BOOK Pythagoras, than in the learning of his own nation, viz. III. Philo of Alexandria, began first to exercise his wit on the text of Moses, with Platonic notions; yet I shall easily grant that Pythagoras, by means of his great industry and converse with the learned nations, might attain to far greater knowledge of many mysterious things in natural philosophy, and as to the origin of the universe, than any of the homebred philosophers of Greece, or it may be, than any one of the nations he resorted to, because he had the advantage of comparing the several accounts of them together, and extracting out that which he judged Plutarch.de the best of them. And hence Plutarch tells us, that the Plat. Phi- first principles of the world, according to Pythagoras, were these two: the one was τὸ ποιητικὸν αἰτίον καὶ εἰδικὸν Ed. Franc. (oTep est vous i Jeòs) an active and forming principle, and that was God, whom he called mind (as Anaxagoras likewise did ;) the other was τὸ παθητικόν τε καὶ ὑλικὸν (ὅπερ esiv ó óparòs nóσpos) passive and material, which is, the visible world.

los. 1. i.

cap. 5.

P. 9.

III.

Plato in Tim. p.

1047.

And thus we see these two renowned founders of the Ionic and Italic societies of philosophers, both_giving their concurrent testimony with Moses as to the true origin of the world, and not at all differing from each Diog. Laer. Other; for thus Thales speaks in Diogenes Laertius, πρεσβύτατον τῶν ὄντων, θεός· ἀγέννητον γάρ. κάλλιστον κόσμος, Ed. Lond. Toinua yap des God is the eldest Being, because unbegotten; the world the most beautiful, because it is God's workmanship. To which those expressions of Plato, in his Timeus, come very near, (whose philosophy was, for substance, Ed. Ficini. the same with the Pythagorean,) when he had before ascribed the production of the world to the goodness of God; which goodness of his did incline him to make all other things like himself. Θέμις ἔτ ̓ ἦν ἔτ ̓ ἐςὶ τῷ ἀρίσῳ δρᾶν ἄλλο πλὴν τὸ κάλλισον. For the most excellent Being cannot but produce the most excellent effects. And as to the material principle out of which the world was made, there appears no great difference between the dwg of Thales, and the van of Plato and Pythagoras; for Plato, when he tells us what a kind of thing the material principle was, he describes it thus, οὐχ ἡσυχίαν ἄγον, ἀλλὰ κινέμενον πλημμελῶς καὶ ἀτάκτως, which, as Chalcidius renders it, is motu importuno fluctuTim. p. 24. ans neque unquam quiescens, it was a visible corporeal Ed. Meurs. thing (Tav oσov v oparov) which was never at rest, but in continual disorderly motion and agitation: which is a full explication, I suppose, of what Thales meant by his water, which is the same with that is, or mixture of

Chalcid.

II.

.c. 10.

mud and water together, which others speak of as the CHAP. principle of the universe; as Orpheus in Athenagoras, and the scholiast on Apollonius, cited by Grotius and Grot. Anothers. Which we have the more reason to believe, be- not. in l. i. cause the successors of Thales, Anaximander and Anax- de Ver. agoras, express themselves to that purpose. Anaximander Christ, Rel called the sea, τῆς πρώτης ὑγρασίας λείψανον, the remainder of the primitive moisture: and Anaxagoras says, before the Nes, or God, set things in their order, távra Xphμata žu óμs weQuguéva, all things were at first confused together; which must needs make that which Chalcidius tells us Chalcid. in Numenius attributes to Pythagoras, which his translator Tim.p.394. calls sylvam fluidam, or fluid matter. Which is the same likewise with the Phoenicians' Mar, which, as appears by Eusebius, some call ἰν, others υδατώδους μίξεως σῆψιν, Euseb. some, mud or slime, others, the putrefaction of watery mix- Præp. tures, which they say was σπορὰ κτίσεως, καὶ γένεσις τῶν Evang. 1. i. xwv, the seed-plot of the creation, and the generation of Ed. Par. things. Thus we see how Thales, with the Phoenicians, from whom he was derived, as Laertius tells us, and Pythagoras, with the Egyptians and others, concur with Moses, not only in the production of the world, but in the manner of it, wherein is expressed a fluid matter, which was the material principle out of which the world was formed; when we are told, that the earth was Gen. i. 2. without form and void, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, i. e. that all at first was but fluid matter; for P. Fagius, from R. Kimchi, renders n by an, which fluid matter was agitated and moved by the Divine Spirit, or the vis plastica mundi; so Chrysostom calls it évépye wrix, and so Drusius and P. Fagius explain by motion or agitation. And herein we have likewise the consent of those forenamed excellent philosophers, who attribute the origin of particular things in the world to this agitation or motion of the fluid matter. For Chalcidius, speaking not only of Thales, Pythagoras, Chalcid. in Plato, but of Anaximenes, Heraclitus, and others, says thus of them, omnes igitur hi-in motu positam rerum originem censuerunt: they all agreed in this, that the origin of things was to be ascribed to the motion of the parts of matter. So the Phoenicians called this motion of the particles of matter αέρα ζοφώδη καὶ πνευματώδη, a dark and blustering wind. And how suitable this explication of the origin of things, from the motion of fluid matter, is to the history of nature, appears by those many experiments by which mixed bodies are shewed to spring from no

Tim. p.

378.

P. 115, &c.

BOOK other material principle than the particles of fluid matter: III. of which you may read a discourse of that ingenious and Boyle's learned gentleman, Mr. Boyle, in his Sceptical Chymist. Sceptical Only thus much may here suffice to have made it appear Chymist, that all those philosophers, who were most inquisitive after the ancient and genuine tradition of the world concerning the first beginning of things, did not only concur with Moses in the main thing, that its beginning was from God, but in the particular circumstances of it, as to the fluid matter and motion thereof. Concerning which I may yet add, if it be material, the testimony of Homer in Plutarch.

To

Ωκεανός, ὅσπερ γένεσις πάντεσσι τέτυκται. And in Chalcidius: Inque eadem sententia Homerus esse invenitur, cum Oceanum et Thetin dicat parentes esse genituræ ; cumque jusjurandum Deorum constituat aquam, quam quidem ipse appellat Stygem, antiquitati tribuens reverentiam, et jurejurando nihil constituens reverentius. which purpose likewise Aristotle speaks in his Metaphysics, that the reason why Styx was made the oath of the Gods, was because water was supposed to be the material principle of things; which he saith was ἀρχαία τὶς αὕτη καὶ παλαιὰ περὶ τῆς φύσεως δόξα, a most ancient tradition concerning the origin of the universe. And tells us before, that some were of opinion, τις παμπαλαιὸς, καὶ πολὺ πρὸ τῆς νῦν γενέσεως καὶ πρώτους θεολογήσαντας, that the most ancient and remote persons, and first writers of theology, held this opinion of water being the first material principle of things.

Having thus made it appear what a consent there was between the ancient tradition of the world, and the writings of Moses, concerning the origin of the world, I now come to consider upon what pretence of reason this tradition came to be contradicted, and the eternity of the world asserted. For which we are to consider, that the difference of the former philosophers of the Ionic sect, after the time of Thales, as to the material principle of the world, one substituting air, another fire, instead of water, rendered the tradition itself suspected among other philosophers, especially when the humour of innovating in philosophy was got among them; and they thought they did nothing unless they contradicted their masters: thence came that multiplicity of sects presently among them; and that philosophy, which at first went much on the original tradition of the world, was turned into dis

II.

putes and altercations, which helped as much to the find- CHAP. ing out of truth, as the fighting of two cocks on a dunghill doth to the finding out the jewel that lies there. For which, scraping and searching into the natures of things had been far more proper than contentions and wranglings with each other; but by means of this litigious humour, philosophy, from being a design, grew to be a mere art; and he was accounted the best philosopher, not that searched further into the bowels of nature, but that dressed and tricked up the notions he had in the best posture of defence against all who came to oppose him. From hence those opinions were most plausible, not which were most true, but which were most defensible, and which, like Des Cartes's second Element, had all the angles cut off, on which their adversaries might have an advantage of justling upon them; and then their opinions were accounted most pure, when they were so spherical as to pass up and down without interruption. From such a degeneracy of philosophy as this we have now mentioned, arose the opinion of the eternity of the world; for the certain tradition of the world being now lost in a crowd of philosophers, whose main aim was to set up for themselves, and not to trade with the common bank, so that there could be no certain and convictive evidence given to a shuffling philosopher that things were ever otherwise than they are; they found it most defensible to assert that the world never had a beginning, nor would have an end, but always did, and would continue in the state they were in. This opinion, though Aristotle seems to make all before him to be of another mind, yet was hatched, as far as we can find, at first under Pythagoras's successors, by Ocellus Lucanus, as appears by his book still extant, Tegl Ts Tou wavτos púσews, of the nature of the universe; to whom Aristotle hath not been a little beholden, as Ludov. Nogarola hath in part manifested in his notes on Ocellus; although Aristotle had not the ingenuity of Pliny, agnoscere per quos profecerit. From Aristotle this opinion, together with his name, spread itself much farther, and became the opinion most in vogue among the Heathen philosophers, especially after the rise of Christianity; for then not only the Peripatetics, but the modern Platonists, Plotinus, Apuleius, Taurus, Iamblichus, Alcinous, Proclus, and others, were all engaged in the defence of the eternity of the world, thinking thereby the better to overthrow Christianity. Hence came the hot and eager contests between Proclus, Simplicius, and

Fic.

III.

BOOK Philoponus; who undertook to answer Proclus's eighteen arguments for the eternity of the world, and to charge Aristotle with self-contradiction in reference to it. But nothing were they more troubled about, than to reconcile the Timæus of Plato with the eternity of the world, which they made to be a mere hypothesis, and a kind of diagram to salve Providence withal; although the plain words of Plato, not only there, but elsewhere, do express, as far as we can judge by his way of writing, his real judgment to Plato. So- have been for the production of the world by God. For phist. p. which purpose we have this observable testimony in his 185. Ed. Sophista, where he divides all manner of productions of things into divine and human, and opposes the opinion that conceived all things to be produced by an eternal power, to the opinion of the vulgar; which, saith he, was τὴν φύσιν αὐτὰ γεννᾶν ἀπό τινος αἰτίας αὐτομάτης καὶ ἄνευ διανοίας queons, that all things were produced by a blind force of nature, without any reason or counsel; to which he opposeth the other opinion, that they are made μετὰ λόγε τε καὶ ἐπιςήμης θείας ἀπὸ θεοῦ γιγνομένης, by a Divine power, with infinite reason and wisdom; and when Theætetus expresseth himself in an academical way as to either of these opinions, the Hospes Eleatensis, who there acts the part of the philosopher, tells him, if he thought he were inclinable to the other opinion, νῦν ἂν τῷ λόγῳ μετὰ πειθῶς ἀναίκαίας ἐπεχειρῶμεν ποιεῖν ὁμολογεῖν, he would undertake to make him confess the contrary, by the evidence of reason which he would bring. And we shall see what great reason there is for this opinion, when we consider what weak and infirm foundations the contrary is built upon. For all the arguments which either Ocellus, or Aristotle, or the modern Platonists make use of, are built on these following suppositions; which are all false. 1. That it is un

V.

conceivable that things should ever have been in any other state than they are. 2. That there is no other way of production but by generation. 3. That God is no free agent, but produced the world by necessity of nature.

1. That it is unconceivable that things should ever have been any otherwise than they are. The reason of which supposition was this: That the general conclusions of reason, which they proceed upon in philosophy, were taken up from the observation of things as they are at present in the world. Which is evident from the ground of Aristotle's condemning the opinion of Empedocles; who asserted the production of the world, and yet the incorruptibility of it : τὸ μὲν ἦν γενέσθαι μὲν, ἀἴδιον δ' ὅμως εἶναι