: LECT. XXIV. The World not Eternal. § 1. Prop. THE system of things which we call the material world, did not exist from eternity in its present form, but had a beginning. 2. Dem. 1. We may not only conceive of many possible alterations which might be made in the form of it, but we see it incessantly changing; whereas an eternal being, for as much as it is self-existent, is always the same. Lect. xxiii. § 6. § 3. 2. We have no credible history of transactions more remote than six thousand years from the present time: for as to the pretence that some nations have made to histories of greater antiquity, as the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Chinese, &c. they are evidently convicted of falshood at large in STILLINGFLEET's Orig. Sacr. p. 15-106. MILLAR'S Propag. of Christ. vol. i. p. 100-112. PEARSON on the Creed, p. 58—60. JENKINS of Christianity, vol. ii. preface, p. 4-11. ALLIX'S Reflections, vol. i. p. 95-120. WINDER'S Hist. of Knowledge, vol. ii. passim. LUCRETIUS, l. v. ver. 325–330*. § 4. 3. We can trace the invention of the most useful arts and sciences; which had probably been carried farther, and invented sooner, had the world been eternal". § 5. 4. The origin of the most considerable nations of the earth may be traced; i. e. the time when they first inhabited the countries where they now dwell: and it appears that most of the western nations came from the east. § 6. Schol. If it be said that deluges, pestilences, conflagrations, &c. destroy men with their inventions, it may be answered, (1.) If the world were eternal, there must have been an immense number of these devastations, and it is amazing (if there be, as this hypothesis supposes, no superior being that presides a CLARKE at BOYLE's Lect. p. 22, 23. COLLIB. on Souls, Ess. v. 1. b PLIN. Nat. Hist. 1. vii, viii. LUCRET. 1. v. ver. 331-339. NICHOLS Conf. vol. i. p. 76–87. 12mo. p. 45— 51. Oct. CHEYNE'S Princ. c. ii. 24. p. 63-68. BURNET'S Theory, vol. i. P. 54-59. C NEWTON'S Chronology passim. WELLS's Geog, of the Old Test. vol. i. c. iii. PEREZON, Cumberland, de orig. Gent. & MICHAELIS'S Specilegium Geographie He *The Hindoos make great pretensions to a very high antiquity, and credit bas been given to their assertions. But the extravagance of their chronology has been shown by the best of all judges, Sir WILLIAM JONES, as may be seen in his Dissertation on the subject, published in the second volume of the Asiatic Researches.-K. over them, that they should not have destroyed the whole human race. (2.) If any had survived, the most useful arts would have been preserved". LECT. XXV. The World not Eternal; continued. § 1. Dem. 5. THE projectile force of the planets is continually diminishing, by the resistance of the fluid through which they pass, i. e. the rays of light; which are every where diffused through all parts of their orbits in so vast a quantity, that multitudes of them fall on bodies too small to be discerned by the naked eye, as appears by microscopical observation. Now if we allow this diminution in the projectile force in one year or age to be ever so small, there must be a finite time in which it will be utterly destroyed; and consequently had the present system of things been eternal, (since on this supposition the same laws of nature must have prevailed) the planets would long ago have fallen into the sun. § 2. 6. The sun is continually losing some of its light, and consequently must long ere this time have been reduced to utter darkness, if the world had been eternal. If it be said, that every ray of light after a certain elongation falls back into the sun; we answer, some of them must in their return strike on the planets, falling on their dark hemisphere, by which means they would be absorbed, and the decay would be real though more gradual, according to the reasoning above. If it be answered, that there may be some kind of fewel provided, as suppose comets, by which the sun is fed; we reply, that fewel is or is not exactly adjusted to the expence of his flame; if it is not exactly adjusted, if too little, the consequence urged above will at length though still more slowly follow; if too much, the sun growing continually hotter, the earth and other planets must have been burnt up, and so an argument against its eternity will arise in another form, from the ever-growing heat of the sun: but if the adjustment be exact, it will be such a proof of design and government in the works of nature as would be so greatly a LUCRET. 1. v. ver, 339-352. PEARSON on the Creed, p. 61. margin. Religion of Nat. p. 91, 92. b WATTS's Ess. No. x. Į 1. p. 242–245. serviceable in another view, that any friend of religion might willingly spare this argument against the world's eternity, when there are so many others unanswerably strong. And it may be observed, that a similar train of reasoning may take place as to some following particulars a. verse. § 3. 7. Since it is probable that the fixed stars and the sun attract each other, had they been eternal, they must long ere this have met in the centre of gravity common to the whole uniAnd nearly akin to this, is the argument which may be drawn from the effect of the nearest access of the earth to Mars, or any other superior planet; in consequence of which it might be supposed to be drawn by such attraction a little from its orbit; the eccentricity of which would by this means be continually increased, till the earth were utterly destroyed. The like argument may be applied to the other planets, and especially to Saturn: but the thought is in general so much the same, that it has not been judged necessary to insist upon it. § 4. 8. Sir WILLIAM PETTY has attempted to prove that the number of mankind doubles in 360 years: but though the exactness of his computation should be doubted, if there be any periodical and constant increase at all, it will prove the world not to be eternal; as from a limited distance of time it must e'er now have been over-run with human inhabitants. Some have indeed maintained a decrease since the Augustan age: but if it could be proved that mankind do actually decrease periodically, or that the increase is exactly balanced, this argument will stand on the same footing with § 2. As for plagues, by which some suppose the balance to be made, if we may judge by what we know of their history, the diminution of mankind by them bears but a very small proportion to its increase, as computed by PETTY. § 5. 9. Many substances are continually petrifying and ossifying; so that, had the world been eternal, the whole earth would have been but one stone, or the petrifaction must have ceased of itself. But if it be said that these stones dissolve, and so there may be a kind of circulation; it is answered, that stones grow in one year, which do not dissolve in many centuries. The argument from the waste of fluids by the growth of animal and vegetable bodies is much the same as this, so far as there is any solidity in it: but it may be queried, whether the dissolution of those bodies, and separation of their consistent fluids in a series of years, may not answer this. §6. 10. Hills are continually subsiding, which will in some finite time reduce the world to a level. If it be objected, that this is balanced by earthquakes, &c. which raise mountains; it is answered, the number of these so raised is comparatively small, and they being hollow would soon be washed away. §7. 11. According to the best calculations which have been made, comets appear on an average at least in 30 years; but whether this account be exact or not, if their return be periodical, there would within an imaginable time have been more than a thousand millions cutting the earth's orbit in various directions; in consequence cf which the earth must have been exposed to such danger, either of being drawn into the sun or separated from it, that, without a particular providence, which this hypothesis opposes, its destruction must have happened long since. $8. 12. If the world be eternal, it is hard to account for the tradition of its beginning, which has almost every where prevailed, though under different forms, among both polite and barbarous nations ©. LECT. XXVI. Spinoza's Doctrine confuted. THERE must have been some great and excellent 1. Cor. 1. being, superior to this whole material system, by which it was reduced into that beautiful order, in which it now appears. § 2. 2. Hence we may infer the vanity and falsehood of SPINOZA's doctrine, who asserts, that the whole and every part of the material world is a self-existent being: for he expressly says, that one being or substance could not be produced. by another, and that all things could be in no other order and manner than they are, i. e. that all things in their present form are necessary, and therefore eternal. Lect. 23. § 4, 6. a NICH. Conf. vol. i. p. 51–55. Oct. p. 30-32. COLLIB. b. CLARE on Fluids, p. 271, 272. b NICH. Conf. vol. i. p. 55-62. Oct. p. 32-36. BURNET'S Arch. 1. ii. c. i. p. 273-285. DU-PIN'S Hist. of the Church, vol. i. c. i. 12mo. d CLARKE at BOYLE'S Lect. p. 26-29. TOLAND'S Pantheisticon, p. 5-8, 54, 55. apud ORPH. Carm. ap. Apul. Op. (de Mundo,) p. 190. 3. Schol. 1. Those arguments which REDI, MALPHIGIUS, and several modern philosophers have advanced against the doctrine of equivocal generation either of animals or plants, have often been urged as conclusive against the eternity of the world: and if they will prove, that every animal or plant of the present generation was not only contained in its immediate parent, but together with that parent in the remoter generation, and so on perpetually, it might indeed prove, that, how small soever the bodies now grown up might be at any given time, there is a certain distance of generation, at which the organized body containing them and all intermediate generations, each bigger than the embryo in question was at that time, must have been bigger than even the whole mass of the earth. But it may be answered, that allowing no animal or plant to rise into visible form but from pre-existent parents of the same kind, it may nevertheless in its first stamina be formed anew, from some fluid before making an unorganized part of the adult parent; and in that case there will be no peculiar force in this argument, as lying against the eternity of the world; for that which arises from the exquisite workmanship of an animal body, and the absurdity of supposing it produced from any fluid or solid merely by mechanical laws, properly belongs to another question". § 4. 2. Neither do we argue from the probability that the torrid zone would have taken fire; which is examined in RAY'S 3 Disc. p. 381-388. § 5. 3. We likewise wave those arguments which are taken from the supposed absurdity and impossibility of the world's having been actually eternal, or having existed through an infinite succession; because the same objection seems to lie against every thing which is said to be eternal, and the argument turns on the supposition, that an infinite is made up of a number of finites". 6. 4. Some of the ancients, who speak of the eternity of the world, do not seem to intend it in the sense in which SPINOZA asserts it. The arguments are designed to prove either that something must be eternal, which is all that those of OCELLUS LUCANUS amount to, or that the world is a necessary eternal effect flowing from the energy of the divine nature, which ARISTOTLE Seems to have thought; or that it was an eternal voluntary emanation from a supreme and infinitely perfect cause, a REDI de Gen. Insect. pass. NIEUWENT. Rel. Phil. vol. i. c. xvi. 9. BENTLEY at BOYLE's Lect. Serm. iv.p. 127, ad fin. RAY'S Wisd. of God. p. 298-326. VAREN. Geog. vol. i. p. 226. Engl. BUR HOGGE on the Soul of the World, p. 30-38. b BURNET on the Art. p. 19, 20. CLARKE at BOYLE'S Lect. P. 35-37. COLLIB. ib. arg. 5. |