tutions and operations of which (being evidently directed according to very much reason, and to very good purpose) do evince their being framed and ordered by such a Being; as I have formerly, with a competent largeness, endeavored to show. But beside those, there is exposed to our observation, yea subject to our inward conscience, another sort of beings, acting in another manner, and from other principles; having in them a spring of voluntary motion and activity; not, as the rest, necessarily determined, or driven on, by a kind of blind violence, in one direct road to one certain end; but guiding themselves with judgment and choice, by several ways, toward divers ends; briefly, endued with reason, to know what and why; and with liberty, to choose what and how they should act; and that this sort of beings (that is, we ourselves, all mankind) did proceed from the same source or original cause, as it is in way of history delivered and affirmed in our text, so I shall now endeavor by reason (apt to persuade even those, who would not allow this sacred authority) to show. Indeed, if the eternal power and divinity of God may,' as St. Paul tells us, 'be seen in all the works of God;' the same peculiarly and principally will appear observable in this masterpiece, as it were, of the great Artificer; if the meanest creatures reflect somewhat of light, by which we may discern the Divine existence and perfections; in this fine and best polished mirror we shall more clearly discover the same: nowhere so much of God will appear as in this work, which was designedly formed to resemble and represent him. This then is the subject of our present discourse, That in man, well considered, we may discern manifest footsteps of that incomprehensibly excellent Being impressed on him; and this doubly, both in each man singly taken, and in men as standing in conjunction or relation to each other: considering man's nature, we shall have reason to think it to have proceeded from God; considering human societies, we shall see cause to suppose them designed and governed by God.

I. Consider we first any one single man, or that human nature abstractedly, whereof each individual person doth partake; and whereas that doth consist of two parts, one material and external, whereby man becomes a sensible part of nature, and

hath an eminent station among visible creatures; the other, that interior and invisible principle of operations peculiarly called human as to the former, we did, among other such parts of nature, take cognisance thereof, and even in that discovered plain marks of a great wisdom that made it, of a great goodness taking care to maintain it. The other now we shall chiefly consider, in which we may discern not only onμeia, but opoμara, of the Divine existence and efficiency; not only large tracks, but express footsteps; not only such signs as smoke is of fire, or a picture of the painter that drew it; but even such, as the spark is of fire, and the picture of its original.

1. And first, that man's nature did proceed from some efficient cause, it will (as of other things in nature) be reasonable to suppose. For if not so, then it must either spring up of itself, so that at some determinate beginning of time, or from all eternity, some one man, or some number of men did of themselves exist; or there hath been a succession, without beginning, of continual generations indeterminate (not terminated in any root, one or more, of singular persons).

Now, generally, that man did not at any time in any manner spring up of himself, appears, 1. From history and common tradition; which (as we shall otherwhere largely show) deliver the contrary; being therein more credible than bare conjecture or precarious assertion, destitute of testimony or proof. 2. From the present constant manner of man's production, which is not by spontaneous emergency, but in way of successive derivation, according to a method admirably provided for by nature. 3. Because if ever man did spring up of himself, it should be reasonable that at any time, that often, that at least sometime in so long a course of times, the like should happen, which yet no experience doth attest. 4. There is an evident relation between our bodies and souls; the members and organs of our bodies being wonderfully adapted to serve the operations of our souls. Now in our bodies (as we have before showed) there appear plain arguments of a most wise Author, that contrived and framed them; therefore in no likelihood did our souls arise of themselves, but owe their being to the same wise Cause.

Also particularly, that not any men did at some beginning of time spring up of themselves is evident, because there is even in the thing itself & repugnance; and it is altogether unconceivable that any thing, which once Lath not been, should ever come to be without receiving its being from another and supposing such a rise of any thing, there could not in any case be any need of an efficient cause; since any thing might purely out of nothing come to be of itself.

Neither could any man so exist from eternity, both from the general reasons assigned, which being grounded in the nature of the thing, and including no respect to this circumstance of now and then, do equally remove this supposition, (for what is in itself unapt or unnecessary or improbable to be now, was always alike so; the being from eternity or in time not altering the nature of the thing;) and also particularly, because there are no footsteps or monuments of man's (not to say eternal, but even) ancient standing in the world; but rather many good arguments (otherwhere touched) of his late coming thereinto; which consideration did even convince Epicurus and his followers, and made them acknowlege man to be a novel production. I add, seeing it is necessary to suppose some eternal and self-subsistent Being distinct from man, and from any other particular sensible being, (for there is no such being, which in reason can be supposed author of the rest; but rather all of them bear characters signifying their original from a Being more excellent than themselves;) and such an one being admitted, there is no need or reason to suppose any other, (especially man and all others appearing unapt so to subsist,) therefore it is not reasonable to ascribe eternal self-subsistence to man. This discourse I confirm with the suffrage of Aristotle himself; who in his Physics hath these words: In natural things, that which is definite and better, if possible, must rather exist: but it suffices that one, the first of things immovble, being eternal, should be to others the original of motion;' (I subjoin, and by parity of reason it is sufficient, that one and the best thing be eternally subsistent of itself, and the cause of subsistence to the rest.)

As for the last supposition, that there have been indeterminate successions of men, without beginning, it is also liable to

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most of the former exceptions, beside that it is altogether unintelligible, and its having this peculiar difficulty in it, that it ascribes determinate effects to causes indeterminate. And indeed it hath been to no other purpose introduced, than to evade the arguments arising from the nature of the thing, by confounding the matter with impertinent intrigues, such as the terms of infinite and indeterminate must necessarily produce in man's shallow understanding. I therefore, on such grounds, assume it as a reasonable supposition, that man's nature is nowise auropus, but hath proceeded from some cause.

2. I adjoin, secondly, that it could not come from any sensible or material cause, nor from any complication of such causes; for that the properties, the powers, the operations of man's soul are wholly different from in kind, highly elevated in worth, above all the properties, powers, and operations of things corporeal, in what imaginable manner soever framed or tempered the properties, faculties, and operations of our souls are, or refer to, several sorts or ways of knowlege, (sense, fancy, memory, discourse, mental intuition;) of willing, (that is, of appetite toward and choice of good, or of disliking and refusing evil;) of passion, (that is, of sensible complacency or displeasure in respect to good and evil apprehended under several notions and circumstances;) of auroKivnoia, or self-moving, (the power and act of moving without any force extrinsical working on it.) The general properties of things corporeal are extension according to several dimensions and figures; aptness to receive motion from, or to impart motion unto, each other in several degrees and proportions of velocity; to divide and unite, or to be divided and united each by other; and the like, coherent with and resulting from these: now to common sense it seems evident that those properties and these are toto genere different from each other; nor have any conceivable similitude unto, connexion with, dependence on each other, as to their immediate nature. Let any part of this corporeal mass be refined by the subtlest division, let it be agitated by the quickest motion, let it be modelled into what shape or fashion you please; how can any man imagine either knowlege or appetite or passion thence to result? or that it should thence acquire a power of moving itself, or another adjacent body? Even, I say, this

inferior locomotive faculty is too high for matter, by any change it can undergo, to obtain: for we (as inward experience, or conscience of what we do may teach us) determine ourselves commonly to action, and move the corporeal instruments subject to our will and command, not by force of any precedent bodily impression or impulse, but either according to mere pleasure, or in virtue of somewhat spiritual and abstracted from matter, acting on us, not by a physical energy, but by moral representation, in a manner more easily conceived than expressed ; (for no man surely is so dull that he cannot perceive a huge difference between being dragged by a violent hand, and drawn to action by a strong reason; although it may puzzle him to express that difference): such a proposition of truth, such an apprehension of events possible, such an appearance of good or evil consequent, (things no where existent without us, nor having in them any thing of corporeal subsistence; nor therefore capable of corporeal operation,) are all the engines that usually impel us to action; and these, by a voluntary application of our minds, (by collecting and digesting, severing and rejecting, sifting and moulding the present single representations of things, by an immediate interior power, independent from any thing without us,) we frame within ourselves. And even such a self-moving or self-determining power we cannot anywise conceive to be in, or to arise from, any part of this corporeal mass, however shaped or fixed, however situated or agitated: much less can we well apprehend the more noble faculties to be seated in or to spring from it; of them the grossest and the finest, the slowest and the nimblest, the roughest and the smoothest bodies are alike capable, or rather unlike, uncapable. To think a gross body may be ground and pounded into rationality, a slow body may be thumped and driven into passion, a rough body may be filed and polished into a faculty of discerning and resenting things; that a cluster of pretty thin round atoms, (as Democritus forsooth conceited,) that a well mixed combination of elements, (as Empedocles fancied,) that a harmonious contemperation (or crasis) of humors, (as Galen, dreaming it seems on his drugs and his potions, would persuade us,) that an implement made up of I know not what fine springs, and wheels, and such mechanic knacks, (as some of our mo