The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

id="noteref-250" epub:type="noteref">250 If a man’s safety or prosperity should depend upon winds or rains, must new motions be impressed upon the atmosphere, and new directions given to the floating parts of it, by some extraordinary and new influence from God? Must clouds be so precipitated, or kept in suspense,251 as the case of a particular man or two requires? To which, add that the differing, and many times contrary interests of men are scarce to be reconciled. The wind which carries one into the port, drives another back to sea; and the rains that are but just sufficient upon the hills, may drown the inhabitants of the valleys.252 In short, may we expect miracles,253 or can there be a particular providence, a providence that suits the several cases and prayers of individuals, without a continual repetition of them, and force frequently committed upon the laws of nature and the freedom of intelligent agents? For my part, I verily believe there may. For,

It seems to me not impossible that God should know what is to come; on the contrary, it is highly reasonable to think that He does and must know things future. Whatever happens in the world which does not come immediately from Him, must either be the effect of mechanical causes, or of the motions of living beings and free agents. For chance, we have seen already, is no cause. Now as to the former, it cannot be impossible for Him, upon whom the being and nature of everything depends, and who therefore must intimately know all their powers and what effects they will have, to see through the whole train of causes and effects, and whatever will come to pass in that way254⁠—nay, it is impossible that He should not do it. We ourselves, if we are satisfied of the goodness of the materials of which a machine is made, and understand the force and determination of those powers by which it is moved, can tell what it will do, or what will be the effect of it. And as to those things which depend upon the voluntary motions of free agents, it is well known that men (by whom learn how to judge of the rest) can only be free with respect to such things as are within their sphere⁠—not great, God knows⁠—and their freedom with respect to these can only consist in a liberty either to act, without any incumbent necessity, as their own reason and judgment shall determine them, or to neglect their rational faculties, and not use them at all, but suffer themselves to be carried away by the tendencies and inclinations of the body, which left thus to itself acts in a manner mechanically. Now He, who knows what is in men’s power, what not; knows the make of their bodies, and all the mechanism and propensions of them; knows the nature and extent of their understandings, and what will determine them this or that way; knows all the process of natural (or second) causes, and consequently how these may work upon them:255 He, I say, who knows all this, may know what men will do, if He can but know this one thing more, viz. whether they will use their rational faculties or not. And since even we ourselves, mean and defective as we are, can in some measure conceive how so much as this may be done, and seem to want but one step to finish the account, can we with any show of reason deny to a Perfect being this one article more, or think that He cannot do that too, especially if we call to mind that this very power of using our own faculties is held of Him?256

Observe what a sagacity there is in some men⁠—not only in respect of physical causes and effects, but also of the future actings of mankind⁠—and how very easy it is, many times (if the persons concerned, their characters, and circumstances are given) to foresee what they will do; as also to foretell many general events, though the intermediate transactions upon which they depend are not known.257 Consider how much more remarkable this penetration is in some men than in others; consider further, that if there be any minds more perfect than the human (and who can be so conceited of himself as to question this?), they must have it in a still more eminent degree, proportionable to the excellence of their natures; in the last place, do but allow (as you must) this power of discerning to be, in God, proportionable to His nature, as in lower beings it is proportionable to theirs, and then it becomes infinite; and then again, the future actions of free agents are at once all unlocked and exposed to His view. For, that knowledge is not infinite which is limited to things past or present or which come to pass necessarily.

After all, what has been said is only a feeble attempt to show how far even we can go, toward a conception of the manner in which future things may be known; but as we have no adequate idea of an infinite and perfect Being, His powers, and among them His power of knowing, must infinitely pass all our understanding. It must be something different from, and infinitely transcending, all the modes of apprehending things which we know anything of.258

We know matters of fact by the help of our senses, the strength of memory, impressions made upon fancy, or the report of others (though that indeed is comprehended under senses. For that which we know only by report, in proper speaking we only know the report of, or we have heard it); and all these ways do suppose those matters either to be present, or once to have been. But is it therefore impossible that there should be any other ways