A CONFUTATION OF ATHEISM FROM THE STRUCTURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN BODIES. THE THIRD AND LAST PART. SERMON V. Preached September the 5th, 1692. ACTS, xvii. 27. That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him; though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being. IN my former discourses I have* endeavoured to prove, that human race was neither (1.) from everlasting without beginning; nor (2.) owes its beginning to the influence of heavenly bodies; nor (3.) to what they call nature, that is, the† necessary and mechanical motions of dead senseless matter. I proceed now to examine the fourth and last plea of the enemies to religion and their own souls, that mankind came accidentally into the world, and hath its life and motion and being by mere chance and fortune. We need not much wonder, that this last opinion should obtain almost universally among the Atheists of these times. For, whereas the other require‡ some small stock of philo [* discourses I have; 1st ed. "discourses, to which I must refer you, I have."-D.] [f that is, the; 1st ed. "or to the."-D.] [ require; 1st ed. "do require."-D.] sophy to understand or maintain them, this account is so easy and compendious, that it needs none at all; and consequently is the more proper and agreeable to the great industry and capacity of the most numerous party of them. For what more easy to say, than that all the bodies of the first animals and plants were shuffled into their several forms and structures fortuitously, that is, these Atheists know not how, nor will trouble themselves to endeavour to know? For that is the meaning of chance; and yet this is all that they say, or can say, to the great matter in question. And indeed this little is enough in all reason; and, could they impose on the rest of mankind, as easily as delude themselves, with a notion that chance can effect a thing, it would be the most expedite and effectual means to make their cause victorious over virtue and religion. For if you once allow them such an acceptation of chance, you have precluded yourself, they think, from any more reasoning and objecting against them. The mechanical Atheist, though you grant him his laws of mechanism, is nevertheless inextricably puzzled and baffled with the first formation of animals; for he must undertake to determine all the various motions, and figures, and positions, and combinations of his atoms, and to demonstrate that such a quantity of motion, impressed upon particles so shaped and situated, will necessarily range and dispose them into the form and frame of an organical body; an attempt as difficult and unpromising of success, as if he himself should make the essay to produce some new kinds of animals out of such senseless materials, or to rebuild the moving and living fabric out of its dust in the grave. But the Atheist that we are now to deal with, if you do but concede to him that fortune may be an agent, presumest himself safe and invulnerable, secure above the reach of any further disputes. For, if you proceed to ask questions, and bid him assign the proper causes and determinate manner of that fortuitous formation, you thereby deny [* allow; 1st ed. "do allow."-D.] [t presumes; 1st ed. doth presume."—D.] him what you granted before, and take away the very hypothesis and the nature of chance, which supposeth that no certain cause or manner of it can possibly be assigned. And as the stupidity of some libertines, that demand a sight of a spirit or human soul to convince them of its existence, hath been frequently and deservedly exposed; because whatsoever may be the object of our sight must not be a soul or spirit, but an opaque body; so this Atheist would tax us of the like nonsense and contradiction, if, after he hath named to us fortune or chance, we should expect from him any particular and distinct account of the origin of mankind; because it is the very essence and notion of his chance to be wholly unaccountable; and if an account could be given of it, it would then no longer be chance, but mechanism, or a necessary production of certain effects from certain causes, according to the universal laws of motion. Thus we are to know, that if once we admit of fortune in the formation of mankind, there is no further inquiry to be made, no more difficulties to be solved, and no account to be demanded. And who then can admire, if the inviting easiness and compendiousness of this assertion should so dazzle the eyes of our Atheist, that he overlooks those gross absurdities that are so conspicuous in it? (1.) For, first, if this Atheist would have his chance or fortune to be a real and substantial agent; as the vulgar seem to have commonly apprehended, some making it a divinity, others they do not conceive what; he is doubly more stupid and more supinely ignorant than those vulgar; in that he assumes such a notion of fortune as, besides its being erroneous, is inconsistent with his Atheism. For since,* according to the Atheists, the whole universe is corpus et inane, body and nothing else, this chance, if it do really and physically effect any thing, must itself be body also. And what a numerous train of absurdities do attend such an assertion! too visible and obvious to deserve to be here [* since; 1st ed. "seeing that."-D.] insisted on. For, indeed, it is no less than flat contradiction to itself. For, if this chance be supposed to be a body, it must then be a part of the common mass of matter; and consequently be subject to the universal and necessary laws of motion; and therefore it cannot be chance, but true mechanism and nature. (2.) But, secondly, if he forbear to call chance a real agent, and is content to have it only a result or event; since* all matter, or some portion of it, may be naturally exempt from these supposed mechanical laws, and be endowed with a power of spontaneous or fortuitous motion, which power, when it is exerted, must produce an effect properly casual, and therefore might constitute the first animate bodies accidentally, against the supposed natural tendency of the particles of those bodies; even this second assertion is contrary to common sense, as well as common observation. For how can he conceive that any parcel of dead matter can spontaneously divert and decline itself from the line of its motion, without a new impulse from external bodies? If it can intrinsically stir itself, and either commence its motion or alter its course, it must have a principle of self-activity, which is life and sense. But sense I have proved formerlya to be incompatible with mere bodies, even those of the most compound and elaborate textures, much more with single atoms or solid particles of matter, that, having no intestine motion of parts, are destitute of the first foundation and capacity of life. And moreover, though these particles should be supposed to have this internal principle of sense, it would still be repugnant to the notion of chance; because their motions would not then be casual, but voluntary, not by chance, but choice and design. And again, we appeal to observation, whether any bodies have such a power of fortuitous motion. We should surely have experiment of it in the effects of nature and art: no body would retain the same constant and uniform weight according to its bulk and sub [* since; 1st ed. "seeing that.”—D.] a Serm. II. stance, but would vary perpetually, as that spontaneous power of motion should determine its present tendency. All the various machines and utensils would now and then play odd pranks and capricios, quite contrary to their proper structures, and designs of the artificers. Whereas, on the contrary, all bodies are observed to have always a certain and determinate motion according to the degrees of their external impulse, and their inward principle of gravitation, and the resistance of the bodies they occur with; which therefore is without error exactly foreseen and computed by sagacious artists. And if ever dead matter should deviate from this motion, it could not proceed from itself, but a supernatural agent; and ought not to be called a chance, but a miracle. For chance is but a mere name, and really nothing in itself; a conception of our own minds, and only a compendious way of speaking, whereby we would express, that such effects as are commonly attributed to chance were verily produced by their true and proper causes, but without their designing to produce them. And in any event called casual, if you take away the real and physical causes, there remains nothing but a simple negation of the agents intending such an event; which negation being no real entity, but a conception only of man's intellect wholly extrinsical to the action, can have no title to a share in the production. As in that famous example, (which Plutarch says is the only one where fortune is related to have done a thing artificially,) when a painter having* finished the picture of a horse, excepting the loose froth about his mouth and his bridle, and, after many unsuccessful essays, despairing to do that to his satisfaction, in a great rage threw his sponge at it, all besmeared, as it was, with the colours, which fortunately hitting upon the right place, by one bold stroke of chance most exactly supplied the want of skill in the artist: even here it is manifest, that, considering the quantity and determination of the motion that was impressed by the painter's hand b Plutarch. Пepl Túxns. [Mor. t. i. p. 268. ed. Wyttenb.-D.] |