Page:The true intellectual system of the universe - the first part; wherein, all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted; and its impossibility demonstrated (IA trueintellectual1678cudw).pdf/31

 Rh 43. That Leucippus and Democritus, being Atheistically inclined, took the Atomical Physiology endeavouring to make it subservient to Atheism, and upon what occasion they did it, and how unsuccessfully.

44. That Plato took the Theology and Pneumatology of the Ancients, but rejected their Atomical Physiology, and upon what accounts.

45. That Aristotle followed Plato herein, with a Commendation of Aristotle's Philosophy.

THEY that hold the Necessity of all humane Actions and Events, do it upon one or other of these two Grounds; Either because they suppose that Necessity is inwardly essential to all Agents whatsoever, and that Contingent Liberty is, a Thing Impossible or Contradictious, which can have no Existence any where in Nature; The sence of which was thus expressed by the Epicurean Poet,

Quòd res quæque Necessum Intestinum habeat cunctis in rebus agendis, &c.

That every thing Naturally labours under an Intestine Necessity: Or else, because though they admit Contingent Liberty not only as a thing Possible, but also as that which is actually Existent in the Deity, yet they conceive all things to be so determin'd by the Will and Decrees of this Deity, as that they are thereby made Necessary to us. The former of these two Opinions, that Contingent Liberty is, such a Thing as can have no Existence in Nature, may be maintained upon two different Grounds; Either from such an Hypothesis as this, That the Universe is nothing else but Body, and Local motion, and Nothing moving it self, the Action of every Agent is determined by some other Agent without it; and therefore that , Material and Mechanical Necessity must needs reign over all things: Or else, though Cogitative Beings be supposed to have a certain Principle of Activity within themselves, yet that there can be no Contingency in their Actions, because all Volitions are determined by a Necessary antecedent Understanding.

Plotinus makes another Distribution of Fatalists, which yet in the Conclusion will come to the same with the Former, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉A man (saith he) will not do amiss that will divide all Fatalists first into these two General Heads, namely, That they derive all things from One Principle, or Not; The former of which may be called Divine Fatalists, the latter Atheistical. Which Divine Fatalists he again subdivides into such as First make God by Immediate Influence to do all things in us; as in Animals the Members are not determined by themselves, but by that which is the Hegemonick in every one: And Secondly, such as make Fate to be an Implexed Series or Concatenation of Causes, all in themselves Necessary, whereof God is the chief. The Former seems to be a Description of that Rh