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

Chap. IIL the Divine Art embodied, 157And thus we have ^ttn the difference between nature and human art ;.that the latter is imperfeft art, acting upon the matter from without, andat a diftance ; but the former is art itfelf, or perfccfl art, aifting as an inwardprinciple in it. Wherefore when art is faid to imitate nature, themeaning thereof is, that imperfeft human art imitates that perfeft art ofnature, which is really no other than the divine art itfelf; as before Arijlotle^Plato had declared in his Sophifl: ', in thefe words ; Tx(p-jcfi XsyoixcMx-TotiTSxr^iixTixvyi' Thofe things^:Which are faid to be done by nature^ are indeed done bydivineart.II. Notwithftanding whicH, we are to take notice in the next place, thatas nature is not the Deity itfelf, but a thing very remote from it, and farbelow it, fo neither is it the divine art, as it is in itfelf pure and abftrafV,,but concrete and embodied only ; for the divine art confidered in itfelf isnothingbut knowledge, underftanding, or wifdom in the mind of God.Now knowledge and underftanding, in its own nature, is xtx'-^oia-fji.nov n, acertain feparate and ahftra^ thing, and of fo fubtile and refined a nature, aythat it is not capable of being incorporated with matter, or mingled andblended with it, as the foul of it. And therefore Arijiotle\ fecond inftance,which he propounds as moft pertinent to illuftrate this bufinefs of nature by,namely of the phyfician's art curing himfelf, is not fo adequate thereunto jbecaufe when the medicinal art cures the phyfician, in whom it is, it dothnot there aAy'^ tZ c^y*.£i/£u vXn, the reafon of the thing without matter ; and fo the divine art orknowledge in the mind of God is unbodied reafon : bat nature is ratiomerfa ^ confufa, reafon immerfed and plunged into matter, and as it werefuddled in it, and confounded with it. Nature is not the divine artarchety*pal, but only edypai; it is a living ftamp or fignature of the divine wifdom ;which though it aft exaftly according to its archetype, yet it doth not at allcomprehend nor underftand the reafon of what itfelf doth. And the differencebetween thefe two may be refembled to that between the XsJ^^r IJixBtloi^,the reafon of the mind and conception, called verbum mentis, atid the >o^o