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poverty, or other calamity; and has no repose, nor pause of
his anxiety, but in sleep.
Which Makes Them Fear The Power Of Invisible Things
This perpetuall feare, alwayes accompanying mankind in the ignorance
of causes, as it were in the Dark, must needs have for object something.
And therefore when there is nothing to be seen, there is nothing to
accuse, either of their good, or evill fortune, but some Power,
or Agent Invisible: In which sense perhaps it was, that some of
the old Poets said, that the Gods were at first created by humane Feare:
which spoken of the Gods, (that is to say, of the many Gods of
the Gentiles) is very true. But the acknowledging of one God Eternall,
Infinite, and Omnipotent, may more easily be derived, from the
desire men have to know the causes of naturall bodies, and their
severall vertues, and operations; than from the feare of what was
to befall them in time to come. For he that from any effect hee
seeth come to passe, should reason to the next and immediate cause
thereof, and from thence to the cause of that cause, and plonge himselfe
profoundly in the pursuit of causes; shall at last come to this,
that there must be (as even the Heathen Philosophers confessed)
one First Mover; that is, a First, and an Eternall cause of all things;
which is that which men mean by the name of God: And all this without
thought of their fortune; the solicitude whereof, both enclines to fear,
and hinders them from the search of the causes of other things;
and thereby gives occasion of feigning of as many Gods, as there be
men that feigne them.
And Suppose Them Incorporeall
And for the matter, or substance of the Invisible Agents, so fancyed;
they could not by naturall cogitation, fall upon any other conceipt,
but that it was the same with that of the Soule of man; and that
the Soule of man, was of the same substance, with that which appeareth
in a Dream, to one that sleepeth; or in a Looking-glasse, to one
that is awake; which, men not knowing that such apparitions are
nothing else but creatures of the Fancy, think to be reall,
and externall Substances; and therefore call them Ghosts;
as the Latines called them Imagines, and Umbrae; and thought them
Spirits, that is, thin aereall bodies; and those Invisible Agents,
which they feared, to bee like them; save that they appear,
and vanish when they please. But the opinion that such Spirits
were Incorporeall, or Immateriall, could never enter into the mind
of any man by nature; because, though men may put together words
of contradictory signification, as Spirit, and Incorporeall;
yet they can never have the imagination of any thing answering to them:
And therefore, men that by their own meditation, arrive to the
acknowledgement of one Infinite, Omnipotent, and Eternall God,
choose rather to confesse he is Incomprehensible, and above
their understanding; than to define his Nature By Spirit Incorporeall,
and then Confesse their definition to be unintelligible: or if they
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