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/44

 16 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 Empedocles writes, that Aether was first of all Secreted out of the Confused Chaos of Atoms, afterward the Fire, and then the Earth, which being Constringed, and as it were Squeezed by the Force of Agitation, sent forth Water bubling out of it; from the Evaporation of which did proceed Air. And from the Aether was made the Heavens, from Fire the Sun. We see therefore that it was not without cause that Lucretius did so highly extol Empedocles, since his Physiology was really the same with that of Epicurus and Democritus; only that he differed from them in some Particularities, as in excluding Vacuum, and denying such Physical Minima as were Indivisible.

XV. As for Anaxagoras, though he Philosophized by Atoms too, substituting Concretion and Secretion in the Room of Generation and Corruption, insisting upon the same Fundamental Principle that Empedocles, Democritus and the other Atomists did; which was (as we shall declare more fully afterward) That Nothing could be made out of Nothing, nor reduced to Nothing; and therefore that there were neither any new Productions nor Destructions of any Substances or Real Entities: Yet, as his Homoeomeria is represented by Aristotle, Lucretius and other Authours, that Bone was made of Bony Atoms, and Flesh of Fleshy, Red things of Red Atoms, and Hot things of Hot Atoms; these Atoms being supposed to be endued originally with so many several Forms and Qualities Essential to them, and Inseparable from them, there was indeed a wide difference betwixt his Philosophy and the Atomical. However, this seems to have had its Rise from nothing else but this Philosophers not being able to understand the Atomical Hypothesis, which made him decline it, and substitute this Spurious and Counterfeit Atomism of his own in the room of it.

XVI. Lastly, I might adde here, that it is recorded by Good Authours concerning divers other Ancient Philosophers, that were not addicted to Democriticism or Atheism, that they followed this Atomical way of Physiologizing, and therefore in all probability did derive it from those Religious Atomists before Democritus. As for Example; Ecphantus the Syracusian Pythagorist, who, as Stobaeus writes, made 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Indivisible Bodies and Vacuum the Principles of Physiology, and as Theodoret also testifies, taught 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, That the Corporeal World was made up of Atoms; Zenocrates that made 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Indivisible Magnitudes the first Principles of Bodies; Heraclides that resolved all Corporeal things into 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, certain smallest Fragments of Bodies; Asclepiades, who supposed all the Corporeal World to be made 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, not of Similar Parts (as Anaxagoras) but of Dissimilar and inconcinn Moleculae, i.e. Atoms of different Magnitude and Figures; and Diodorus that