A Treatise of the Laws of Nature. Richard Cumberland

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СКАЧАТЬ Soul of the World, destroying the Deity of the World, and the Parts thereof, making them inanimate and unintelligent, calling the Moon an Earth, and the Sun a Mass of Fire; whilst at the same time he acknowledg’d a single supreme Deity existing separately, whilst he discarded the Soul of the World, which deified all the Parts thereof, which was no less than a Subversion of the main of the Pagan Theism; for which Plato charges him with Atheism. And Ficinus⁸⁰ affirms, “That Plato in his Book of Laws asserts the Coelestial Gods only, because the Contemplation of the higher Deities is very foreign to the matter of Laws.” Which is an Insinuation, that those higher Deities in Platonism are properly Gods of Philosophical Speculation only, no Deities of Religion and Laws. Nor could the Platonists suppose their first Principle a Deity of Religion and Laws; for they look upon it, as quite above all external Adoration; and such was Numa’s Deity, to whom he would neither allow Image, nor material Sacrifice. “Plato” (saith Eugubinus⁸¹) “did not so clearly propose the greatest God as an Object of Worship, because he could not be worshipp’d; what he is, and how to be worshipp’d, cannot be describ’d, or declar’d. In three Places he calleth him undeclarable, in the Timaeus, difficult for Thought, undeclarable by Speech, or Word. According to Philo also he is unconceivable, unthinkable, undeclarable; being thus unspeakable and inexplicable, and such as the old Theologers call innominable, some invisible, others to be worshipp’d in silence, others uninvestigable; therefore Plato hath said nothing of him in his Book of Laws, nor set down any Thing concerning his Worship, because he could not, this Deity being unknowable, both as to Name and Nature.” If Plato’s supreme Deity is of no Religion; if all Understanding, Conception, Name, Word, Speech, be utterly incompetible and unapplicable to this first Principle; if there be no Doctrine, no Learning, no Discipline, or Institution, touching such a Deity, and, consequently, no Religion; this is not discoursing, nor reasoning, but dreaming of such a Deity; for there can be no Proof of the Being of such a Deity, neither à Priori, nor à Posteriori, no more than could be given of such Gods as Epicurus suppos’d, who did nothing, and who could not be known, either directly, or by their Works.

      However, the Followers of Plato thought this supreme Deity was to be worshipp’d, but by Silence, pure Cogitation, and As similation to him, which is the Sacrificing our Life to him. But such a kind of Deity and his Worship being foreign from matter of Law, and altogether unsuitable to the generality of Mankind, Plato thought it a Solecism to mention him in his Book of Laws. “He taketh care that the Matters of his Acroamatical Theology, his Acroamatical Deity, do not fall into the Hands of unskilful Men; for scarce any Thing, as I suppose, would be Matter of more Derision amongst the common People. From Plato, therefore, you have the true Cause, why we may not speak of the first Deity amongst the Vulgar, why it is not lawful to publish to the Vulgar the Parent of the Universe: For, not understanding the Things that are said of him, they deride them, being Things remote from popular Custom, and gross Ears; therefore, treating of Laws which ought to be publish’d to the People, he spake nothing of that great uninvestigable Deity, proposing only the Worship of Heaven to the People, to whom he must speak only of that, which they thought certain Religion.”⁸²

      The Platonists, therefore, tho’ they had higher Deities in their School, do yet agree, That the supreme Deity of their Religion and Laws, is the Soul of the World, or the Mundane System as animated by a governing Mind, which Deifies it, the supreme Deity of the Popular Pagans, and the same with Zeus, or Jupiter. Speusippus, also, agreeable to Plato, is said by Cicero to have held “a certain Force, or Power, whereby all Things are govern’d, and that Animal.”⁸³ Such also was Pythagoras’s Notion of the Deity, as others, and Cicero also in the same Treatise relates; “Pythagoras also acknowledg’d one God, an incorporeal Mind, diffus’d thro’ the whole Nature of Things, the Origin of vital Sense to all Animals.” In like manner Onatus the Pythagorean defines “God, the Mind and Soul, and Ruler of the whole World.” The Jove of the Orphick Theology is the mundane Soul and System.

      Πάντα γδ ῤν μεγάλῳ Ζῆνος τάδε σώ ματι κεῖται.

      All these Things lie in the great Body of Jove.

      “A Spirit that pervadeth the whole World,” was one of the Aegyptian Notices of God.⁸⁴ The Supreme Deity of the Peruvians was of the same kind, as appeareth from his Name Pachacamac, which signifieth the Soul, or Life, of the World. The Stoicks usually intitle the Supreme Deity, The Mind and Understanding of the Whole, the common, or universal, Mundane Nature, and the common Reason of Nature, the ruling Principle of the World; and, as Zeno defin’d God, a Spirit pervading the whole World. And the Indians, according to Megasthenes, suppos’d, That the God, who is the Maker and Governour of the World, pervadeth the Whole of it. Agreeably to these Sentiments, the Romans styled Capitoline Jove, “the Mind and Spirit, the Guardian and Governour of the Universe, the Artificer and Lord of this Mundane Fabrick, to whom every Name, Fate, Providence, Nature, the World, is agreeable.”⁸⁵ So true is that of Macrobius; “Jupiter among the Theologers is the Soul of the World.”⁸⁶ The Soul moveth and governeth the Body, which it presideth over, saith Cicero, “As that chief God governeth the World.”⁸⁷ St. Austin saith thus of Varro; “When Varro elsewhere calleth the rational Soul of every one a Genius, and affirmeth such a Mind, or Soul, of the whole World to be God; he plainly implieth that God is the Universal Genius of the World, and that this is he, whom they call Jove. Those only seem to Varro to have understood what God is, who thought him a Soul governing the World by Motion and Reason.”⁸⁸ Such a Soul of the World the Stoicks call’d, The artificial Fire orderly proceeding to the Generation of the Things of the World.

      Many Christian Writers have grossly symboliz’d with the aforesaid Doctrine of the Pagans; and, particularly, all those Christian Divines, who account the Platonists Triad the same with the Christian Trinity, if they are consistent with themselves, suppose the H. Ghost, to be the same with the Platonists Soul of the World, which is the Pagan Jove, thus perverting the Scriptures, confounding Things Sacred and Profane, Human and Divine, God and the World, God and Belial, the Kingdom of Darkness and of Light, Paganizing Christianity. It is one Thing to say, That mundane, animative, intelligent Nature is God, as being somewhat, that he inclusively is; and another Thing to say, That mundane, animative, intelligent Nature, form’d by the Pagans into a Jove, is, as such, God. The former Assertion is legitimate Theism, the latter is Heathenism.

      This Jupiter of the Popular Pagans, the Soul of the World, may justly be thought the best sort of Jupiter in the Pagan Theology. But the Heathenism of the Notion will, in great Measure, appear from the Original of it. For the Heathens were carried to this Notion of the Supreme Deity, partly by the first Original Theism of their Institution, and partly by their Method of proving the Existence of a Deity against Atheism. The first Original Theism of their Institution, or their eldest Idolatry, was the deifying the visible Heaven, or World, as the Supreme universal Deity, or chief God. As amongst the Chinese, “Some suppose, that the Sun, Moon and Stars, and chiefly Heaven itself, whence the Earth deriveth all her Advantages, must be worshipp’d with all possible Devotion.”⁸⁹

      This Pagan Idea of a Supreme Deity, was also a Consequent of their Method of proving the Existence of a Deity against Atheism; which, tho’ it hath much of true Reason and sound Philosophy in it, does also involve the Deity of the World; which is of the same Importance in the Pagan Religion, with the Existence of a Deity. Plato’s Theism, which he asserts in his Book of Laws, we have already seen to be only an asserting a Soul of the World. So Cicero disputeth. “There is assuredly a СКАЧАТЬ