minds, together with their power over matter, the course of the first motion that was given to the universe is so changed, that if there is not a constant providence, the frame of nature must go out of the channel into which God did at first put it. The order of things on this earth takes a great turn from the wind, both as to the fruitfulness of the earth, and to the operations on the sea, and has likewise a great influence on the purity of the air, and, by consequence, on men's good or ill health; and the wind, or the agitation of the air, turns so often and so quick, that it seems to be the great instrument of Providence, upon which an unconceivable variety of things does naturally depend. I do not deny, but that it may be said, that all those changes in the air arise from certain and mechanical, though to us unknown causes; which may be supported from this, that between the Tropics, where the influence of the heavenly bodies is stronger, the wind and weather are more regular; though even that admits of great exceptions: yet it has been the common sense of mankind, that, besides the natural causes of the alterations in the air, they are under a particular influence and direction of Providence: and it is in itself highly probable, to say no more of it. This may either be managed immediately by the acts of the Divine Mind, to which nature readily obeys, or by some subaltern mind, or angel, which may have as natural an efficiency over an extent of matter proportioned to its capacity, as a man has over his own body, and over that compass of matter that is within his reach. Which way soever God governs the world, and what influence soever he has over men's minds, we are sure that the governing and preserving his own workmanship is so plainly a perfection, that it must belong to a Being infinitely perfect: and there is such a chain in things, those of the greatest consequence arising often from small and inconsiderable ones, that we cannot imagine a Providence, unless we believe every thing to be within its care and view.

The only difficulty that has been made in apprehending this, has arisen from the narrowness of men's minds, who have measured God rather by their own measure and capacity, than by that of infinite perfection, which, as soon as it is considered, will put an end to all further doubtings about it. When we perceive that a vast number of objects enter in at our eye by a very small passage, and yet are so little jumbled in that crowd, that they open themselves regularly, though there is no great space for that neither; and that they give us a distinct apprehen

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ART. sion of many objects that lie before us, some even at a I. vast distance from us, both of their nature, colour, and size; and by a secret geometry, from the angles that they make in our eye, we judge of the distance of all objects both from us, and from one another. If to this we add the vast number of figures that we receive and retain long and with great order in our brains, which we easily fetch up either in our thoughts or in our discourses; we shall find it less difficult to apprehend how an infinite mind should have the universal view of all things ever present before it. It is true, we do not so easily conceive how free minds are under this Providence, as how natural agents should always move at its direction. But we perceive that one mind can work upon another. A man raises a sound of words, which carry such signs of his inward thoughts, that by this motion in the air another man's ear is so struck upon, that thereby an impression is made upon his brain, by which he not only conceives what the other man's thought was, but is very powerfully inclined to consent to it, and to concur with it. All this is a great way about, and could not be easily apprehended by us, if we had not a clear and constant perception of it. Now since all this is brought about by a motion upon our brains, according to the force with which we are more or less affected, it is very reasonable for us to apprehend that the Supreme Mind can, besides many other ways to us less known, put such motions in our brain, as may give us all such thoughts as it intends to impress upon us, in as strong and effectual a manner as may fully answer all its purposes.

The great objection that lies against the power and the goodness of Providence, from all that evil that is in the world, which God is either not willing or not able to hinder, will be more properly considered in another place; at present it is enough in general to observe, that God's providence must carry on every thing according to its nature; and since he has made some free beings capable of thought, and of good and evil, we must believe, that as the course of nature is not oft put out of its channel, unless when some extraordinary thing is to be done, in order to some great end; so in the government of free agents, they must be generally left to their liberty, and not put too oft off their bias: this is a hint to resolve that difficulty by, concerning all the moral evil, which is, generally speaking, the occasion of most of the physical evil that is in the world. A providence thus settled, that extends itself to all things both natural and free, is

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necessary to preserve religion, to engage us to prayers, ART. praises, and to a dependence on it, and a submission to it. Some have thought it was necessary to carry this further, and so they make God to be the first and immediate cause of every action or motion. This some modern writers have taken from the schools, and have dressed it in new phrases of general laws, particular wills, and occasional causes; and so they express or explain God's producing every motion that is in matter, and his raising every sensation, and, by the same parity of reason, every cogitation in minds: this they think arises out of the idea of infinite perfection, and fully answers these words of the Scriptures, that in God we live, move, and have our being. To others all this seems first unnecessary; for if God has made matter capable of motion, and capable of receiving it from the stroke or impulse that another piece of matter gives it; this comes as truly from God, as if he did immediately give every motion by an act of his own will. It seems more suitable to the beauty of his workmanship, to think that he has so framed things that they hold on in that course in which he has put them, than to make him perpetually produce every new motion. And the bringing God immediately into every thing, may, by an odd reverse of effects, make the world think that every thing is done as much without him, as others are apt to imagine that every thing is done by him. And though it is true that we cannot distinctly apprehend how a motion in our brain should raise such a thought as answers to it in our minds; yet it seems more reasonable to think that God has put us under such an order of being from which that does naturally follow, than that he himself should interpose in every thought. The difficulty of apprehending how a thing is done, can be no prejudice to the belief of it, when we have the infinite power of God in our thoughts, who may be as easily conceived to have once for all put us in a method of receiving such sensations, by a general law or course of nature, as to give us new ones at every minute. But the greatest difficulty against this is, that it makes God the first physical cause of all the evil that is in the world: which as it is contrary to his nature, so it absolutely destroys all liberty; and this puts an end to all the distinctions between good and evil, and consequently to all religion. And as for those large expressions that are brought from Scripture, every word in Scripture is not to be stretched to the utmost physical sense to which it can be carried: it is enough if a sense is given to it, that agrees to the scope of it: which is fully

ART. answered by acknowledging, that the power and provi I. dence of God is over all things, and that it directs every thing to wise and good ends, from which nothing is hid, by which nothing is forgot, and to which nothing can resist. This scheme of providence fully agrees with the notion of a Being infinitely perfect, and with all that the Scriptures affirm concerning it; and it lays down a firm foundation for all the acts and exercises of religion.

As to the power and providence of God with relation to invisible beings, we plainly perceive that there is in us a principle capable of thought and liberty, of which, by all that appears to us, matter is not at all capable: after its utmost refinings by fires and furnaces, it is still passive, and has no self-motion, much less thought, in it. Thought seems plainly to arise from a single principle, that has no parts, and is quite another thing than the motion of one subtile piece of matter upon another can be supposed to be. If thought is only motion, then no part of us thinks, but as it is in motion; so that only the moving particles, or rather their surfaces, that strike upon one another, do think: but such a motion must end quickly, in the dissipation and evaporation of the whole thinking substance; nor can any of the quiescent parts have any perception of such thoughts, or any reflection upon them. And to say that matter may have other affections unknown to us besides motion, by which it may think, is to affirm a thing without any sort of reason: it is rather a flying from an argument, than an answering it: no man has any reason to affirm this, nor can he have any. And besides, all our cogitations of immaterial things, proportions, and numbers, do plainly shew that we have a being in us distinct from matter, that rises above it, and commands it: we perceive we have a freedom of moving and acting at pleasure. All these things give us a clear perception of a being that is in us distinct from matter, of which we are not able to form a complete idea: we having only four perceptions of its nature and operations. 1. That it thinks. 2. That it has an inward power of choice. 3. That by its will it can move and command the body. And, 4. That it is in a close and intire union with it, that it has a dependence on it, as to many of its acts, as well as an authority over it in many other things. Such a being that has no parts must be immortal in its nature, for every single being is immortal. It is only the union of parts that is capable of being dissolved; that which has no parts is indissoluble. To this two objections are made: one is, that beasts seem to have both thought and freedom,

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though in a lower order: if then matter can be capable of ART. this in any degree how low soever, a higher rectification of matter may be capable of a higher degree of it. It is therefore certain, that either beasts have no thought or liberty at all, and are only pieces of finely organized matter, capable of many subtile motions, that come to them from objects without them, but that they have no sensation nor thought at all about them; or, since how prettily soever some may have dressed up this notion, it is that which human nature cannot receive or bear; there being such evident indications of even high degrees of reason among the beasts; it is more reasonable to imagine, that there may be spirits of a lower order in beasts, that have in them a capacity of thinking and choosing; but that so entirely under the impressions of matter, that they are not capable of that largeness, either of thought or liberty, that is necessary to make them capable of good or evil, of rewards and punishments; and that therefore they may be perpetually rolling about from one body to another. Another objection to the belief of an immaterial substance in us is, that we feel it depends so entirely on the fabric and state of the brain, that a disorder, a vapour, or humour in it, defaces all our thoughts, our memory, and imagination; and since we find that which we call mind sinks so low upon a disorder of the body, it, may be reasonable to believe, that it evaporates, and is quite dissipated upon the dissolution of our bodies: so that the soul is nothing but the livelier parts of the blood, called the animal spirits. In answer to this, we know that those animal spirits are of such an evanid and subtile nature, that they are in a perpetual waste, new ones always succeeding as the former go off: but we perceive at the same time that our soul is a stable and permanent being, by the steadiness of its acts and thoughts; we being for many years plainly the same beings, and therefore our souls cannot be such a loose and evaporating substance as those spirits are. The spirits are indeed the inward organs of the mind, for memory, speech, and bodily motion; and as these flatten or are wasted, the mind is less able to act: as when the eye or any other organ of sense is weakened, the sensations grow feeble on that side: and as a man is less able to work, when all those instruments he makes use of are blunted; so the mind may sink upon a decay or disorder in those spirits, and yet be of a nature wholly different from them. How a mind should work on matter, cannot, I confess, be clearly comprehended. It cannot be denied by any that