CHAP. XIII.

Further pooofs of the wrong sentiments of the ancient philosophers, in relation to the Divinity. Plutarch's opinion, and which he represents as having been very general among the ancients, concerning two eternal principles, the one good, the other evil. Those philosophers who taught that the world was formed and brought into its present order by God, yet held the eternity of matter; and few if any of them believed God to be the Creator of the world in the proper sense. Many of them, especially after the time of Aristotle, maintained the eternity of the world in its present form. It was an established notion among the most celebrated philosophers, and which spread generally among the learned Pagans, that God is the soul of the world, and that the whole animated system of the world is God. The pernicious consequence of this notion shown, and the use that was made of it, for encouraging and promoting idolatry and polytheism.

THE celebrated Plutarch flourished after Christianity had made some progress in the world. But no man was better acquainted with the opinions of the ancient Pagan philosophers that lived before him. He acknowledged one perfectly wise and good God, the author of all good, and of the order so conspicuous in the universe. But not being able to account for the evil that is in the world under the administration of a good God, he asserted also a co-eternal evil, or disorderly principle: though he supposed the former, the good principle, to be the most prevalent. This was an opinion he zealously maintained, as appears from several passages in his writings; particularly in his Timæan Psychogonie, his Platonic Questions, and his treatise of Isis and Osiris. And he asserts it to have been the general sentiment of the most ancient and famous nations, and of the wisest and greatest per-. sons among them; some of them directly asserting two gods, others calling only the good principle God, as Plutarch himself does, and the evil one a demon.* That philosopher affirms that this notion obtained among the Persians, and may be traced in the astrology of the Chaldeans, in the mysteries and sacred rites of the Egyptians, and among the

* Plut. De Isid. et Osir. Oper. tom. II. p. 369, 370. Edit. Francof.

Greeks themselves. And he endeavours to show that the most eminent philosophers were in the same sentiments, particularly Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and others. In this however his prejudices in favour of his own opinion seem to have carried him too far. Dr. Cudworth has taken pains to clear these philosophers from the charge; and says that, for ought we can yet learn, Plutarch himself, Numenius, and Atticus, were the only Greek philosophers who, in their public writings, openly maintained that opinion. But it is not probable that, if this had been the case, Plutarch, who was so well acquainted with the history and tenets of the philosophers, and so able a judge of them, would have asserted it to be so general as he has done. Dr. Cudworth himself afterwards mentions Apuleius, as in the same way of thinking. And it seems to have obtained among many of the oriental philosophers.

But not to insist upon this, it deserves our notice, that few, if any, of the Pagan philosophers acknowledged God to be, in the most proper sense, the Creator of the world. By calling him "Anougyos-the maker of the world," they did not mean that he brought it out of non-existence into being, but only that he built it out of pre-existent materials, and disposed it into a regular form and order. Even those philosophers, who held God to be an incorporeal essence, yet supposed two first principles of things, really distinct from one another, both existing from eternity, an incorporeal mind, and passive matter. Of this opinion was Anaxagoras; so also was Pythagoras, as Numenius affirms, Archelaus, Archytas, and other Pythagoreans. Parmenides and Empedocles asserted, that God could not make any thing, but out of preexistent materials. Laërtius expressly asserts, that Plato held two principles, God and matter; and that matter is without form and infinite, but God put it in order.* Plu

* Laërt. lib. iii. segm. 69. where see M. Casaubon's note upon it; as also Menage's observations. Dr. Cudworth endeavours to show that Plato held that God created matter: but it would not be difficult to answer his arguments.

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tarch also ascribes this opinion to Plato, and to Socrates too, only he adds a third principle, viz. ideas. De Placit. Philos. lib. i. cap. 3. Oper. tom. II. p. 878. He himself plainly asserts the eternity of matter; and argues that God could not have formed the world, if he had not had matter to work upon.* Laërtius observes, concerning the Stoics, that they held there were two principles of the universe, 66 το ποιοῦν καὶ "To Tάoxo-the active and the passive. The passive is rude "unformed matter; the active is the reason which acteth in "it, that is God." This opinion of the Stoics is very clearly explained by Seneca, in the beginning of his 65th epistle. And Zeno, in a passage cited by Stobæus, says that "the first "essence of all things that exist is matter, and that this is all ❝of it eternal, and not capable of being either increased or di« minished—οὐσίαν τὴν τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων, πρώτην ὕλην, ταύτην δε σε πάσαν αἰδίον οὔτε πλείω γιγνομένην οὔτε ἑλάττω.”t Cicero, as quoted by Lactantius, says, that "it is not probable that the "matter of things, out of which all things were made, was "formed by Divine Providence; but that it hath, and always

had, a force and nature of its own." And he goes on to argue, that "if matter was not made by God, neither was "earth, air, water, and fire made by him." The famous Galen, after having acknowledged that the opinion of Moses, who ascribed the production of all things to God, is far more

Plato indeed supposes mind to be prior to body: but by body he does not understand the first matter, but that which is formed out of it. The learned Mosheim, in his Latin translation of the Intellectual System, has, as I am informed, for I have not his book by me, a long dissertation to prove that Dr Cudworth is mistaken, and that Plato did really hold, that matter was eternal; and indeed there are many authorities to prove it.

* Plut. Psychogon. Oper. tom. II. p. 1014. B. C.

+ Laërt. lib. vii. segm. 134.

cit. Phil. lib. i. cap. 3.

See also, to the same purpose, Plutarch De Pla

Stob. Eclog. Phys. lib. i, cap. 14. p. 29. Edit. Plantin.

§ Lactant. lib. ii. cap. 8. Davies thinks this was taken by Lactantius from Cicero's third book, De Nat. Deorum, some parts of which are now lost. See the fragments at the end of the 3d book, De Nat. Deor. Edit. Davies. 2d. p. 342, 343.

agreeable to reason than that of Epicurus, who attributed the whole frame to a fortuitous concursion of atoms, yet asserts the pre-existence of matter: and that the power of God could not extend itself beyond the capacity of matter which it wrought upon: and that this was that in which Plato, and those of the Greeks who wrote rightly upon the nature of things, differed from Moses. I would observe, by the way, that here is a plain proof that the learned heathens were sensible that Moses held that God not only formed the world out of matter, but created the matter itself out of which the world was made, which the Greek philosophers denied. See Galen, De Usu Part. lib. ii. ap. Stilling. Orig. Sacræ, book iii. chap. 2. p. 441. edit. 3d. The learned Dr. Thomas Burnet, who was well acquainted with the opinions of the ancients, says, that the Ionic, Pythagoric, Platonic, and Stoic schools all agreed in asserting the eternity of matter: and that the doctrine, that matter was created out of nothing, seems to have been unknown to the philosophers, and which they had no notion of.*

It would be carrying it too far to say, that they who did not acknowledge God to have created the world from nothing, were not really Theists, or that they left no place for religion. For supposing that there is a supreme eternal mind, of perfect wisdom and goodness, which formed this world out of crude passive matter, and disposed it into that regular and beautiful order in which we behold it, though he did not originally give existence to that matter itself, yet even on this supposition, it would be reasonable for men to pay their religious adoration and obedience to the great Orderer and Framer of this vast system, and who still continueth to govern it. But though such persons could not be justly charged with atheistical principles, yet I think Dr. Cudworth very properly calls them "imperfect Theists ;" and observes that they had not "a right genuine idea of God." They absurd

ly ascribed necessary existence, the noblest of the divine prerogatives, and which really comprehendeth all others under it, to such a mean, inert, imperfect thing, as they themselves represented matter to be. They limited the divine omnipotence, and could not maintain it in its just extent: since upon their scheme God could neither create nor annihilate matter, but could only change or vary its forms. Nor can I see how they could consistently suppose that he had a power even of doing this. For if matter existed from everlasting, by a necessity of nature, it must be uncaused and independAnd on this supposition it is hard to conceive how he should have such power over it, as not only to put it in motion, out of its natural state of rest, but to change, fashion, and model it according to his own will, as he must do in forming the universe.* Many of those who maintained that hypothesis, supposed that matter might in several respects not be duly obsequious to his operations: and that, through the inepitude of the materials, he might not be able to order things as he would, but only did the best the matter he worked upon would allow him to do. This is hinted in those queries proposed by Seneca. "Quantum Deus possit? Mate

ent.

* Those that held matter to be uncreated, eternal, and necessarily existent, did in effect ascribe to it the most essential and fundamental attribute of the Deity. Plato calls God the ró ", as being that which properly is, or exists. For, as Cicero observes, Plato would not allow any thing which hath a beginning and ending, to have a real being and existence; and asserts that that only is or exists which is always such. "Nihil Plato putat esse quod oriatur et intereat; idque "solum esse quod semper tale sit." Tuscul. Disp. lib. i. cap. 24. Plutarch has some noble speculations on this subject, in his tract on the word EI, inscribed on the temple of Apollo, at Delphi. He shows that it cannot be so properly said of God, that he was or will be, as that he is; that this signifies that he is the same eternal, independent, immutable being, the only being that has a true and stable existence. How he and other philosophers could, in consistency with this, hold matter to be eternal and uncreated, and yet mutable, the subject of so many changes, is hard to see. Those philosophers, though otherwise very absurd, were more consistent with themselves, who, holding matter to be eternal, maintained that it was immoveable and invariable, and that all the mutations we see in it are nothing in reality, but are appearances only.