the narrow contractedness of their minds by vice and immorality

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The atheistic queries next to be answered. The first query: If there were a God, who was perfectly happy in himself, why would he go about to make a world? Answer. The reason of God's making the world was from his overflowing and communicative goodness, that there might be other beings happy besides himself. This consistent with God's making the world for his own glory. The reason why Plotinus would explode that. True, that God did not make the world merely to ostentate his skill and power; but to display his goodness, which is chiefly his glory. The Atheists farther demand, What hurt would it have been for us never to have been made? Answer. No other than this, that we could never have enjoyed good, nor been capable of happiness. If no hurt not to have been made, then none to be annihilated; the distance being as great from nothing to something, as from something to nothing 187

The second atheistic query: If God's goodness were the cause of his making the world, why then was it not made sooner? This question capable of a double sense: First, Why was not the world from eternity? The reply: This not from any defect in the Divine goodness, but because there is an impossibility of the thing itself; the necessity and incapacity of such an imperfect being hindering it. Ourselves prone to think, that could the world have been from eternity, it should have been so, Thus Philoponus, in his confutation of Proclus's arguments for the world's eternity. And now no place left for those atheistic cavils against the novity of the creation; as if God must therefore have slept from eternity; or had contracted a satiety of his former solitude. Another sense of the question: Why, though the world could not be from eternity, yet was it not made sooner? Answer. The world could not possibly have so been made in time, as that it should not have been once but a day old; and also once no more than five or six thousand years old 188

The third atheistic query: How could God move the matter of the whole world, especially if incorporeal? Answer. That all things being derived from the Deity, and essentially depending on him, they must needs be commandable by him, and obsequious to him. And since no body can move itself, that which first moved the matter must be incorporeal, and not

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move it by machines and engines, but by cogitation or will only. That conceit, that an incorporeal Deity could not move matter, because it would run through it, absurd; this moving not mechanically, but vitally. That cogitative beings have a natural power of moving matter, evident from our own souls moving our bodies, not by machines or engines, but merely by thought. More easy for the Deity to move the whole world by will and cogitation, than for us our bodies

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The last head of the atheistic argumentation, from interest. First, that it is the interest of particular persons there should be no being infinitely powerful, who hath no law but his own will. The first reply; wishing is no proving. Nor will any man's thinking make things otherwise than they are But, secondly, this wish of Atheists founded upon a mistaken notion of God Almighty, that he is nothing but arbitrary will omnipotent. God's will not mere will, but law and equity; ought itself willing. Nor does justice in God clash with goodness; but is a branch or particular modification thereof. The interest of none there should be no God, unless perhaps of such as are irreclaimably wicked, and wilfully abandon their own true good

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To be without God, to be without hope. No faith nor hope in senseless matter. According to the atheistic hypothesis, no possibility of happiness nor security of good

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God such a being, as, if he were not, nothing more to be wished for. To believe a God, to believe the existence of all good and perfection; and that things are all made and governed as they should be. Peccability from the necessity of imperfect free-willed beings. Infinite hopes from a being infinitely good and powerful. Democritus and Epicurus, however cried up so much of late, but infatuated Sophists, or witty fools, and debauchers of mankind ib.

The last atheistic argumentation, That Theism or religion is inconsistent with the interest of civil sovereigns. Their first pretence for this, that the civil sovereign reigns only in fear; and therefore must be no power nor fear greater than that of the leviathan 194

In answer to this, the atheistic ethics and politics to be unravelled. Their foundation laid in the villanizing of human nature. That there is no natural justice, equity, nor charity. No public nor common nature in men, but all private and self

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That an appetite to kill That nature hath brought

That every man by nature hath a right to every thing, even to other men's bodies and lives. and torment, by nature gives a right. men into the world without any fetters or shackles of duty and obligation, the hinderances of liberty. Lastly, that nature absolutely dissociates and segregates men from one another, by reason of the inconsistency of appetites and private good. Every man by nature in a state of war against every man 195 But, in the next place, they add, that though this state of nature, which is belluine liberty, and lawless freedom to every thing, be in itself the best; yet by accident, and by reason of men's imbecility, does it prove the worst. Wherefore, when men had been weary of hewing and slashing, they then bethought themselves at length of helping nature by art; by submitting to a lesser evil for the avoiding of a greater; abating their infinite right, and yielding to terms of equality with others, and subjection to a common power

197 Where these Atheists first slander human nature; and then debase justice and civil authority, making it the ignoble and bastardly brat of fear; or a lesser evil submitted to out of necessity for the avoiding of a greater. According to which atheistic hypothesis no man is willingly just. This no new invention of the writer De Cive, but the old atheistic generation of justice, and of a body politic, civil society, and sovereignty (before Plato's time); it being fully described in his second book of a Commonwealth. Where the philosopher concludes justice, according to these, to be but a middle thing betwixt the best and the worst; loved, not as good in itself, but only by reason of men's imbecility: or, that justice is indeed another man's good, and the evil of him that is just. The same hypothesis also, concerning justice, as a factitious thing, that sprung only from fear and imbecility, and was chosen but as a lesser evil, insisted on by Epicurus

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The van attempts of our modern atheistic politicians, to make justice by art when there is none by nature. First, by renouncing and transferring men's right by will and words. For if nothing naturally unlawful, then can no man, by will and words, make any thing unlawful to himself. What made by will may be destroyed by will. The ridiculous conceit of these atheistic politicians, that injustice is nothing but dati repetitio, and such an absurdity in life, as is in disputation when a man

denies a proposition he had before granted; no real evil in the man, but only a relative incongruity in him as a citizen. Again, these justice-makers and authority-makers pretend to derive their factitious justice from pacts and covenants. But pacts and covenants, without natural justice (as themselves confess), nothing but words and breath; and therefore can have no force to oblige. Wherefore they make another pretence also from certain counterfeit laws of nature of their own devising, that are nothing but mere juggling equivocation; they being but the laws of fear, or their own timorous and cowardly complexion. They ridiculously dance round in a circle, when they derive the obligation of civil laws from covenants; of covenants from laws of nature; and of laws of nature again from civil laws. Their vain attempt by art to consociate what nature hath dissociated, like tying knots in the wind or water. Their artificial obligation, or ligaments, by which the members of their leviathan are held together, more slender than cobwebs ⚫ 200

These artificial justice-makers and obligation-makers sensible of the weakness of these attempts artificially to consociate what nature hath dissociated; therefore fly at last from art to force and power; making their sovereign to reign only in fear. This the true meaning of that opinion, that all obligation is derived from law; that is, the command of him who hath power to compel. If obligation to obey civil laws only from fear of punishment, then is no man obliged to hazard his life for the safety of his prince; and whoever can promise themselves impunity, may justly disobey. If civil sovereigns reign only in fear, then is their authority nothing but force; and power would justify rebellion. Lastly, if civil right or authority nothing but force and violence, then could it not last long; what natural prevailing against what is violent

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Wherefore since civil authority and bodies politic can neither be merely artificial, nor yet violent things, there must be some natural vinculum to hold them together, such as will both oblige subjects to obey the commands of sovereigns, and sovereigns, in commanding, to seek the good of their subjects; something of a common, public, and conglutinating nature; which no other than natural justice. The authority of God himself founded in justice; of which civil authority a participation. Sovereignty no creature of the people and of men's wills; but hath a stamp of Divinity upon it. Had not God made a city, men,

neither by art or political enchantment, nor by mere force, could have made any. The whole world one city of God and rational beings. The civil sovereign no leviathan; that is, no beast, but a god. He reigns not in mere brutish force and fear, but in natural justice and conscience, and the authority of God himself. Nevertheless, need of force and fear too, to compel some to their duty; nor is the sovereign's sword here alone sufficient; but he must reign also in the fear of God Almighty 206 The second atheistic pretence, to make religion inconsistent with civil sovereignty; because it limits and confines that which in its own nature is and ought to be infinite. The reply: that the Atheists' infinite right and authority of civil sovereigns is nothing but belluine liberty; but true right and authority are essentially founded in natural justice; there being no authority to command, where there is not an obligation to obey; and commands not creating obligation, but presupposing it, without which they would signify nothing. The first original obligation not from will but nature. The error of those Theists who derive all obligation to moral things from the will and positive command of God, as threatening punishments and promising rewards. From whence it would follow, that no man is good and just but by accident only, and for the sake of something else. Justice a different species of good from that of private utility. Infinite justice as absurd as an infinite rule or measure. If no infinite justice, then no infinite right and authority. God's own authority bounded by justice: his will ruled by justice, and not justice by his will. Atheists, under a pretence of giving civil sovereigns infinite right, really divest them of all right and authority, leaving them nothing but brutish force. Proved here that the summæ potestates must of necessity be ȧvuπɛúθυνοι

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The last atheistic pretence for the inconsistency of religion with civil power, because conscience is private judgment of good and evil. Answer. That not religion, but Atheism, introduceth such private judgment as is absolutely inconsistent with civil sovereignty, it acknowledging nothing in nature that tends to public and common good, but making private appetite the only rule or measure of good, and utility of justice. The desperate consequence from hence, that private utility may justify rebellion and parricide. The Atheists' professed assertion, that they who have once rebelled may justly defend themselves after