Divine Dialogues

...mechanical The text continues the word "mechanical" from the previous page. motion; and that matter excludes motion in its own concept original: "Idea" no more than it includes rest. According to the previous implication, this would mean that matter might possess motion on its own just as it possesses its own existence. See also what an appropriate interpretation original: "Gloss" this principle provides for Acts 14:17 "Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons...", and how well that text agrees with the first section of the first chapter of Descartes's Meteors.

Principles, Part 1, Article [28]

A third peculiar property of his philosophy is a seeming modesty in declining all search into the final causes The "final cause" is a philosophical term for the ultimate purpose or goal for which something is created; for example, the "final cause" of an eye is to see. of the phenomena of the world. He acts as if, forsooth, it were too great a presumption for human wit to pry into the ends of God's creation. Yet, in truth, his philosophy is of such a nature that it prevents all such research. According to his system, things come to pass as if God were not the creator and designer of the world at all. Instead, it suggests that mere matter, mechanically swung about by a certain measure of motion, fell necessarily—without any further divine intervention—into this frame of things we see. It implies that things could not have been otherwise than they are, and that therefore all the specific uses found in creation are not the results of wisdom or planning, but the blind outcomes of mere material and mechanical necessity. Since things are framed this way, it is indeed very consistent for him to throw the consideration of the "final cause" out of his mechanical philosophy. But in the meantime, I do not understand how appropriate an interpreter of Scripture this philosophy will be in places such as the Psalms, which say: O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all. Though the author cites Psalm 144 below, this specific quote is from Psalm 104:24. For according to this philosophy, God has made none of them in that way. Let the zealous Cartesian A follower of the philosophy of René Descartes. read the whole 144th Psalm and try to harmonize it on this point, if he can, with his master's philosophy. Let him see also what sense he can make of the first book of Corinthians, Chapter 1, verse 21.

2 Maccabees

Fourthly, the apparitions of horsemen and armies encountering one another in the air, 2