Matter not eternal and uncaused . 397

infinity of power is supposed. If then evenin the case of generation and corruption, thismaxim falls short of the self-evidence of anaxiom or intuitive truth, how can it be oppos-ed to the possibility of creation by infinitepower ? Or where is the force of it compellingmen to assert that brute-matler , a thing en-tirely of a passive nature, by their own con-ception of it, should be self-existent ?

XX. Lucretius makes this his firfi prin-ciple, and the ground-work of his wholebook (*u): but his reasoning upon it is loose' and

by small power, that, on the contrary, a stupendous poweris manifested in the most ordinary appearances of nature,fids die excellent Borelli first observed in animal moti-Csl ; and the ingenious Mr. Hales, by a course of happy

ex periments, hath strewn the fame in the force of the a-ibending sap. in vegetables. And since all is performed byimmediate power of the Deity; the means, the me-the materials, in every production of nature, declarelrtl to be infinite in Power, in Knowledge, in Goodness .(zi) Principium hinc cujus nobis exordiasumetNullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus unquam.

Lib. 1. ver. 150.

. this principle he proposes as an excellent remedya £ainst the fear of any superior power.

^pippe it a formido mortaleis continet omneis,

•itfod multa in terrisfieri cceloque tuentur,

Quorum