228 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IV. 



maintain againft Dr Baxter, that God moves unorganized Bodies, not 

 immediately, but by the intervention of that Mind which I call the 

 Elemental Mind. With refpedt to things in Generation and Cor- 

 ruption, which are the Caufes of other things of like nature, the 

 remoter Caufe may no longer have an exiftence, and yet the thing 

 produced continue to exift by virtue of fome immediate Caufe con- 

 tinually operating. Thus, an Animal or Plant, produced in the or- 

 dinary way of generation, receives its exiftence and firft movements 

 from the parent Animal or Plant ; but it continues to exift and to 

 be moved by virtue of the Animal or Vegetable Life, that is in it, 

 after the parent, which firft began its motion, has ceafed to exift. 



If the Newtonians had attended to this diftindion, they would 

 not have maintained, that a Body, put in motion by impulfe of an- 

 other Body, continues in motion by virtue of that impulfe, after it 

 has ceafed, but would have feen clearly that the impulfe was only 

 the remoter caufe of the Motion, and that the Motion muft be con- 

 tinued by an immediate Caufe, which can be no other than Mind. 

 And I think they were the more inexcufeable, for giving fo great a 

 handle to the Atheift, by the "uis in/tla, which they devifed for car- 

 rying on the Motion, when they knew that there were other Mo- 

 tions, which were carried on in the fame direction, which could not 

 be accounted for from any impulfe, fuch as the Motions of magne- 

 tifm, which, if we fuppofe to be produced by a "uis injitay there 

 is an end of Theifm, — But of this more hereafter. 



CHAP. 



not followed the vulgar idiom in rendering this palTage, but had tranflated siF*v^il<e> 



■we are moved, inftead of we move- JHs of the /^poflUs, chap. 17. v. a8. 



