wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted, and

132 77je Cofmo-Vh^ick /^theifm Book j.with one fenticnt or rational life and nature, one foul or mind, governingand ordering the wh-jle. Which corporeal cofmo-zoihri we do not reckonamongil the forms of atheifm, but rather account it for a kind offpuriousthdfm, or theifm difguifcd in a pagmick drefs, and not without a complicationof many falfe apprc:henfions, concerning the Deity, in it. The fecondis, that the whole world is no animal, but, as it were, one huge plant or vegetable,a body endued with one plaftick or fpermatick nature, branchingout the whole, orderly and methodically, but without any underftanding orfenfe. And this muft needs be accounted a form of atheifm, becaufe it doesnot derive the original of things in the univerfe from any clearly intelleftualprinciple or confcious nature.vr.jge.2o.XXVII. Now this form of atheifm, which fuppofes the whole world (therebeing nothing but body in it) not to be an animal, but only a great plantor vegetable, having one fpermatick form, or plaftick nature, which withoutany confcious reafon or underftanding orders the whole, though ithave fome nearer correfpondence with that hylozoick form of atheifm be^fore defcribed, in that it does not fuppofe nature to be a mere fortuitous, buta kind ofartilicial thing-, yet it differs from it in this, that the hylozoickfuppofing all matter, as fuch, to have life efTentially belonging to it, muittherefore needs attribute to every part of matter for at leaft every particulartotum, that is one by continuity) a diftindl plaftick life of its own, but acknowledgeno one common life, as ruling over the whole corporeal univerfe ;and confcquently impute the original of all things (as hath been already obferved)to a certain mixture of chance, and plaftick or methodical nature,both together. Whereas the cofmo-plaftick atheifm quite excludes fortuneor chance, "fubje£ling all things to the regular and orderly fate of one plaftickor plantal nature, ruling over the whole. Thus that philofopher beforementioned concludes, that whether the world were an animal (in the/, Stoical fenfe) or whether it were a mere plant or vegetable, yii initio ejus^ ufyiie ad exiii'.m, qidcquid facer e, quicqnid fati debeat, inclufeim eft. Ut in femine,omnis futuri ratio hominis coinprehenfa eft. Et legem barb^ i£ canorumnondiim natus infans habet \ totius ennn corporis., 6? fequentis atatis., in parvooccultoque lineamenta funt. Sic origo mundi non magis folem (^ lunam, idvices fyderum, ^ animalium ortus, quam quibus mutarentur terranea, continuit.In his fuit inundatio, qu^ non fecus qitiim byems, quam a-ftas, lege mundivenit. Whatfoever., from the beginning to the end of it., it can either do orfuffer, it was all at firft included in the nature of the whole -, as in the feed iscontained the whole delineation of the future man, and the embryo or unborninfant hath ah eady in it the law of a beard and gray hairs ; the lineamentsof the whole body, and of its following age, being there deferibed as itwere in a little and obfcure compendium. In like manner, the original andfirft rudiments of the world contained in them not only the fun and moon, thecourfes of the ftars, and the generation of animals, but alfo the vicijfitudes ofall terreftriai things ; and every deluge or inundation of water comes to pafsnolefs by the law of the world (its fpermatick or plaftick natui'cj than winterand fu.i.mer doth.XXVIII.