they thought proper to clothe it in its separate state, and of which Tully says in his Tusculans, “tanta ejus tenuitas, ut fugiat aciem;" whichever we suppose, this hypothesis stands on no other foundation, philosophically speaking, than that of a mere possible existence, of such spirits as are admitted for divers theological uses. The other hypothesis is founded on what we know of actual existence. We are led to it by a plain, direct, and unforced analogy. We know that there are habitations: and we assume that they are inhabited.

The first might appear plausible, as it did in those ages when poets and philosophers, as well as the vulgar, imagined that the Supreme Being who spoke, to use a common expression, and the universe was made, and every act whose will is sufficient to destroy it again, stood in need, like some earthly monarch, of ministers to attend his throne, of messengers to convey, and of troops to execute his orders: when they looked on the visible world, as on a great palace whose floor was the earth, and whose ceiling or upper story was the sky, and when, in consequence of such fantastical notions, they supposed the upper story, or heaven, to be the habitation of gods, and of other celestial persons, as the lower story, or earth, was that of men. But it is time that these wild imaginations should have no longer any place in the first philosophy. As far as revelation realises and sanctifies them, they must be employed by the divine: and he has in revelation a sufficient authority for employing them. The philosopher, whose object is natural theology, has not the same, because the reality of such existences cannot be deduced from any knowledge he has of nature, and because he cannot be justified in going beyond the bounds which this knowledge prescribes. Faith and reason, revealed and natural knowledge, ought to be always distinguished; lest one should be confined, and the other

* Cujus cœlum laquear et terra pavimentum.

extended too much: and divines and philosophers should keep in their distinct provinces.

Thus they proceed, for the most part, in matters of natural philosophy. The modern philosophers, though very good Christians, communicate the wonderful discoveries that have been made in corporeal nature, and concerning the true system of the universe, without any regard to their repugnancy to the Mosaic history of the creation, and to almost all the notions of the sacred penmen, which were plainly those of an ignorant people and unphilosophical ages. When such of these philosophers, as are divines, endeavor to reconcile to philosophical truth these apparent contradictions to it, they do but shake the authority of the Scriptures, and show most evidently how necessary it is to keep theology and philosophy each on its proper bottom, and to avoid at least by comparing these different systems, to demonstrate that they are irreconcilable. St. Austin and others paid, as divines, no regard to cosmography, and flatly denied the antpiodes. The inquisitors at Rome denied that Galilei saw what he said he saw, and punished hin very consequentially for saying that he saw it. Several divines follow the same method. They enter into cosmographical disquisitions no more than St. Austin, nor into astronomical any more than the Roman inquisitors, but content themselves to take the history of the creation according to the literal and obvious sense, as they find it related in the book of Genesis, and as they would take any other journal or historical relation. They who have done otherwise, and have found, upon trial, that this relation, thus understood, could not be reconciled to nature, reason, philosophy, nor natural theology, for natural theology teaches us to think of God in a manner very opposite to the ideas which Moses gives of the Supreme Being and of his operations, have made use of two expedients little favorable to the Mosaic history: for some have assumed it to be in this part wholly mythological, and others, unable to wrest natural philosophy into an agreement with it, have so wrested the text into a seeming agreement with their philosophical theories, as to make it plain that this text may be applied to any hypothesis, with some ingenuity, a skill in languages, and a knowledge of antiquity. -But I stop, here, a digression that might carry me insensibly a great way, and that was intended only to show, that since men have not admitted, in favor of revelation, a system of physics that is inconsistent with philosophical truth, there is no reason for admitting, in favor of the same revelation, a system of pneumatics, that is so too: whereas a hypothesis that has some foundations of probability in natural philosophy may be admitted, for this reason by the philosopher, and even by the divine for another reason; because it is not inconsistent with

revelation. If it be said that the pneumatical system, which establishes so many orders of spiritual beings, is not inconsistent with any knowledge that we have of nature; that it is properly a system, because it is established on revealed authority; and that if we consider it in a philosophical light alone, and merely as a hypothesis, it is better founded than the other; since we may assume, that there is a world of spirits from what we know of our own spirit by a more direct and easy analogy than that by which we assume, that the planets are inhabited by corporeal intelligent animals: if this be said, the answer is obvious and decisive. That there are such spiritual beings, as the authority of revelation is brought to prove, may not be inconsistent with some philosophical truths, but is so with others. Let it be, that any knowledge we have of natural philosophy does not contradict this system, yet is it suspicious to the first philosophy, because uncecessary; and inconsistent with it, because the reasons for the generation, to speak like the heathen, or the creation, to speak like Jews and Christians, of this unnecessary world of spirits, the supposed manner of their existence, and the uses to which they are put, or suffered to put themselves, with a multitude of other circumstances, stand in opposition to several truths of the first philosophy or natural theology, and have served only to promote polytheism, superstition, and idolatry. These dogmas then, for if they are revealed they cease to be hypotheses, must be solely maintained on the authority of the Scriptures.

If the divine keeps on that ground, he cannot be defeated. He may own his inability to answer the objections, and to solve the difficulties opposed to him; or may refuse more prudently still to give any attention to philosophical reasoning, by urging, that a time will come, a time appointed of the father, when every knot will be untied, and every seeming repugnancy of reason to revelation will be reconciled: and that he is contented, as the philosopher ought to be, to wait for that time. The rabbi might. defer his answer till Elias comes: the Christian till the Messias comes in his glory, and till the consummation of things. In the mean while, a sort of truce should take place between the divine and the philosopher. The former should forbear the vain attempt of bending reason to support revelation in this case, which is often done in many others, and almost always with notable prejudice to the latter. The philosopher should forbear to invade the province of the divine, on this condition; and should content himself to assert and promote natural theology, without opposing it to supernatural. Both of them might thus concur in receiving the hypothesis of planetary worlds, which does not require to be contrasted with the other, nor should have been so by me,

VOL. III.-29

if I had not thought it necessary to show at the same time, that there are probably finite created intelligences vastly superior to the human, and that there is however no such gradation of intelligent beings, as raises the most elevated of them a jot nearer to the supreme intelligence than the lowest. I oppose this theological system, and I defend the philosophical hypothesis, the rather, because by these means we may combat the pride and presumption of metaphysicians in two most flagrant instances, in the assumption of a gradation of the same intelligence and knowledge from man to God, as I have said already, and in that by which man is made the final cause of the whole creation; for if the planets of our solar system are worlds inhabited like ours, and if the fixed stars are other suns about which other planets revolve, the celestial phenomena were no more made for us than we for them. That noble scene of the universe, which modern philosophy has opened, gives ample room for all the planetary inhabitants, whom it leads, and even constrains us to suppose. Where the spirits of the other system reside was a question easily answered, when superstition and hypothesis made up the sum of theology and philosophy. But it is not so easy to be answered now. Are the good and pure spirits in heaven? But where is heaven? Is it beyond all the solar systems of the universe? Or is it, like the intermundia of Epicurus, in expanses between them? Are the evil and impure spirits in hell? But where is hell? Is it in the centre of any one planet for every system? Or is it in the centre of every planet? Do others wander in air? or reside latent in every element? Are they confined invisibly, like those that the Chinese imagine, to certain countries and cities, to rivers and lakes, to woods and mountains? Or is it their employment to attend on particular men, the guardian angels, of some, or the devils and the tempters of others; for temptation is ascribed to the evil spirits still, though possession is so no longer, I think, out of Spain and Portugal, and other countries, where religious ignorance prevails as much as in them, if any such there are? -Tantum

ESSAY THE THIRD:

CONTAINING

SOME FURTHER REFLECTIONS

ON THE

RISE AND PROGRESS OF MONOTHEISM,

THAT FIRST AND GREAT PRINCIPLE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY, OR THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY.

SECTION I.

I HAD finished the last essay before I recollected, that there was something in Mr. Locke's discourse concerning the reasonableness of Christianity, very repugnant to what I have advanced about the knowledge of the one true God. And to what I shall have occasion to say, on another occasion, about the ignorance of natural religion, under which it is supposed that mankind labored before the coming of Christ. I shall not anticipate the second point, but shall bestow some more reflections on the first; in order to judge, whilst the subject is fresh in my mind, whether I ought to retract any thing that I have said to you in conversation, or that has fallen from my pen upon the subject. If it appears, on examination, that my notions are not so well sounded in fact, and in reason, as those of this great man in the present case, I shall submit with pleasure to an authority, that I respect extremely in all cases; and if it appears that they are better founded than his in both, one useful lesson will be the result of this examination. We shall learn how unsafe it is to take for granted any thing, in matters especially which concern, or which

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