i86 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IIL 



verfe feems to require. We muft, therefore, fuppofe, according to 

 AriRotle, that from the firft caufe have proceeded iai mediately 

 every animal and every vegetable, and, in fhort, every individual 

 thing in the three kingdoms, the animal, vegetable, and mineral. 



According to this philofophy of Ariftotle, we muil fuppofe that 

 the ideas of all particular things are in the divine mind; for other- 

 wife thefe particular things could not be underftood to proceed from, 

 him. But, I afk, Whether he has not general ideas, fuch as we 

 have ? And, I think, it would be impious to maintain, that he has 

 not all the ideas which a creature has, of fo imperfect intelligence as 

 man: And, if he have fuch ideas, it certainly will not be maintain- 

 ed, that he collects them as we do, from particular fenfible objeds» 

 Suppofmg them, therefore, to be originally in the divine mind. Can 

 w^e believe that they have no exiftence in nature, entire and undi- 

 vided, but that only parts of them exift incorporated with matter ; 

 and that they proceed in that way from the divine mind, vrithout 

 any order or fubordination ? So that, in the works of creation, there 

 is neither firft nor laft, higheft nor lowefl: ; I mean in the order of 

 produdion ; for, in that order, what produces is higher than what 

 is produced. Now, I hold, with Gregory Nazianzen *, whom I have 

 mentioned in fundry paflages of this work upon metaphyfics, that 

 all the ideas of the divine mind are realized ; and that they are not,^ 

 like the ideas of our mind, mere ideas, which we have not power 

 to realize. This dodrine of Gregory Nazianzen, 1 think, is very 

 fublime theology, giving us, if it be poffible to give us, the idea of the 

 eiog ^v^i^o'jtriog of Plato, and making us conceive how all things are 

 in God, not as they are in the mind of man, that is, in idea only, (if 

 wt could conceive the mind of any man capable of comprehending 

 the whole univerfity of things), but in reality and adual exiftence;, 

 ' " , fo 



* He was B'.fhop of Conftantinople, and the mofr learned Greek of the /\i\\ Century: 

 He lia^ written a great deal both in verfe and profe, and in a ftile very elegant.. 



