Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/175

Rh 8. But the safest Magick is the sincere consecrating a mans Soul to God, and the aspiring to nothing but so profound a pitch of Humility, as not to be conscious to our selves of being at all touched with the praise and applause of men; and to such a free and universal sense of charity, as to be delighted with the welfare of another as much as our own. They that solely have their eye upon these, will finde coming in whatever their heart can desire. But they that put forth their hand to catch at high things, as they fancy, and neglect these, prove at last but a Plague to themselves and a Laughing-stock to the world.

These are the several Speculations that the foregoing Narration would naturally beget in the minds of the curious. But methinks I hear the Atheist replying to all this, That I have run a long division upon uncertain grounds, and asking me, not without some scorn and anger, whether I believe that multifarious Fable I have rehearsed out of Bodinus, and so much descanted upon. To which I answer. That I will not take my oath that the most likely passage in all Plutarch's Lives or Livie's History is assuredly true. But however that I am not ashamed to profess, that I am as well assured in my own judgement of the Existence of Spirits, as that I have met with men in Westminster-Hall, or seen Beasts in Smithfield.





1. The Structure of Mans body, and Apparitions, the most convictive Arguments against the Atheist. 2. His first Evasion of the former of them, pretending it never was but there were men and women and other Species in the World. 3.'' The Author's answer to this pretension. First, That every man was mortall, and therefore was either created or rose out of the Earth.'' 4. Secondly, That even in infinite succession there is something First ordine Naturæ, and that these First were either created or rose out of th Earth. 5. Thirdly, That if there were alwaies men in the World, and every man born of a woman, some was both Father and Son, Man and Babe at once. 6. That it is contrary to the Laws of mere blind Matter, that man in his adult perfections should exist therefrom at once. 7. The Atheist's second Evasion, That the Species of things arose from the multifarious attempts of the motion of the Matter; With a threefold Answer thereto. 8. An Evasion of the last Answer, touching the perpetual exactness in the fabrick of all living Species with a threefold Answer also to that Evasion. 9. The further serviceableness of this Answer for the quite taking away the first Evasion of the Atheist.

Hus have we gone through the many and manifold Effects represented to our Senses on this wide Theatre of the World; the faintest and obscurest whereof are Arguments full enough to prove the  Rh