A14095:141
A discovery of D. Jacksons vanity. Or A perspective glass, whereby the admirers of…A discovery of D. Iacksons vanitie. Or A perspective glasse, wherby the admirers of…
A discovery of D. Jacksons vanity. Or A perspective glass, whereby the admirers of D. Jacksons profound discourses, may see the vanity and weakness of them, in sundry passages, and especially so far as they tend to the undermining of the doctrine hitherto received. Written by William Twice, Doctor of Divinity, as they say, from whom the copy came to the pressA discovery of D. Iacksons vanitie. Or A perspective glasse, wherby the admirers of D. Iacksons profound discourses, may see the vanitie and weaknesse of them, in sundry passages, and especially so farre as they tende to the undermining of the doctrine hitherto received. Written by William Twisse, Doctor of Divinitie, as they say, from whom the copie came to the presse
Amsterdam: printed by the successors of Giles Thorp, 1631
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
& likewise Job saith of him▪ that He is higher then the Heaven, 1and deeper then Hell; & certainly God is able to produce a body without the Heavens, and consequently in Vacuo; & hereupon it seems to some, that in good reason God should first have a being there, before he produce the any body there. And this is one reason of many, which Brad wardine useth to prove, that God is in Vacuo: (for tha• is his opinion) though Vasquius was not acquainted with him. Now by your leave, I will consider your reasons to the contrary. First you demand whether this local distance be created or no• ▪ whether it be something or nothing? I answer, that •rteinly it is not created, as being just nothing yet so as that it is possible a body should be, where before was no body. As for example where now the World is, before the World was, […] no body, yet was it then possible there should be a body, ⟨p. 92⟩So without the Heavens is no body, yet is it possible that a body should be without the heavens. You proceed saying, If it be nothing, then they had an imagination of an infinite space which really was nothing; and we grant they had. For they held it only an imaginary space or distance. Further you infer; If really nothing, then it could not be truly termed an imaginary space, before the World was created. A manifest inconsequence. For as men may imagine things that are not, so such things may be truly termed imaginary things which are not real. And there is no such difference, as you avouch, between these two, To imagine an infinite space, and to say, that There is an imaginary infinite space. For wheresoever there is the imagination of an infinite space, there must needs be an infinite space imagined. And therefore as often as there is in man the imagination of an infinite space without the heavens, this is as much as to say, there is an infinite space imagined by man to be without the heavens. But I observe your subtlety following. Before the heavens, you say, there could be no imagination of any such space; therefore there was no such space imagined. I answer; though before the heavens there was no man at all to imagine it, yet nevertheless was it imaginable, and now you confess it is so imagined. And not only do we imagine a Vacuum to have been before the World was, but even since the World is, to wit, without the Heavens.