A CONFUTATION OF ATHEISM FROM THE ORIGIN AND FRAME OF THE WORLD. PART II. SERMON VII. Preached November the 7th, 1692. ACTs, xiv. 15, &c. That ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless, he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. WHEN we first entered upon this topic, the demonstration of God's existence from the origin and frame of the world, we offered to prove four propositions. I. That this present system of heaven and earth cannot possibly have subsisted from all eternity. II. That matter considered generally, and abstractly from any particular form and concretion, cannot possibly have been eternal; or, if matter could be so, yet motion cannot have coexisted with it eternally, as an inherent property and essential attribute of matter. These two we have already established in the preceding discourse; we shall now shew, in the third place, III. That, though we should allow the Atheists, that matter and motion may have been from everlasting; yet if (as they now suppose) there were once no sun, nor stars, nor earth, nor planets, but the particles that now constitute them were diffused in the mundane space in manner of a chaos, without any concretion or* coalition; those dispersed particles could never of themselves, by any kind of natural motion, whether called fortuitous or mechanical, have convened into this present or any other like frame of heaven and earth. 1. And first, as to that ordinary cant of illiterate and puny Atheists, the fortuitous or casual concourse of atoms, that compendious and easy despatch of the most important and difficult affair, the formation of a world (besides that in our next undertaking it will be refuted all along); I shall now briefly despatch it, from what hath been formerly said concerning the true notions of fortune and chance. Whereby it is evident, that in the atheistical hypothesis of the world's production, fortuitous and mechanical must be the self-same thing. Because fortune is no real entity nor physical essence, but a mere relative signification, denoting only this; that such a thing said to fall out by fortune was really effected by material and necessary causes, but the person, with regard to whom it is called fortuitous, was ignorant of those causes or their tendencies, and did not design or foresee such an effect. This is the only allowable and genuine notion of the word fortune. But thus to affirm, that the world was made fortuitously, is as much as to say, that before the world was made, there was some intelligent agent or spectator, who, designing to do something else, or expecting that something else would be done with the materials of the world, there were some occult and unknown motions and tendencies in matter, which mechanically formed the world beside his design or expectation. Now the Atheists, we may presume, will be loath to assert a fortuitous formation in this proper sense and meaning, whereby they will make [* or; 1st ed. " and."--D.] b Serm. v. understanding to be older than heaven and earth. Or if they should so assert it, yet, unless they will affirm that the intelligent agent did dispose and direct the inanimate matter (which is what we would bring them to), they must still leave their atoms to their mechanical affections; not able to make one step toward the production of a world beyond the necessary laws of motion. It is plain, then, that fortune, as to the matter before us, is but a synonymous word with nature and necessity. It remains that we examine the adequate meaning of chance; which properly signifies, that all events called casual, among inanimate bodies, are mechanically and naturally produced according to the determinate figures, and textures, and motions of those bodies; with this negation only, that those inanimate bodies are not conscious of their own operations, nor contrive and cast about how to bring such events to pass. So that thus to say, that the world was made casually by the concourse of atoms, is no more than to affirm, that the atoms composed the world mechanically and fatally; only they were not sensible of it, nor studied and considered about so noble an undertaking. For if atoms formed the world according to the essential properties of bulk, figure, and motion, they formed it mechanically; and if they formed it mechanically without perception and design, they formed it casually. So that this negation of consciousness being all that the notion of chance can add to that of mechanism, we, that do not dispute this matter with the Atheists, nor believe that atoms ever acted by counsel and thought, may have leave to consider the several names of fortune, and chance, and nature, and mechanism, as one and the same hypothesis. Wherefore, once for all to overthrow all possible explications which Atheists have or may assign for the formation of the world, we will undertake to evince this following proposition: 2. That the atoms or particles which now constitute heaven and earth, being once separate and diffused in the mundane space, like the supposed chaos, could never, without c Serm. v. a God, by their mechanical affections, have convened into this present frame of things, or any other like it. Which that we may perform with the greater clearness and conviction, it will be necessary, in a discourse about the formation of the world, to give you a brief account of some of the most principal and systematical phenomena that occur in the world now that it is formed. (1.) The most considerable phenomenon belonging to terrestrial bodies is the general action of gravitation, whereby all known bodies in the vicinity of the earth do tend and press towards its centre; not only such as are sensibly and evidently heavy, but even those that are comparatively the lightest, and even in their proper place and natural elements (as they usually speak); as air gravitates even in air, and water in water. This hath been demonstrated and experimentally proved beyond contradiction, by several ingenious persons of the present age; but by none so perspicuously, and copiously, and accurately, as by the honourable founder of this Lecture,d in his incomparable Treatises of the Air and Hydrostatics. (2.) Now this is the constant property of gravitation, that the weight of all bodies around the earth is ever proportional to the quantity of their matter: as, for instance, a pound weight (examined hydrostatically) of all kinds of bodies, though of the most different forms and textures, doth always contain an equal quantity of solid mass or corporeal substance. This is the ancient doctrine of the Epicurean physiology, then and since very probably indeed, but yet precariously asserted: but it is lately demonstrated and put beyond controversy by that very excellent and divine theorist, Mr. Isaac Newton,f to whose most admirable sagacity and industry we shall frequently be obliged in this and the following discourse. I will not entertain this auditory with an account of the d Mr. Boyle's Physicom. Exp. of Air, Hydrostat. Paradoxes. e Lucret. lib. i. f Newton. Philos. Natur. Princ. Math. lib. iii. prop. 6. demonstration; but referring the curious to the book itself for full satisfaction, I shall now proceed and build upon it as a truth solidly established, that all bodies weigh according to their matter; provided only that the compared bodies be at equal distances from the centre toward which they weigh. Because the further they are removed from the centre, the lighter they are; decreasing gradually and uniformly in weight, in a duplicate proportion to the increase of the dis tance. (3.) Now since gravity is found proportional to the quantity of matter, there is a manifest necessity of admitting a vacuum, another principal doctrine of the atomical philosophy. Because if there were every where an absolute plenitude and density, without any empty pores and interstices between the particles of bodies, then all bodies of equal dimensions would contain an equal quantity of matter, and consequently, as we have shewed before, would be equally ponderous; so that gold, copper, stone, wood, &c., would have all the same specific weight, which experience assures us they have not: neither would any of them descend in the air, as we all see they do; because, if all space was full, even the air would be as dense and specifically as heavy as they. If it be said, that, though the difference of specific gravity may proceed from variety of texture, the lighter bodies being of a more loose and porous composition, and the heavier more dense and compact; yet an ethereal subtile matter, which is in a perpetual motion, may penetrate and pervade the minutest and inmost cavities of the closest bodies, and adapting itself to the figure of every pore, may adequately fill them, and so prevent all vacuity, without increasing the weight: to this we answer, that that subtile matter itself must be of the same substance and nature with all other matter, and therefore it also must weigh proportionally to its bulk; and as much of it as at any time is comprehended within the pores of a particular body must gravitate jointly with that body; so that if the presence of this ethereal matter made an absolute fulness, all bodies of |