A Treatise of the Laws of Nature. Richard Cumberland

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СКАЧАТЬ cunctorum est & Jupiter ultimus idem.

       Jupiter & caput & medium est, sunt ex Jove cuncta.

       Jupiter est terra basis, & Stellantis Olympi.

       Jupiter & mas est, estque idem Nympha perennis.

       Spiritus est cunctis, validusque est Jupiter ignis’

       Jupiter est Pelagi radix, est Lunaque, solq;

       Cunctorum Rex est, Princepsque & Originis Author;

       Namque sinu occultans, dulces in luminis auras,

       Cuncta tulit, sacro versans sub pectore curas.

      The Popular Pagans call their Deities sometimes by Masculine, sometimes by Feminine Names, not pretending to know their Sexes;⁹⁹ or judging it matter indifferent, which of their Sexes they ascrib’d to their Deities; or, perhaps, supposing them Hermaphrodites. In the Septuagint, also, Baal is sometimes of the Masculine, and sometimes of the Feminine Gender.

      The one animate Mundane System is also one Deity, some say the first God, others the Second, and some call it the Third God. In the Stoicks Theology the World is the supreme God. The Platonists usually call it the third God: But Origen saith, that they call it the second. Which is very agreeable to what Plato saith in his Timeus, according to Cicero’s Version of it, “Deus ille aeternus hunc perfectè beatum Deum procreavit,” The eternal God procreated this perfectly happy God. The visible, sensible, fabricated World, being thus confronted to an invisible, intelligible, parental, eternal Deity, in this Antithesis, it falleth to the World’s Share, to be called the second God. So Celsus the Platonist and others have intituled the animated World, the Son of God.¹⁰⁰ And, consequently, there is in Platonism a twofold Son of God; the one is the Metaphysical Intellect of the Mundane System, the other is the intelligent Mundane Animal, the only-begotten sensible Son of God.

      The one Mundane System is also intituled one Temple, House, or Habitation, which Appellations denote such an Unity and undivided State of the Universe as perfectly disagrees with Christianity. The Habitation of the Immortal God, is one of the usual Names of the World. One Philosopher calleth it, The Temple of the Father; another calleth it, Amost Holy and God-becoming Temple; another styleth it, The Fire-refulgent House of Jove. By Cicero it is intituled, The Caelestial and Divine House; and by the Aegyptians, The Kingly House of the Deity. “Is God shut up within the Walls of Temples?” said Heraclitus. “The whole World variously adorn’d with Animals, and Plants, and Stars, is his Temple.” The Stoicks say, “The whole World is the Temple of the Gods, and the only Temple becoming their Amplitude and Magnificence.” Whence the Persians and the Magi condemn’d all artificial Temples; and Xerxes, by the Persuasion of the Magi, burnt the Temples of the Greeks, themselves doing their religious Worship to the Gods under the open Heaven; to whom they supps’d, that all Things should be open, and that this whole World is their Temple and Habitation. Zeno, the Father of the Stoicks, is likewise said, to have disallow’d the Building of Temples; and Plato, as some will have it, privately prohibited the having Statues of the Gods, as knowing, “That the World is the Temple of God.” The World is call’d by Plato, The House of the Gods, and, The made Image of the Eternal Gods. Agreeably to this Notion of the Philosophick Pagans, the Apocryphal Book of Baruch (3. 24.) looks upon the visible Universe as “The House of God.” But no such Language ever occurreth in the Holy Bible; which should have taught Christian Writers so much Discretion, as not to speak the Sense and Language of the Heathen Philosophers, which they frequently do.

      In the Stoicks Philosophy, the one Mundane System Jove is All Things, and All Things are Him, as his Parts and Members. Particularly Souls are Parts of God, and Avulsions from Him. Visible and Corporeal Things are the Parts of his Body. Thus is he One and All Things. Their Deity is so intimate, complicate, united, and connected with all Things, as to constitute with them One Mundane Intelligent Animal; therefore the whole animated World, and all the Things thereof are Jove, and Jove is the animated World, and the Things thereof.

      Jupiter est quodcumque vides, ———

      Jove is whate’er you see.

      The eldest Idolatry was the Worship of Heaven, the World, and the Stars, as appeareth from the Jove of the eldest Times, and of all Nations. Of the Persians, Herodotus reporteth, “That they did not, like the Greeks, think the Gods of human Birth and Original; but their way was, ascending to the Tops of the Mountains, they Sacrific’d to Jove, calling the whole Circle of the Heaven, Jove.”¹⁰¹ Strabo saith of them, “They Sacrifice in an high Place, thinking the Heaven, Jove.”¹⁰² So Plutarch says of the Aegyptians, “They take the first God, and the Universe, for the same Thing.” Universal Mundane Nature, the Aegyptians deified under the Name of Isis, which was their supreme Deity, as the Inscription before her Temple at Sais sheweth; “I am all that hath been, is, and shall be; and my Veil no Mortal hath ever yet uncover’d: And that other Inscription on the Altar at Capua (“Tibi una. Quae es omnia. Dea Isis.”) which maketh her one, and all Things. The Aegyptian Serapis, another Name of their supreme Deity, is the World, for, “Serapis being ask’d by Nicocreon” (King of the Cypriots) “what God he was? Made answer, I am a God, such as I describe myself. The Starry Heaven is my Head, the Sea is my Belly, the Earth is my Feet, mine Ears are in the Aether, and mine Eye is the bright Lamp of the Universe, the Sun.”¹⁰³ The Orphic Theology makes a like Description of Jupiter.¹⁰⁴ So Cicero hath shew’d from Ennius and Euripides, (who is called the scenical Philosopher,) That the Heaven, or circumambient Aether is the European Pagans Jove, the supreme universal Deity.¹⁰⁵ So in the Poet Aeschylus, Jupiter is Universal Mundane Nature. “Jupiter is Aether, and Earth, and Heaven, and all Things. And, if there be any Thing above these, Jupiter is it.” “The Naturalists” (saith Macrobius¹⁰⁶) “called the Sun” (Διόνυσον διὸς νοῦν) “Dionysus, the Mind of Jove, because the Mind of the World. The World is called Heaven, which they call Jove. Whence Aratus, being to speak of Heaven, saith, Let us take our rise from Jove.” So in an antient Inscription, the visible Heaven is intituled, Eternal, the best and greatest, Jupiter.¹⁰⁷ Agreeably to which Sense of the antient Pagans, that Tradition of theirs, reported by Aristotle, is to be understood touching the Divinity of the Heavens. “It hath been delivered to us by those of very antient Times, both that the Stars are Gods, and that the Divinity containeth the whole of Nature.”¹⁰⁸

      This Notion was so familiar with the Pagans, that Strabo, writing of Moses, could not but suppose the Gods of his Religion to be of this Nature and Notion; “That which containeth us all, and the Earth, and the Sea, which we call Heaven, and the World, and the Nature of the whole,” Universal Mundane Nature.¹⁰⁹ So Juvenal describes the God of the Jews.

      Nil praeter Nubes & Caeli numen adorant.

      They Worship no Deity but the Clouds and the Heavens.¹¹⁰

      So Diodorus Siculus reporteth Moses to have been of Opinion, “That the Heaven which surroundeth СКАЧАТЬ