Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/176

  of a Deity. But some being more palpable then other some, and more accommodate to awaken the dull and flow belief of the Atheist into the acknowledgement of a God, it will not be amiss to take notice of what Evasions he attempts to make for the extricating himself out of those that he fancies the most sensibly to entangle him, and the most strongly to hinder his escape.

And such are especially these two last I insisted upon, The curious frame of Mans Body, and Apparitions.

2. And the force of the former some endeavour to evade thus; "That there hath ever been Man and Woman and other Species in the world, and so it is no wonder that like should propagate its like, and therefore that there is no want of any other invisible or material cause but the Species of things themselves: and so these admirable contrivances in Nature must imply no divine Wisdom nor Counsel, nor any such thing.

3. But here I demand, whether there were ever any Man that was not mortal, and whether there be any mortal that had not a beginning; and it he had, it must be either by Generation, or Creation. If by Creation; there is a God: If by equivocal Generation, as rising out of Earth, our Argument will hold good still notwithstanding this Evasion. But if you'l say there was never any man in the world but was born of a Woman, this must amount but to thus much, that there hath been an infinite number of succesions of births. If there be meant by it any thing more then thus, it will not prove sense.

4. For though our Phansie cannot run through an infinite series of Effects, yet our reason is assured there is no Effect without a Cause, and be the Progress of Causes and Effects as infinite as it will, at last we resolve it naturally into some First: and he that denies this, seems to me wilfully to wink against the light of Nature, and doe violence to the Faculties of his Mind. And therefore of necessity there must be at least one first Man and Woman which are first ordine Naturæ, though infinity of time, reckoning from the present, causeth a confusion and obscurity in our apprehensions. And these which are thus first in order of Nature or Causality, must also exist first before there can be any other Men or Women in the World. And therefore concerning these first, it being manifest that they were born of no Parents, it follows they were Created or rose out of the Earth, and so the Evasion will be frustrated.

5. Besides, if you affirm that there was never any Man in the world but who was born of a Woman, and so grew to Mans estate by degrees, it will fall to some mans share to be a Babe and a Man at once, or to be both Father and Child. For so soon as Mankind was, (let it be from Eternity, and beyond Eternity is nothing) those that then existed were begot of some body, and there was nothing before them to beget them, therefore they begot themselves.

6. But that they should at once then have been perfect men, their substances being of alterable and passive matter, that is wrought diversly and by degrees into the frame it hath, according to the perpetual testimony of Nature, is as rash as if they should say that Boots and Shoes