explication of the cause and the manner; yet they will, fixthly, urge matter of fact and experience, that mere body may produce cogitation and sense. For, fay they, do but observe the actions of fome brutes, how nearly they approach to human reafon, and visibly difcover fome glimpses of understanding: and if that be performed by the pure mechanism of their bodies, (as many do allow, who yet believe the being of God, and an immaterial spirit in man,) then it is but raising our conceptions, and fuppofing mankind to be engines of a finer make and contexture, and the bufiness is done. I must confefs that the Cartefians and some others, men that have given no occafion to be fufpected of irreligion, have afferted that brutes are mere machines and automata. I cannot now engage in the controversy, neither is there any neceffity to do fo; for religion is not endangered by either opinion. If brutes be faid to have fenfe and immaterial fouls, what need we be concerned, whether those fouls fhall be immortal, or annihilated at the time of death? This objection supposes the being of God; and he will do all things for the wisest and best ends. Or, if brutes be supposed to be bare engines and machines, I admire and adore the divine artifice and skill in fuch a wonderful contrivance. But I shall deny then that they have any reason or

fense,

fense, if they be nothing but matter. Omnipotence itself cannot create cogitative body. And it is not any imperfection in the power of God, but an incapacity in the fubject. The ideas of matter and thought are absolutely incompatible; and this the Cartefians themselves do allow. Do but convince them that brutes have the least participation of thought, or will, or appetite, or sensation, or fancy, and they will readily retract their opinion. For none but befotted Atheists do join the two notions together, and believe brutes to be rational or fenfitive machines. They are either the one, or the other; either endued with fenfe and fome glimmering rays of reason from a higher principle than matter; or (as the Cartefians fay) they are purely body, void of all sensation and life; and, like the idols of the Gentiles, they have eyes, and fee not; ears, and hear not; nofes, and Smell not: they eat without hunger, and drink without thirst, and howl without pain. They perform the outward material actions, but they have no inward felf-consciousness, nor any more perception of what they do or fuffer, than a looking-glafs has of the objects it reflects, or the index of a watch of the hour it points to. And as one of those watches, when it was first presented to the Emperor of China, was taken there for an animal; so, on the contrary, our Cartesians

take

For,

take brute animals for a fort of watches. confidering the infinite distance betwixt the poor mortal artist, and the almighty Opificer; the few wheels and motions of a watch, and the innumerable fprings and organs in the bodies of brutes; they may affirm, (as they think, without either abfurdity or impiety,) that they are nothing but moving automata, as the fabulous & ftatues of Dædalus, bereaved of all true life and vital fenfation, which never act spontaneously and freely: but as watches must be wound up to fet them agoing, fo their motions alfo are excited and inhibited, are moderated and managed by the objects without them.

(2.) And now that I have gone through the fix parts that I propofed, and fufficiently shewn that sense and perception can never be the product of any kind of matter and motion, it remains therefore that it must neceffarily proceed from fome incorporeal substance within us. And though we cannot conceive the manner of the foul's action and paffion, nor what hold it can lay on the body when it voluntarily moves it, yet we are as certain that it doth fo, as of any mathematical truth what

s Vide Zenobium et Suidam in Δαιδάλο ποιήματα, et Scholiaftem Eurip. Hecuba, ver. 838.

foever; or at leaft of fuch as are proved from the impoffibility or abfurdity of the contrary, a way of proof that is allowed for infallible demonstration. Why one motion of the body begets an idea of pleasure in the mind, another an idea of pain; why fuch a disposition of the body induces fleep, another disturbs áll the operations of the foul, and occafions a lethargy or frenzy; this knowledge exceeds our narrow faculties, and is out of the reach of our discovery. I difcern fome excellent final causes of such a vital conjunction of body and foul; but the inftrumental I know not, nor what invisible bands and fetters unite them together. I refolve all that into the fole pleafure and fiat of our omnipotent Creator; whofe existence (which is my last point) is fo plainly and nearly deducible from the established proof of an immaterial foul, that no wonder the refolved Atheists do fo labour and beftir themselves to fetch sense and perception out of the power of matter. I will dispatch it in three words. For, fince we have shewn that there is an incorporeal fubftance within us, whence did that proceed, and how came it into being? It did not exist from all eternity; that is too abfurd to be supposed; nor could it come out of nothing into being without an efficient cause. Something therefore must have created our fouls out of nothing; and that

fomething

fomething (fince nothing can give more than it has) must itself have all the perfections that it hath given to them. There is therefore an immaterial and intelligent Being that created our fouls; which Being was either eternal itself, or created immediately or ultimately by some other Eternal, that has all those perfections. There is therefore originally an eternal, immaterial, intelligent Creator; all which together are the attributes of God alone.

And now that I have finished all the parts which I proposed to discourse of, I will conclude all with a short application to the Atheifts. And I would advife them, as a friend, to leave off this dabbling and fmattering in philosophy, this shuffling and cutting with atoms. It never fucceeded well with them, and they always come off with the lofs. Their old mafter Epicurus feems to have had his brains. fo muddled and confounded with them, that he scarce ever kept in the right way; though the main maxim of his philofophy was to trust to his fenfes, and follow his nofe. I will not take notice of his doting conceit, that the Sun and Moon are no bigger than they appear to the eye, a foot or half a yard over; and that the stars are no larger than so many glowworms. But let us fee how he manages his

h Epicurus apud Laert. Lucret. lib. v. Cicero de Fin. lib. i. Acad. lib. ii.