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/47

 Rh says he had met withal. The other he represents in this manner. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉· The Adversaries of these Corporealists do cautiously and piously assault them from the Invisible Region, fetching all things from above by way of Descent, and by strength of Reason convincing, that certain Intelligible and Incorporeal Forms are the true or First Substance, and not Sensible things. But betwixt these two there hath always been (saith he) a great War and Contention. And yet in the Sequel of his Discourse he adds, that those Corporealists were then grown a little more modest and shame-faced than formerly their great Champions had been, such as Democritus and Protagoras; for however they still persisted in this, that the Soul was a Body, yet they had not (it seems) the Impudence to affirm, that Wisdom and Vertue were Corporeal Things, or Bodies, as others before and since too have done. We see here that Plato expresly asserts a Substance distinct from Body, which sometimes he calls 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Incorporeal Substance, and sometimes 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Intelligible Substance, in opposition to the other which he calls 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉Sensible. And it is plain to any one, that hath had the least acquaintance with Plato's Philosophy, that the whole Scope and Drift of it, is to raise up mens Minds from Sense to a belief of Incorporeal Things as the most Excellent: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, as he writes in another place. For Incorporeal Things, which are the greatest and most excellent things of all, are (saith he) discoverable by Reason only and nothing else. And his Subterraneous Cave, so famously known, and so elegantly described by him, where he supposes men tied with their backs towards the Light, placed at a great distance from them, so that they could not turn about their Heads to it neither, and therefore could see nothing but the shadows (of certain Substances behind them) projected from it, which Shadows they concluded to be the only Substances and Realities, and when they heard the Sounds made by those Bodies that were betwixt the Light and them, or their reverberated Eccho's, they imputed them to those shadows which they saw. I say, all this is a Description of the State of those Men, who take Body to be the only Real and Substantial thing in the World, and to do all that is done in it; and therefore often impute Sense, Reason and Understanding, to nothing but Blood and Brains in us.

XX. I might also shew in the next place, how Aristotle did not at all dissent from Plato herein, he plainly asserting 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, another Substance beside Sensibles, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, a Substance separable and also actually separated from Sensibles, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, an Immoveable Nature or Essence (subject to no Generation or Corruption) adding that the Deity was to be sought for here: Nay such a Substance 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, as hath no Magnitude at all; but is Impartible and Indivisible. He also blaming Zeno (not the Stoick, who was Junior to Aristotle, but an ancienter Philosopher of that Name) for making God to be a Body, in these words; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉