Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. Generations of Men, Animals and Plants could not be from Eternity. ^*If any Man say the world was from Eternity, then there must be propagations of living Creatures in the same manner as are at this day: For without this the World could not consist; what we see now done must have been perpetually done, if it be done by a necessity of nature: But we see nothing now that doth arise but by a mutual propagation from another: If the world were Eternal therefore, it must be so in all Eternity: take any particular species, suppose a man, if men were from Eternity, then there were perpetual generations, some were born into the World and some died: Now the natural condition of generation is, that a man doth not generate a man, nor a Sheep a Lamb, as soon as ever it self is brought into the World, but get strength and vigour by degrees, and must arrive to a certain stated age before they can produce the like, for whilst any thing is little and below the due age, it cannot increase its kind; Men therefore and other Creatures did propagate their kind, by the same Law, not as soon as ever they were born, but in the interval of some time, and Children grew up by degrees in the Mothers Womb till they were fit to be brought forth: If this be so, then there could not be an Eternal succession of propagating: For there is no Eternal continuation of time: Time is always to be conceived as having one part before another: But that perpetuity of Nativities is ⟨p. 17⟩always after some time, wherein it could not be for the weakness of age: If no man then can conceive a propagation from Eternity, there must be then a beginning of Generation in time, and consequently the Creatures were made in time.

1. *Petar. Theo. Dogmat. tom. 1. lib. 1. cap. 2. pag. 15.

^*[If the World were Eternal, it must have been in the same posture as it is now, in a state of Generation and Corruption; And so Corruption must have been as Eternal as Generation, and then things that do generate and corrupt must have Eternally been and Eternally not have been: There must be some first way to set Generation on work.] We must lose our selves in our conceptions; we cannot conceive a Father before a Child, as well as we cannot conceive a Child before a Father: And reason is quite bewildered, and cannot return into a right way of Conception till it Conceive one first of every kind: One first man, one first animal, one first Plant from whence others do proceed. The argument is unanswerable, and the wisest Atheist (if any Atheist can be called wise) cannot unlose the knot. We must come to something, that is first in every kind, and this first must have a cause, not of the same kind, but Infinite and Independent; otherwise men run into unconceivable Labyrinths and contradictions.