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bodied. Its Opificer. Without Consciousness. Acts Fatally and Sympathetically. Incorporeal. Lodg'd in the Souls of Animals. A Censure of R. Des Cartes's Philosophy.
In the fourth Chapter the Idea of God is declared, in answer to the first Atheistick Argument. A large account of the Pagan Polytheism; to remove a grand Objection that lay in the Authors way from thence, against the Naturality of the Idea of God, as including Unity or Onlyness in it. The rather by him thus fully given, because he had not met with it sufficiently performed before. Eugubinus, who hath laboured most in this Subject, having, besides other things, given no account of the many Pagan Poetical and Political Gods, what they were; yet a great part of the Authors performance, to prove them really to have been, but the Polyonymy of One God. The Author also largely insisteth upon the Trinity, in order to the giving a full account of the Pagan Theology: it being certain, that the Pythagoreans and Platonicks, if not others, had their Trinity. Of all which, most of the principal Heads discoursed, are these that follow, viz.
That there must be some unmade Substance, the principle of Things made. The Asserters of two unmade Principles, God and the Matter. Omnipotence included in the Divine Idea. Knowledge and Power alone, make not up a God. A Good superiour to Knowledge. Morality in the Nature of God. Onlyness, contained in the Divine Idea: Against which, the Pagan Polytheism the grand Objection. The Ditheistick Doctrine. Of the Platonick origin of Evils. Pagans, not generally Ditheists. Things of Nature personated and Deified, but several Names of God. All the Pagan gods derived from one Supream. The Pagan Theogonia the same with the Cosmogonia. The Pagans Eternal gods derived from one Supream. This, denoted by Appellatives, as Δαἰμων, τὸ Θεῖον. Θεοὶ, taken only for the Inferiors. Champions for Paganism assert one Supream, as Apollonius Tyaneus, &c. Of the Sibylline Oracles. The Triplasian Mithras of the Persians. The Chaldaick Trinity, and Oracles. History of Orpheus, no Romance. A Polytheist, yet asserter of one Supream. A Trinity, part of the Orphich Cabala. Grand Arcanam of the Orphich Theology, that God is All. This a ground of Polytheism amongst as well the Egyptians, as Greeks and other Nations. Names of Greekish gods from the Egyptians. Who were yet constant asserters of the Cosmogonia: and of Incorporeal Substance. Some Trismegistick Books counterfeit, notall.
