A14095:67
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.
5. But you have not yet dispatched it as it seems. Now you begin to dispute the creation of the World; but your phrase in expressing it, is very incongruous, as when you suppose Philosophers to maintain, that the root of incorruption in the heavens, can brook no limits of duration, but must be imagined without end or beginning. Now Philosophers maintained (and they only were the Peripatetics. For Aristotle ingenuously acknowledgeth in his books de Caelo, that all 1that went before him, supposed the heavens to have had a beginning) that the Heavens were without beginning and without end, not that the root of incorruption in the Heavens (as you speak) was without beginning and without end. For of any such root of their incorruption he disputeth not; and I verily think, that herein, affecting to phrasifie, you speak you know not what. Now this he maintained, in opposition unto those, who feigned the World to have had a beginninge ex praejacente materia; which matter had no beginning. And Aristotle concurring withal that went before him in this, that nothing could be produced out of nothing, and opposing them in the point of matter praejacent, drew up his Tenet to this pitch, that the World had no beginning. As if he had disputed thus; If the World had a beginning, ⟨p. 38⟩it must have its beginninge eyther ex aeterna materia praejacente, or no. But not ex aeterna materia praejacente, as he laboured to prove, therefore if it had a beginning, it must be of nothing; Now all granted that ex nihilo nihil sit; whence it followed that it could have no beginning at all. And truly, I am of opinion, that his Tenet was more sound then his opposites; and that with better reason it may be maintained that the World had no beginning, then that the matter or Chaos rudis indigestaque moles, whereof the World was made, had no beginning. Now that Principle wherein they all agreed, nothing can be made of nothing, they thought to be evident of it self, and such as needed no proof.
5. But you have not yet dispatched it as it seemes. Nowe you beginne to dispute the creation of the World; but your phrase in expressinge it, is very incongruous, as when you suppose Philosophers to maynteyne, that the roote of incorruption in the heavens, can brooke no limits of duration, but must be imagined without ende or beginninge. Now Philosophers maynteyned (and they only were the Peripatetickes. For Aristotle ingenuously acknowledgethe in his bookes de Caelo, that all