Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/201

Rh  as have been here pleaded for, from ever having any Existence in the world.

7. Wherefore to bring our Answer to a head, I say, we are to use that natural method in this Speculation that men that know the use of their Faculties observe in all others, viz. to assent to what is most simple, easie and plain first, and of which there can be no doubt but that the Notion is congruous and consistent; and such is the Idea of a Being absolutely Perfect, no arbitrarious or fortuitous figment, or forced compilement of Notions that jarre one with another, or may be justly suspected, if not demonstrated, to be incoherent and repugnant; such as for example would be a walking Tree, or or an intelligent Stone, or the like: but such as wherein the Notions naturally and necessarily come together to compleat the conception of some one single Title, as being homogeneal and essential thereunto.

8. And then what I contend for is this. That attending to this Natural Idea of God, or a Being absolutely Perfect, we unavoidably discover the necessity of actual Existence, as inseparable from him, it being necessarily included in this Idea of absolute Perfection: which is still more undeniably set on in the last push of my Argument, where I urge that either Impossibility, Contingency, or Necessity of actual Existence must needs belong to a Being absolutely Perfect; but not Impossibility nor Contingency, therefore Necessity of actual Existence.

And therefore being so well secured of this Truth, I require the Objector to bring up his Argument to this last and clearest frame, and let him also urge that either Impossibility, Contingency, or Necessity of actual Existence, belongs either to a Being absolutely Miserable or absolutely Mischievous; and I shall confidently answer, Impossibility of Existence, and give him a further reason, besides what I intimated before of the incongruity of the Notions themselves, that it is also repugnant with the Existence of God, whom, without any rub or scruple, attending to the natural and undistorted suggestions of our own Faculties, we have already demonstrated to exist.

9. And still to make our Answer more certain concerning a Being absolutely Mischievous, it is most evident He is not, and therefore sith he must be of himself if he be at all, it is impossible he should be: And that he is not, is plain, because things would then be infinitely worse then they are, or not at all; whenas I dare say they are now as well as it is fit or possible for them to be, if we had but the wisdome to conceive or comprehend the whole counsel and purpose of Providence, and knew clearly and particularly what is past and what is to come.

10. But if we take up, out of our own blindness or rashness, Principles concerning the Providence of God that are inconsistent with his Idea (such as the Ptolemaical Systeme of the Heavens, which (as some say) Alphonso looked upon (though others tell the story of the misplacement of certain Mountains on the Earth) as so perplex'd a Bungle, that transported with zeal against that fond Hypothesis, he did scoffingly and audaciously profess, that if he had stood by whilst God made the World, he could have directed the Frame of it better) we shall indeed then have occasion to Rh