# An Antidote Against Atheism/Book III/Chapter XV

Chap. XV.
1. The Structure of Mans body, and Apparitions, the most convictive Arguments against the Atheist. 2. His first Evasion of the former of them, pretending it never was but there were men and women and other Species in the World. 3. The Author's answer to this pretension. First, That every man was mortall, and therefore was either created or rose out of the Earth. 4. Secondly, That even in infinite succession there is something First ordine Naturæ, and that these First were either created or rose out of th Earth. 5. Thirdly, That if there were alwaies men in the World, and every man born of a woman, some was both Father and Son, Man and Babe at once. 6. That it is contrary to the Laws of mere blind Matter, that man in his adult perfections should exist therefrom at once. 7. The Atheist's second Evasion, That the Species of things arose from the multifarious attempts of the motion of the Matter; With a threefold Answer thereto. 8. An Evasion of the last Answer, touching the perpetual exactness in the fabrick of all living Species with a threefold Answer also to that Evasion. 9. The further serviceableness of this Answer for the quite taking away the first Evasion of the Atheist.
1. Thus have we gone through the many and manifold Effects represented to our Senses on this wide Theatre of the World; the faintest and obscurest whereof are Arguments full enough to prove the ​Existence of a Deity. But some being more palpable then other some, and more accommodate to awaken the dull and flow belief of the Atheist into the acknowledgement of a God, it will not be amiss to take notice of what Evasions he attempts to make for the extricating himself out of those that he fancies the most sensibly to entangle him, and the most strongly to hinder his escape.
And such are especially these two last I insisted upon, The curious frame of Mans Body, and Apparitions.
2. And the force of the former some endeavour to evade thus; "That there hath ever been Man and Woman and other Species in the world, and so it is no wonder that like should propagate its like, and therefore that there is no want of any other invisible or material cause but the Species of things themselves: and so these admirable contrivances in Nature must imply no divine Wisdom nor Counsel, nor any such thing.
3. But here I demand, whether there were ever any Man that was not mortal, and whether there be any mortal that had not a beginning; and it he had, it must be either by Generation, or Creation. If by Creation; there is a God: If by equivocal Generation, as rising out of Earth, our Argument will hold good still notwithstanding this Evasion. But if you'l say there was never any man in the world but was born of a Woman, this must amount but to thus much, that there hath been an infinite number of succesions of births. If there be meant by it any thing more then thus, it will not prove sense.
4. For though our Phansie cannot run through an infinite series of Effects, yet our reason is assured there is no Effect without a Cause, and be the Progress of Causes and Effects as infinite as it will, at last we resolve it naturally into some First: and he that denies this, seems to me wilfully to wink against the light of Nature, and doe violence to the Faculties of his Mind. And therefore of necessity there must be at least one first Man and Woman which are first ordine Naturæ, though infinity of time, reckoning from the present, causeth a confusion and obscurity in our apprehensions. And these which are thus first in order of Nature or Causality, must also exist first before there can be any other Men or Women in the World. And therefore concerning these first, it being manifest that they were born of no Parents, it follows they were Created or rose out of the Earth, and so the Evasion will be frustrated.
5. Besides, if you affirm that there was never any Man in the world but who was born of a Woman, and so grew to Mans estate by degrees, it will fall to some mans share to be a Babe and a Man at once, or to be both Father and Child. For so soon as Mankind was, (let it be from Eternity, and beyond Eternity is nothing) those that then existed were begot of some body, and there was nothing before them to beget them, therefore they begot themselves.
6. But that they should at once then have been perfect men, their substances being of alterable and passive matter, that is wrought diversly and by degrees into the frame it hath, according to the perpetual testimony of Nature, is as rash as if they should say that Boots and Shoes ​and Stockins, and Pyes and Peels and Ovens, have been together with all Eternity: whenas it is manifest there ought to be an orderly intervall of time before these things can be, wherein must precede the killing of Oxen and flaying of them, as also of Sheep, tanning, spinning, cutting, and many more such like circumstances. So that it is enormously ridiculous to say that Mankind might have been at once from all Eternity, unless the Omnipotency of a God, who can doe whatever we can imagine and more, should by his unresistible Fiat cause such a thing in a moment so soon as himself was, which was ever, and he was never to seek for either power or skill.
But that the fluid and blind matter of it self should have been thus raised up from all Eternity into such compleat Species of things, is very groundless and irrational. I say, that there ever should be such a thing as this in the world, a man at once existing of himself in this corporeal frame that we see, who notwithstanding did afterwards dye like other mortals, is a Fable above all Poetical Figments whatsoever, and more incredible then the fondest Legend that any Religion ever offered to the Atheists belief.
7. Others therefore deserting this way of Evasion betake themselves to another, which, though it seem more plausible at first view, is fully as frivolous. They say, "That all the Species of things, Man himself not excepted, came first out of the Earth by the omnifarious attempt of the particles of the Matter upon one another, which at last light on so lucky a construction and fabrick of the Bodies of Creatures as we see; and that having an infinite series of time to try all tricks in, they would of necessity at last come to this they are.
But I answer, that these particles might commit infinite Tautologies in their strokes and motions, and that therefore there was no such necessity at all of falling into those forms and shapes that appear in the world.
Again, there is that excellent contrivance in the Body, suppose, of a Man, as I have heretofore instanced, that it cannot but be the effect of very accurate Knowledge and Counsel.
And lastly, this concourse of Atoms, they being left without a guide, it is a miracle above all apprehension, that they should produce no inept Species of things, such as should of their own nature have but three Legs, and one Eye, or but one Eare, rows of Teeth along the Vertebræ of their Backs, and the like, as I have above intimated; these Ineptitudes being more easie to hit upon then such accurate and irreprehensible frames of Creatures.
8. But to elude the force of this Argument against the fortuitous concourse of Atoms, they'l excogitate this mad evasion; "That Nature did indeed at first bring forth such ill-favoured and ill-appointed Monsters, as well as those that are of a more exquisite frame; but those that were more perfect fell upon those other and kill'd them and devoured them, they being not so well provided of either limbs or senses as the other, and so were never able to hop fast enough from them, or maturely to discover the approaching dangers that ever & anon were coming upon them. But this unjust and audacious calumny ​cast upon God and Nature will be easily discover'd and convicted of falshood, is we do but consider,
First, that Trees, Herbs and Flowers, that do not stir from their places, or exercise such fierce cruelty one upon another, are all in their several kinds handsome and elegant, and have no ineptitude or defect in them.
Secondly, that all Creatures born of putrefaction, as Mice and Frogs and the like, as those many hundreds of Insects, as Grashoppers, Flies, Spiders and such other, that these also have a most accurate contrivance of parts, and that there is nothing fram'd rashly or ineptly in any of them.
Lastly, in more perfect Creatures, as in the Scotch Barnacles, which Historians write of; of which if there be any doubt, yet Gerard relates that of his own knowledge, (which is as admirable, and as much to our purpose) there is a kinde of Fowl which in Lancashire are called Tree-Geese; they are bred out of rotten pieces of broken Ships and trunks of Trees cast upon a little Island in Lancashire they call the Pile of Foulders: the same Authour saith he hath found the like also in other parts of this Kingdom. Those Fowls in all respects, though bred thus of putrifaction (and that they are thus bred is undeniably true, as any man, if he please, may satisfie himself by consulting Gerard, the very last page of his History of Plants) are of as an exact Fabrick of Body, and as fitly contriv'd for the functions of such a kind of living Creature, as any of those that are produced by propagation. Nay, these kind of Fowls themselves do also propagate, which has imposed so upon the foolishness of some, that they have denied that other way of their generation; whenas the being generated one way does not exclude the other, as is seen in Frogs and Mice.
Wherefore those productions out of the Earth and of Putrefaction being thus perfect and accurate in all points as well as others, it is a manifest discovery that Nature did never frame any Species of things ineptly and foolishly, and that therefore she was ever guided by Counsel and Providence, that is, That Nature her self is the effect of an all-knowing God.
9. Nor doth this consideration only take away this present Evasion, but doth more palpably and intelligibly enervate the former. For what boots it them to flie unto an infinite propagation of Individualls in the same eternal Species, as they imagine, that they might be able alwayes to assign a Cause answerable to the Effect; whenas there are such Effects as these, and Products of Putrefaction, where Wisdom and Counsel are as truly conspicuous as in others? For thus are they nevertheless necessarily illaqueated in that inconvenience which they thought to have escaped by so quaint a subtilty.