III. by laws, but to determine man's general obligation to CHAP. obedience to that particular positive precept by the breach of which man fell. If God's power over man was universal and unlimited, what reason can there be to imagine it should not extend to such a positive law? Was it because the matter of this law seemed too low for God to command his creature? But whatever the matter of the law was, obedience to God was the great end of it, which man had testified as much in that instance of it as in any other whatsoever; and in the violation of it were implied the highest aggravations of disobedience; for God's power and authority were as much contemned, his goodness slighted, his truth and faithfulness questioned, his name dishonoured, his majesty affronted in the breach of that, as of any other law whatsoever it had been. If the law were easy to be observed, the greater was the sin of disobedience ; if the weight of the matter was not so great in itself, yet God's authority added the greatest weight to it; and the ground of obedience is not to be fetched from the nature of the thing required, but from the authority of the legislator. Or was it then because God concealed from man his counsel in giving of that positive precept? Hath not then a legislator power to require any thing, but what he satisfies every one of his reason in commanding it? If so, what becomes of obedience and subjection? It will be impossible to make any probative precepts on this account; and the legislator must be charged with the disobedience of his subjects, where he doth not give a particular account of every thing which he requires; which as it concerns human legislators, (who have not that absolute power and authority which God hath,) is contrary to all laws of policy, and the general sense of the world. This Plutarch gives a good account of, when he dis BOOK Courseth so rationally of the sobriety which men ought III. to use in their inquiries into the grounds and reasons Plutarch. of God's actions; For, saith he, physicians will give sero puni-prescriptions without giving the patient a particular numine. reason of every circumstance in them: ovde yàp oùs de his qui untur a VI. των. ἄνθρωποι νόμους τίθενται, τὸ εὔλογον ἁπλῶς ἔχουσι καὶ πάντοτε φαινόμενον, ἀλλ ̓ εἶναι καὶ δοκεῖ κομιδῆ γελοῖα τῶν προσταγμά Twv. Neither have human laws always apparent reason for them; nay, some of them are to appearance ridiculous: for which he instanceth in that law of the Lacedæmonian ephori, μὴ τρέφειν μύστακα, to which no other reason was annexed but this, καὶ πείθεσθαι τοῖς νόμοις, ὡς μὴ χαλεποὶ ὦσιν αὐτοῖς. They commanded every magistrate, at the entrance of his office, to shave himself, and gave this reason for it, that they might learn to obey laws themselves. He further instanceth, in the Roman custom of manumission; their laws about testaments, Solon's law against neutrality in seditions; and concludes thence, καὶ ὅλως πολλὰς ἄν τις ἐξείποι νόμων ἀτοπίας, μήτε τὸν λόγον ἔχων τοῦ νομοθέτου, μήτε τὴν αἰτίαν συνιεὶς ἑκάστου τῶν γραφομένων. Any one would easily find many absurdities in laws, who doth not consider the intention of the legislator, or the ground of what he requires. Τί δὴ θαυμαστὸν, saith he, εἰ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων οὕτως ἡμῖν ὄντων δυσθεωρήτων, οὐκ εἴπορόν ἐστι τὸ περὶ τῶν θεῶν εἰπεῖν, ὦ λόγῳ τοὺς μὲν ὕστερον, τοὺς δὲ πρότερον τῶν ἁμαρτ TAVÓVTWY KOλÁČOVσw; What wonder is it, if we are so puzzled to give an account of the actions of men, that we should be to seek as to those of the Deity? This cannot be then any ground on the account of mere reason, to lay the charge of man's disobedience upon God, because he required from him the observance of that positive command of not eating of the forbidden fruit. The only thing then left is, Whether God be not III. tent. l. ii. dist. 7. sect. 9. liable to this charge, as he left man to the liberty of CHAP. his will? And that may be grounded on two things; either that God did not create man in such a condition, in which it had been impossible for him to have sinned; or that, knowing his temptation, he did not give him power to resist it. If neither of these will lay any imputation of the origin of evil upon God, then God will appear to be wholly free from it. First, concerning man's being created a free agent. If the determination of the schools be good, that possibility of sinning is implied in the very notion of a creature, and consequently that impeccability is repugnant to the nature of a created being, then we see a necessary reason why man was created in a state of liberty. But Vid. Thom. 1. p. q. 63. endeavouring to shew that the grounds of our religion art. 1. Estiare not repugnant to natural reason, I shall rather um in Senmake use of the testimony of such who professed to be followers of nothing else but reason and philosophy: among whom I shall make choice of Simplicius, both for the reason he produceth, and because he is farthest from any suspicion of partiality, by reason of his known opposition to the Mosaic history of the creation. He Simplic. then, in his Commentaries on Epictetus, professedly Epict. c. 34. disputes this very subject of the origin of evil; and, P. 175. after having rejected that fond opinion of two principles, one of good, and the other of evil, undertakes to give an account whence evil came into the world; which, because it tends so much to the illustrating our present subject, I shall give an account of. God, saith he, who is the fountain and principle of all good, not only produced things which were in themselves good, nor only those things which were of a middle nature, but the extremes too; which were such things which were apt to be perverted from that which is according to nature, to that which we call evil. And that after Com. in BOOK those bodies which were (as he supposeth) incorruptiIII. ble, others were produced which are subject to muta tion and corruption; and so after those souls which were immutably fixed in good, others were produced which were liable to be perverted from it; that so the riches of God's goodness might be displayed in making to exist all beings which are capable of it; and that the universe might be perfect, in having all sorts of beings in it. Now, he supposeth, that all those beings which are above this sublunary world are such as are immutably good, and that the lowest sort of beings, which are liable to be perverted to evil, are such which are here below. Therefore, saith he, the soul being of a more noble and immutable nature, while it is by itself, doth not partake of evil; but it being of a nature apt to be joined with these terrestrial bodies, (by the providence of the Author of the universe, who produced such souls, that so both extremes might be joined by the bonds of vital union,) thereby it becomes sensible of those evils and pains which the body is subject to; but these things are not properly evils, but rather good, considering our terrestrial bodies as parts of the universe, which is upheld by the changes and vicissitudes which are in this lower world; which he largely discourses on, to shew that those particular alterations, which are in bodies, do conduce rather to the perfection and beauty of the universe, than are any real evils in it. But now, saith he, for the origin of those things which are properly evils, viz. moral evils, which are τà tŷs åvoρwπívns чuxñs TTαiopata, the lapses and errors of the human soul, we are to consider, that there are souls of a more excellent nature than ours are, which are immutably good; and the souls of brutes are of a lower kind than ours are, and yet are middle between the rational and III. Com. in vegetative, having something in them parallel both to CHAP. the appetites and evils which are in men; which will therefore be understood by an account of the other. Ἡ δὲ ἀνθρωπίνη ψυχή, μέση προελθοῦσα τῶν τε ἀεὶ ἄνω μενουσῶν Simplic. ψυχῶν, διά τε τὴν ἐν τῇ ψυχικῇ οὐσίᾳ ἀκρότητα, καὶ διὰ τὴν τοῦ Epict. c. 34. νοῦ μέθεξιν, καὶ τῶν ἀεὶ κάτω διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸ σῶμα συγγένειαν Salmas. τῆς ἀλόγου ζωῆς, καὶ σύνδεσμος ζωτικὸς γινομένη τῶν τε ἄνω καὶ τῶν κάτω, διὰ τῆς αὐτεξουσίου σχέσεως, ποτὲ μὲν πρὸς ἐκεῖνα, ποτὲ δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα ὁμοιοῦται. The soul of man is nexus utriusque mundi, in the middle between those more excellent beings which perpetually remain above, with which it partakes in the sublimity of its nature and understanding, and those inferior terrestrial beings, with which it communicates through the vital union which it hath with the body; and by reason of that freedom and indifferency which it hath, it sometimes is assimilated to the one, sometimes to the other of these extremes. So that while it approacheth to the nature of the superior beings, it keeps itself free from evil, but because of its freedom it may sometimes sink down into these lower things; and so he calls the cause of all evil in the soul τὴν αὐτοθελῆ κάθοδον εἰς τόνδε τὸν OnToν TÓTOV, its voluntary descent into this lower world, and immersing itself in the feculency of terrestrial matter: κἂν φύσιν δὲ ἀμφίβολον ἔλαχεν, οὐκ ἀναγκαζομένη Ibid. κάτεισιν ἢ ἄνεισιν, ἀλλ ̓ οὕτως ὑπέστη, ὡς ὅταν αὐτὴ θέλῃ κατιέναι τε καὶ ἀνιέναι. For though the soul be of a kind of amphibious nature, yet it is not forced either upwards or downwards, but acts either way, according to its internal liberty. But, saith he, while the rational soul keeps that power which it hath in its hands over the body, and makes use of it only as an instrument for its own good, so long it keeps pure and free from any stain of evil; but when it once forgets the similitude it hath with the more excellent being, and throws |