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Credit: The works. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![those that are learned in the Hebrew, do affirm that the words PART I. in that place (Ea;od. 3) do not signifie, Eyo sum qui sum, et qui est, etc. but Ero qui ero, et qui erit, etc. vid Gassend. in aniviad. Epicur. Physiolog. I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the World Eternal, or how Sect. 12. he could make two Eternities:] (that is, that God, and the World ^S- o- both were eternal.) I wonder more at either the ignorance or incogitancy of the Conimhricenses, who in their Comment upon the eighth book of Aristotle's Physicks, treating of the matter of Creation, when they had first said that it was possible to know it, and that actually it was known (for Aristotle knew it) yet for all this they afterwards affirm, That considering onely the light of Nature, there is nothing can be brought to demonstrate Creation: and yet farther, when they had defined Creation to be the production of a thing ex nihilo, and had proved that the World was so created in time, and refused the arguments of the Philosophers to the contrary, they added this. That the World might be created ab ceterno: for having propos'd this question [Num aliquid a Deo ex JEtemitate procreari potuitf] they defend the affirmative, and assert that not onely incorporeal substances, as Angels; or permanent, as the celestial Bodies ; or corruptible as Men, etc. might be produced and made ab ceterno, and be conserved by an infinite time, ex utraq; parte ; and that this is neither repugnant to God the Creator, the things created, nor to the nature of Creation : for proof whereof, they bring instances of the Sun which if it had been eternal, had illumin- ated eternally, (and the virtue of God is not less than the virtue of the Sun.) Another instance they bring of the divine Word, which was produced ab aterno : in which discourse, and in the instances brought to maintain it, it is hard to say whether the madness or impiety be greater; and certainly if Christians thus argue, we have the more reason to pardon the poor heathen Aristotle. There is in us not three, but a Trinity 0/Souls. ] The Peripatetiques held that men had three distinct Souls; whom the Heretiques, the Anomcei, and the Jacobites, followed. There arose a great dispute about this matter in Oxford, in the year 1276, and it was then determined against Aristotle. Daneus Christ. Eth. 1. 1. c. 4. and Suai-ez in his Treatise de causa formali, Que.^t. An dentur plures formcB in uno composito, affirmeth there was a Synod that did anathematize all that held with Aristotle in this point. There is but one first, and four second causes in all things.'] In Sect 14. that he saith there is but one first cause, he speaketh in opposi- tion to the Manichees, who held there were Duo principia ; one from whom came all good, and the other from whom came all evil: the reason of Protagoras did it seems impose upon their understandings; he was wont to say, <S^ Deus non est, unde igiturbonaf Si autem est, unde mala? In that he saith there](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22650349_0001_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
