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/48

 20 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉; Zeno implicitly affirms, God to be a Body, whether he mean him to be the whole Corporeal Universe, or some particular Body; for if God were Incorporeal, how could he be Spherical? nor could he then either Move or Rest, being not properly in any Place; but if God be a Body, then nothing hinders but that he may be moved. From which, and other Places of Aristotle, it is plain enough also, that he did suppose Incorporeal Substance to be Unextended, and as such, not to have Relation to any Place. But this is a thing to be disputed afterwards. Indeed some learned men conceive Aristotle to have reprehended Zeno without Cause, and that Zeno made God to be a Sphear, or Spherical, in no other sence, than Parmenides did in that known Verse of his; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉. Wherein he is understood to describe the Divine Eternity. However, it plainly appears from hence, that according to Aristotle's sence, God was 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, an Incorporeal Substance distinct from the World.

XXI. Now this Doctrine, which Plato especially was famous for asserting, that there was 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Incorporeal Substance, and that the Souls of Men were such, but principally the Deity; Epicurus taking notice of it, endeavoured with all his might to confute it, arguing sometimes after this manner; There can be no Incorporeal God (as Plato maintained) not only because no man can frame a Conception of an Incorporeal Substance, but also because whatsoever is Incorporeal must needs want Sense, and Prudence, and Pleasure, all which things are included in the Notion of God; and therefore an Incorporeal Deity is a Contradiction. And concerning the Soul of Man; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, &c. They who say that the Soul is Incorporeal, in any other sence, than as that word may be used to signifie a Subtil Body, talk Vainly and Foolishly; for then it could neither be able to Do nor Suffer any thing. It could not Act upon any other thing, because it could Touch nothing; neither could it Suffer from any thing, because it could not be Touch'd by any thing; but it would be just like to Vacuum or Empty Space, which can neither Do nor Suffer any thing, but only yield Bodies a Passage through it: From whence it is further evident, that this Opinion was professedly maintained by some Philosophers before Epicurus his time.

XXII. But Plato and Aristotle were not the first Inventors of it: For it is certain, that all those Philosophers who held the Immortality of the Humane Soul, and a God distinct from this visible World, (and so properly the Creator of it and all its parts) did really assert Incorporeal Substance. For that a Corporeal Soul cannot be in its own Nature Immortal and Incorruptible, is plain to every one's Understanding, because of its parts being separable from one another; and whosoever denies God to be Incorporeal, if he make him any thing at all, he must needs make him to be either the whole poreal