by. And, therefore, where there is no such vicissitude or variety, as there can be no sense of time, so there can be nothing of the thing. Proclus hath wittily observed that Saturn, or (as the Greeks called him) Kpóvos, was the first of the Deol éTIKóσμio1, or mundane gods, 'because time is necessarily presupposed to all generation,' which proceeds by certain motions and intervals. This world is indeed a great horologe to itself, and is continually numbering out its own age; but it cannot lay any sure hold upon its own past revolutions, nor can it gather up its infancy and old age, and couple them up together. Whereas, an infinitely comprehensive mind hath a simultaneous possession of its own never-flitting life; and because it finds no succession in its own immutable understanding, therefore it cannot find any thing to measure out its own duration. And as time lies in the basis of all finite life, whereby it is enabled, by degrees, to display all the virtue of its own essence-which it cannot do at once; so such an eternity lies at the foundation of the divinity, whereby it becomes one 'without any shadow of turning, as St James speaks without any variety or multiplicity within itself, of which all created beings that are carried down in the current of time partake. And, therefore, the Platonists

1 Qu. θεοὶ ἐγκόσμιοι.

2 Proclus does not speak of the priority of the god Κρόνος, but of χρόνος, ‘Time. Cronus himself was fabled to be the son of Uranus and Ge, and therefore connected with them by γένεσις. The expression τὸ πрŵтоv, which Proclus makes use of-not τὸν πρῶτον—would seem conclusive on this point. καν γὰρ πότε λέγωμεν θεῶν γενέσεις, τὴν ἄῤῥητον αὐτῶν πρόοδον ἐνδεικ· νύμενοι λέγομεν καὶ τὴν τῶν δευτέρων έτερότητα πρὸς τὰς αἰτίας αὐτῶν. οἱ δέ γε θεολόγοι πάσας τὰς τοιαύτας ἀπορίας προαναιρούντες, ἵνα αἱ γενέσεις αὐτοῖς κατὰ λόγου πλάττωνται τῶν θεῶν, χρόνον τὸ πρῶτον ἐπωνόμασαν, ὡς δέοντος ὅπου γένει σίς ἐστιν, ἐκεῖ προηγεῖσθαι τὸν χρόνον, καθ'

δν ἡ γένεσις καὶ δι ̓ ὅν.—Procl. in Plat. Tim. 86 B.

Thus rendered by Taylor: 'For though we sometimes speak of the generations of the gods, yet we say this indicating their ineffable progression, and the difference of secondary natures with reference to the causes of them. Theologists, however, previously subverting all such doubts, in order that the generations of the gods may be rationally devised by them, call the first principle of things Time, because it is fit that where there is generation, time should precede, according to which, and on account of which, generation subsists.'

3 Jam. i. 17.

were wont to attribute Aiv, or 'eternity,' to God-not so much because He had neither beginning nor end of days, but because of His immutable and uniform nature, which admits of no such variety of conceptions as all temporary things do: and time they attributed to all created beings, because there is a yéveous, or 'constant generation,' both of and in their essence, by reason whereof we may call any of them, as Proclus tells us, by that borrowed expression,-čvnu kai véav-'old and new,' being every moment, as it were, re-produced, and acting something which it did not individually before. Though otherwise they supposed this world, constantly depending upon the Creator's omnipotency, might, from all eternity, flow forth from the same power that still sustains it, and which was never less potent to uphold it than now it is: notwithstanding, this piece of it which is visible to us, or at least this scheme or fashion of it, they acknowledged to have been but of a late date.

Fifth: Now thus as we conceive of God's Eternity, we may, in a correspondent manner, apprehend His Omnipresence; 'not so much by an infinite expanse or extension of essence, as by an unlimited power,' as Plotinus hath fitly expressed it'. For as nothing can ever stray out of the bounds, or get out of the reach, of an Almighty mind and power; so when we barely think of mind or power, or any thing else most peculiar to the Divine essence, we cannot find any of the properties of quantity mixing themselves with it: and as we cannot confine it in regard thereof to any one point of the universe, so neither can we well conceive it extended through the whole, or excluded from any part of it. It is always some material being that contends for space: bodily parts will not lodge together, and the more bulky they are, the

1 ληπτέον δὲ καὶ ἄπειρον αὐτὸν, οὐ τῷ ἀδιεξιτήτῳ ἢ τοῦ μεγέθους ἢ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ,

ἀλλὰ τῷ ἀπεριλήπτῳ τῆς δυνάμεως. Επη. VI. 9. 6.

more they justle for room one with another; as Plotinus tells us; 'bodily beings are great only in bulk, but divine essences in virtue and power'.'

Sixth: We may, in the next place, consider that freedom and liberty which we find in our own souls, which is founded in our reason and understanding; and this is therefore infinite in God, because there is nothing that can bound the first mind, or disobey an Almighty power. We must not conceive God to be the freest agent, because He can do and prescribe what He pleaseth, and so set up an absolute will which shall make both law and reason, as some imagine. For as God cannot know Himself to be any other than what indeed He is; so neither can He will himself to be any thing else than what He is, or that any thing else should swerve from those laws which His own eternal nature and understanding prescribe to it. For this were to make God free to dethrone Himself, and set up a liberty within Him, that should contend with the royal prerogative of His own boundless wisdom.

To be short. When we converse with our own souls, we find the spring of all liberty to be nothing else but reason; and therefore no unreasonable creature can partake of it: and that it is not so much any indifferency in our wills of determining without reason, much less against it, as the liberal election of, and complacency in, that which our understandings propound to us as most expedient: and our liberty most appears, when our will most of all congratulates the results of our own judgments; and then shows itself most vigorous, when either the particularity of that good, with which the understanding converseth, or the weak knowledge that it hath of it, restrains it not. Then is it most pregnant, and flows forth in the fullest stream, when its object is most full, and the acquaintance with it most ample; all liberty in

1 τὸ (γὰρ) ἐκεῖ μέγα ἐν δυνάμει, ἐνταῦθα ἐν ὄγκῳ.—Enn. II. 9. 17.

the soul being a kind of liberality in the bestowing of our affections, and the want or scarce measure of it, parsimoniousness. And, therefore, the more the results of our judgments tend to an indifferency, the more we find our wills dubious, and in suspense what to choose; contrary inclinations arising and falling within interchangeably, as the scales of a balance equally laden with weights; and all this while the soul's liberty is nothing else but a fluctuation between uncertainties, and languisheth away in the impotency of our understandings. Whereas the Divine understanding, beholding all things most clearly, must needs beget the greatest freedom that may be; which freedom as it is bred in it, so it never moves without the compass of it. And though the Divine will be not determined always to this or that particular, yet it is never bereft of eternal light and truth to act by: and, therefore, though we cannot see a reason for all God's actions, yet we may know they were neither done against it, nor without it.

CHAPTER III.

How the consideration of those restless motions of our wills after some supreme and infinite good, leads us into the knowledge of a Deity.

WE

E shall once more take a view of our own souls, and observe how the motions thereof lead us into the knowledge of a Deity. We always find a restless appetite within ourselves which craves for some supreme and chief good, and will not be satisfied with any thing less than infinity itself; as if our own penury and indigency were commensurate with the Divine fulness: and, therefore, no question has been more canvassed by all

philosophy than this, de summo hominis bono; and all the sects thereof were anciently distinguished by those opinions that they entertained de finibus boni et mali, as Cicero phraseth it. But of how weak and dilute a nature soever some of them may have conceived that summum bonum, yet they could not so satisfy their own inflamed thirst after it. We find, by experience, that our souls cannot live upon that thin and spare diet with which they are entertained at their own home; neither can they be satiated with those jejune and insipid morsels with which this outward world furnisheth their table. I cannot think the most voluptuous Epicurean could ever satisfy the cravings of his soul with corporeal pleasure, though he might endeavour to persuade himself there was no better: nor the most quintessential Stoics find an αὐτάρκεια and αταραξία—' a self-sufficiency and tranquillity" -within their own souls, arising out of the pregnancy of their own mind and reason; though their sullen thoughts would not suffer them to be beholden to a higher being for their happiness. The more we endeavour to extract an autarchy out of our own souls, the more we torment them, and force them to feel and sensate their own pinching poverty. Ever since our minds became so dim-sighted as not to pierce into that original and primitive blessedness which is above, our wills are too big for our understandings, and will believe their beloved prey is to be found where reason discovers it not: they will pursue it through all the vast wilderness of this world, and force our understandings to follow the chase with them: nor may we think to tame this violent appetite, or allay the heat of it, except we can look upward to some Eternal and Almighty goodness which is alone able to master it.

It is not the nimbleness and agility of our own reason which stirs up these eager affections within us, (for then