II. the good old physicians for poring upon Galen and Hippo- Discoui.se crates to learn a company of senseless aphorisms, whilst they by their own meditation and experience had found out reme811 dies more easy, more effectual, more universal. We blame the Court of Rome for their Index Expurgatorius; it is a shrewd sign, when litigants are forced to cut out the tongues of their own witnesses: yet they purged out but words, or sometimes a sentence; rarely prohibited one of their own authors. Here words, and sentences, and whole authors, and arts, go to wrack together; much like the Mahometan reformation, when they sacrificed the most part of their interpreters of the Alcoran to the fire without ever reading them. Yet, what they did, they did by public authority, and spared some as genuine expositors. But what this our new censor doth, he doth upon his own head, and like death sparing none; so did not they. Down goes all astrology and metaphysics. The moral philosopher must quit his means and extremes in order to virtue, his liberty of contradiction and contrariety, his necessity absolute and hypothetical', his proportion arithmetical and geometricals (I hope the geometrician may have leave to hold it still), his principia congenita and acquisitat, his ἑκούσιον and προαιρετόν", and most of his terms of art, because Mr. Hobbes hath not read them. It is well if moral philosophy escape his censure. For if the law of the land be "the only infallible rule of right reason," then the knowledge of actions, morally good and morally bad, belongeth properly to the common lawyer. The moral philosopher may put up his pipes. The same arbitrary power he assumeth to himself in natural philosophy, rejecting all the common terms used by philosophers, euphoniæ gratid, because they sound not well in his ears, for other reasons he hath none. "Let the natural philosopher no more mention his intentional species, his understanding agent and patient, his receptive and reductive power of the matter, his qualities symbolical and dissymbolical, his temperament ad pondus and ad justitiam," &c.; "I would have him fling away his sympathies and antipathies, his anti III. PART peristasis and the like." Whether it was astronomy or astrology in my original, I do not know, nor have means to see. Both may signify the same thing. I am sure, I neither said nor meant judiciary or genethliacal astrology, as my instances do evidence. The truth is, there are so many mistakes in that impression, that sometimes I scarcely know myself what to make of them. But he is more propitious to the astronomer. His "apogæum and perigæum, arctic, antarctic, equator, zodiac, zenith, horizon, zones," are not so much as terms of art," but are as intelligible "as a hatchet or a saw." What? Imaginary circles, and lines, and poles, and points, and an imaginary axletree, and ram, and bull, and bears, and dragon, and yet no terms of art? What are they then? Let him put it to a jury of Malmsburians themselves, whether they understand these so well as a hatchet or a saw," and he is gone. a He The like favour he shews to logicians. Their words of the first and second intention, their abstracts and concretes, their subjects and predicates, their moods and figures, their method synthetic and analytic, their fallacies of composition and division, are no terms of art, but plain intelligible words. that can say this without blushing, may dispute with any man. Porphyry makes the five predicables to be five terms of art. Are not the predicaments and post-predicaments, and demonstrations a priori and a posteriori, terms of art? Who made a mood and a figure to signify what they do but artists? Let all the world hear them, or read them, who have not learned logic, and they shall understand no more of them than of his "jargon." Why is not an antecedent and hypothetical necessity as intelligible as a categorical and hypothetical syllogism? An individuum vagum, if it were not a term of art, should signify rather an atom, or a rogue, than an honest person. Though he be so favourable to logic here, he is as little beholden to it as to the other arts, who knows no better what are terms of art. One of the first distinctions which we meet withal in logic, is between the first and second notions. The second notions, such as all these are, are called 812 II. expressly terms of art, or logical notions, or logical organs, Discourse which they define to be "images or representations, whereby the understanding doth form to itself real notions ;" and they compare them to brazen weights, of no value in themselves, whereby nevertheless all sorts of gold are weighed. There can be nothing more certain and evident than this, that all these logical and astronomical terms be second notions, and terms of art. Nay, so extremely blind and partial he is, that he approveth of "Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio," which he maketh "terms of art," as a good invention to help "the apprehension of young men';" and yet, with the same breath, rejecteth these most excellent and most significant distinctions and expressions, which have been received in a manner universally, some of them for two thousand years, all of them for divers centuries of years, in the Church, and in the Schools, as well of theology as philosophy, which were invented for remedies against confusion, and helps to the clearer and more distinct understanding of high and difficult notions, upon this false and slanderous pretext, that they were “invented to blind the understanding," because he presumed to condemn them before he took pains to understand them. He addeth, that I "cite no terms of art for geometry," saying he "was afraid" I "would have put in lines, or perhaps equality and unequality, for terms of artd." To free him from this fear, I put in their numbers, numbering and numbered, their superficies, concave and convex, their triangles, amblygone and oxygone, their cones, cubes, cylinders, their parallels, and parallelograms, their proportions, superpartient and superbipartient, &c., their rules of algebra and helcataim, their integers, and numerators, and divisors, and denominators, and fabrical figures, their proportionality, arithmetical and geometrical, continual and discontinual, direct, conversed, alternative, inversed, compounded, parted. Geometry hath its words of art and proper expressions, as well as all other arts and sciences. So hath physic, chyrurgery, law. So have soldiers, mariners, hawkers, hunters. But of all others he hath the least favour for the divine; 19. III. PART whom he will not permit "to use a word in preaching, but such as his auditors, nor in writing, but such as his common readers, may understand." I do not like it any more than he, that a divine should affect uncouth words, to make his I Cor. xiv. ignorant auditors to gape. "I had rather speak five words in the Church with understanding," &c., "than ten thousand in an unknown tongue." But doth he make no distinction between the Church and the Schools? Doth he think, that theology, which hath the sublimest subject, doth not require as high, as learned, and as distinct expressions, as any art or science whatsoever? All hearers and readers are not novices, nor of the vulgar or common sort. There are those who have [Acts xxii. been "brought up at the feet of Gamaliel," and have been ad3.] mitted into the innermost closet of the School learning. The Holy Scripture itself, though it affect plainness, is not always such a stranger either to learning or elegancè. The only answer I shall give him to this, is, that he is "beyond his last.” A contradiction. In the last part of this section, he troubleth himself more than he needeth about a testimony, which I cited out of his book De Cive; not out of any esteem I had for it,-for I condemned it, but to let him see his contradiction. There he made the ecclesiastical doctors to be infallible, here he maketh them to be fallible. There he made their infallibility to be a peculiar privilege derived to them by imposition of hands from the Apostles, whom they succeeded, and from the promise of Christ; here he attributeth it wholly to that power which is committed to them by the civil magistrate. And what if the civil magistrate commit no power to them? Then, by his doctrine, Christ breaketh His promise, and this privilege ceaseth. "Infallibilitatem hanc promisit Servator noster (in iis rebus quæ ad salutem sunt necessaria) Apostolis usque ad diem judicii, hoc est, Apostolis et Pastoribus ab Apostolis successive per manuum impositionem consecrandish." He answereth, that "the infallibility of ecclesiastical doctors..doth not consist in this, that they cannot be deceived, but that a subject cannot be deceived in obeying them, when they are Matt. xv. lawfully constituted doctors." A pretty fancy. 14. [Qu., Animadv. upon Numb. xix. "If the II. blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch;" doctor and DISCOURSE subject together. If the doctors be deceived themselves, they must needs deceive the subjects, who trust to their interpretation. Secondly, he waveth now the two grounds of their infallibility, that is, the promise of Christ and the privilege conferred by imposition of hands, and ascribeth all their infallibility to the constitution of the civil power; which may render their expositions legal, according to the municipal laws, but cannot render them infallible. Thirdly, if ecclesias813 tical doctors lawfully constituted, be so far infallible that they cannot deceive the subject, why did he vary so much (notoriously) from their expositions at that time, as he hath done in his book De Cive, when they had both imposition of hands and approbation from supreme authority? Why doth he now, wanting both the promise of Christ and imposition of hands, take upon him to be the tryer and examiner of the exposition, not only of single prophets, but of whole Convocations? CASTIGATIONS OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS ;-NUMBER XX. and com If Mr. Hobbes did understand what true election and true Election compulsion is, it were evident, that election of one out of pulsion inmore than one cannot consist with antecedent determination consistent. to one; much less with compulsion or force, where he that is compelled opposeth and resisteth as much as he can. That the same act should be both voluntary, that is, with our will, and compulsory, that is, against our will, not in part but in whole, is impossible. But as the sepia, to preserve herself undiscovered, doth shed forth about her a quantity of black inky blood, to hide herself from the fisher; so T. H., for fear to be catched in palpable errors, doth confound and blunder all things, making a new election, a new compulsion, a new liberty. There is not a word of moment here that hath not been discussed formerly in this treatise. And I do not esteem his raw "meditations" worthy of repetition over and over. What is new in them, I shall cull out from the rest. stance of a He telleth us, that when a stone is thrown upwards, "the [T. H.'s inexternal agent giveth it a beginning of motion." So far we stone fallagree, whatsoever gives it the continuance. He saith further, ing.] [Qu., Animadv. upon Numb. xx. p. 226.] |