thereby with exceeding immodesty and rudeness charge the world with extreme both vanity and malignity; many, if not all, worthy historians, of much inconsiderateness or fraud; most lawgivers, of great silliness and rashness; most judicatories, of high stupidity or cruelty; a vast number of witnesses, of the greatest malice or madness; all which have concurred to assert these matters of fact.

It is true, no question, but there have been many vain pretences, many false reports, many unjust accusations, and some undue decisions concerning these matters; that the vulgar sort is apt enough to be abused about them; that even intelligent and considerate men may at a distance in regard to some of them be imposed on; but as there would be no false gems obtruded, if there were no true ones found in nature; as no counterfeit coin would appear, were there no true one current ; so neither can we well suppose that a confidence in some to feign, or a readiness in most to believe, stories of this kind could arise, or should subsist, without some real ground, or without such things having in gross somewhat of truth and reality. However, that the wiser and more refined sort of men, highest in parts and improvements both from study and experience, (indeed the flower of every commonwealth; statesmen, lawgivers, judges, and priests,) on so many occasions of great importance, after most deliberate scanning such pretences and reports, should so often suffer themselves to be deluded, to the extreme injury of particular persons concerned, to the common abusing of mankind, to the hazard of their own reputation in point of wisdom and honesty, seems nowise reasonable to couceive. In likelihood rather the whole kind of all these things, were it altogether vain and groundless, would on so frequent and so mature discussions have appeared to be so, and would consequently long since have been disowned, exploded, and thrust out of the world; for, as on this occasion it is said in Tully, Time wipeth out groundless conceits, but confirms that which is founded in nature, and real.'

Now if the truth and reality of these things, (all or any of them,) inferring the existence of powers invisible, at least inferior ones, though much superior to us in all sort of ability, be admitted, it will at least (as removing the chief obstacles of

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VOL. V.

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incredulity) confer much to the belief of that supreme Divinity, which our discourse strives to maintain.

I must acknowlege that both these arguments, drawn from testimonies concerning matters of fact, (and indeed all other arguments,) were invalid and insignificant, could any demonstration or any argument weighty enough be brought to show the impossibility of such a thing to exist, as we infer to exist from them. But, as it is a very easy thing (so whoever is versed in speculation and reasoning about things cannot but find) to prove many things possible to be, which do not actually exist; so it is hard to prove the impossibility of a thing's being ; yea there is plainly no other mean of doing this, than the manifesting an evident repugnance between being itself, and some property assigned to that thing; or between several properties attributed thereto; as if we should suppose a square circle, or a round square to exist. But in our case no man can show such a repugnance; between being and wisdom, power or goodness, there is no inconsistence surely; nor can any man evince one to be between being and coexisting with matter, or penetrating body; between being and insensibility; between being and any other property which we ascribe to God; nor is there any clashing between those properties themselves: it is therefore impossible to show that God cannot exist; and therefore it is unreasonable to disbelieve the testimonies (so many, so pregnant) that declare him to exist.

Men indeed, who affix themselves to things which their sense offers, may be indisposed to abstract their minds from such things, may be unapt to frame conceptions about any other sort of things; but to think there can be no other things than such as we see and feel, that nothing, endued with other properties than such as these objected to our sense have, can exist, implies a great dulness of apprehension, a greater shortness of reason and judgment; it is much like the simplicity of a rustic, who, because he never was above three miles from home, cannot imagine the world to reach ten miles farther; and will look on all that is told him, concerning things more distant, to be false, and forged to abuse him. I add, that these men's incredulity is hence more inexcusable, because the possibility of such a being's existence, the compatibility and concurrence of such

properties in one thing, is (as we otherwhere have largely showed) by a very plain instance declared, even by that being within every man, which in a degree partakes of all those properties.

I shall leave this head of discourse with this one remark; that they are much mistaken, who place a kind of wisdom in being very incredulous, and unwilling to assent to any testi-mony, how full and clear soever for this indeed is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions ; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt. Compare we, I say, these two sorts of fools; the credulous fool, who yields his assent hastily on any slight ground; and the suspicious fool, who never will be stirred by any the strongest reason or clearest testimony; we shall find the latter in most respects the worst of the two; that his folly arises from worse causes, hath worse adjuncts, produceth worse effects. Credulity may spring from an airy complexion, or from a modest opinion of one's self; suspiciousness hath its birth from an earthy temper of body, or from self-conceit in the mind; that carries with it being civil and affable, and apt to correct an error; with this a man is intractable, unwilling to hear, stiff and incorrigible in his ignorance or mistake: that begets speed and alacrity in action; this renders a man heavy and dumpish, slow and tedious in his resolutions and in his proceedings: both include want of judgment; but this pretending to more thereof, becomes thereby more dangerous. Forward rashness, which is the same with that, may sometimes, like an acute disease, undo a man sooner; but stupid dotage, little differing from this, is (like a chronical distemper) commonly more mischievous, and always more hard to cure. In fine, were men in their other affairs, or in ordinary converse, so diffident to plain testimony, as some do seem to be in these matters concerning religion, they would soon feel great inconveniences to proceed thence; their business would stick, their conversation would be distasteful; they would be much more offensive, and no less ridiculous than the most credulous fool in

the world. While men therefore so perversely distrustful affect to seem wise, they affect really to be fools; and practice according to the worst sort of folly.

Thus have I, although very cursorily, considered the first kind of works extraordinary that appear in the world: I proceed briefly to touch the other sort, observable in the transaction of human affairs; for even in these there do happen things in a sort miraculous or prodigious; according to reasonable estimation surpassing the common efficacy of human causes; by which God in a language more express, as it were, and in a louder tone, declares his presence and providence here; so that they must be very deaf and stupid who do not from them learn lessons of piety and reverence toward God; who do not in them hear Heaven thundering forth that proclamation to us all: Discite justitiam moniti. For instance,

1. We may observe, when any where things are come to such a pass, that iniquity and outrage do extremely prevail, so that the most of men's lives become intolerably grievous, that in such cases often the state of things, how seemingly stable and robust soever, in a manner sudden and strange, by means to appearance small and weak, to be overturned, and reduced to a more tolerable form; no strugglings of might, no fetches of policy, no circumspection or industry of man availing to uphold it, an invisible hand checking all such force, and crossing all such devices. A stone cut out of the mountains without hands,' (that is, a slender instrument coming forth out of some remote or secret place, without any considerable influence of human endeavor,) breaking in pieces the iron, and the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold;' there being raised up instantly a Moses or a Maccabæus; an Ehud or a Gideon; a Dion or a Timoleon, by a single stroke or a sudden impression, to deliver oppressed nations from slavery.

2. How many examples do experience and history afford us of justice and vengeance, in ways for their kind and for their circumstances very remarkable, executed in the face of the world on persons (such as Corah and his fellows, Sennacherib, Herod, Brennus) notoriously wicked and mischievous, who have outbraved Heaven by their impiety, or horribly abused mankind by their injustice!

3. Yea, we may take notice that even few of those men, whose actions have been illustrious for greatness void of goodness; who have climbed to height of power and state by the ruins and slaughters of mankind; that, I say, few of such persons have departed off the stage in peace or honor. That Alexander was snapt in the flower of his age and glory; that Cæsar was no sooner arrived to the top of his fortune than to the bottom of his life; neither having time allowed them to enjoy, scarce to taste, those fruits which they so eagerly sought and toiled for both perhaps (one without any peradventure) being speeded away by violent and treacherous hands. Not to mention Pompey or Hannibal, or other such like men of exorbitant ambition, whose fortunes were so strangely changed, and whose ends were so dismal.

4. We may however observe that few great tyrants and oppressors, few persons insolently profane or sacrilegious, have escaped the visible stroke of divine vengeance; a stroke inflicted in ways not only violent, but shameful; and that usually by means most unexpected, by the hands of their own guards, their own servants, their own favorites, the very instruments of their mischief, and these stirred up by slight causes, by some little disgrace or disgust received by them from their master.* What a long black legend of Caligula's, Nero's, Domitian's, Commodus's, Heliogabalus's, Maximinus's, may any man's observation even out of profane histories easily com pose, of whom the divine justice in such ways hath rid the world?

5. I might also mention the judgments of God on persons and families raised to wealth and splendor of estate by oppression, fraud, sacrilege, rapine, or such bad means; whose estates without any visible ordinary means do moulder and decay; a secret moth devouring them; a thing which falls under common observation.

6. The same providence hath more clearly discovered itself in the strange detections of murders, and other enormous mischiefs committed in darkness, and revealed by a light unaccountably darted from Heaven. Of which kind

* Vid. Plut. in Pelopida ad fin.