Remarks.
- ↑ Ver. 645, 646. Physic of Metaphysic, &c.—And Metaphysic calls, &c.] Certain writers, as Malbranch, Norris, and others, have thought it of importance, in order to secure the existence of the soul, to bring in question the reality of body; which they have attempted to do by a very refined metaphysical reasoning: While others of the same party, in order to persuade us of the necessity of a Revelation which promises immortality, have been as anxious to prove that those qualities which are commonly supposed to belong only to an immaterial Being, are but the result from the sensations of matter, and the soul naturally mortal. Thus between these different reasonings, they have left us neither Soul nor Body: nor the Sciences of Physics and Metaphysics the least support, by making them depend upon and go a begging to one another.
- ↑ Ver. 647. See Mystery to Mathematics fly!] A sort of men (who make human Reason the adequate measure of all Truth) having pretended that whatsoever is not fully comprehended by it, is contrary to it; certain defenders of Religion, who would not be outdone in a paradox, have gone as far in the opposite folly, and attempted to shew that the mysteries of Religion may be mathematically demonstrated; as the authors of Philosophic, or Astronomic Principles, natural and reveal'd.
- ↑ Ver. 649. Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,] Blushing, not only at the view of these her false supports in the present overflow of dulness, but at the memory of the past; when the barbarous learning of so many ages was solely employed in corrupting the simplicity, and defiling the purity of Religion. Amidst the extinction of all other Lights, she is
Heav'n] Philosophy has at length brought things to that pass, as to have it esteemed unphilosophical to rest in the first cause; as if its ends were an endless indagation of cause after cause, without ever coming to the first. So that to avoid this unlearned disgrace, some of the propagators of our best philosophy have had recourse to the contrivance here hinted at. For this Philosophy, which is founded in the principle of Gravitation, first considered that property in matter, as something extrinsical to it, and impressed immediately by God upon it. Which fairly and modestly coming up to the first Cause, was pushing natural enquiries as far as they should go. But this stopping, though at the extent of our ideas, was mistaken by foreign Philosophers as recurring to the occult qualities of the Peripatetics. To avoid which imaginary discredit to the new theory, it was thought proper to seek for the cause of gravitation in a certain elastic fluid, which pervaded all body. By this means, instead of really advancing in natural enquiries, we were brought back again by this ingenious expedient to an unsatisfactory second cause: For it might still, by the same kind of objection, be asked, what was the cause of that elasticity? See this folly censured, ver. 475.
