After telling us that there are two orders of these _immutable_ INTELLIGIBLE FORMS; _one_ belonging to the Contemplator of objects, and subsequent to their existence; _another_ belonging to the Maker of them, being the archetype, according to which they were formed; he thus proceeds: "The WHOLE VISIBLE { 254} WORLD, exhibits nothing more than so many passing pictures of these IMMUTABLE ARCHETYPES. Nay, through these it attains even a Semblance of Immortality, and continues throughout ages to be SPECIFICALLY ONE, amid those infinite particular changes, that befall it every moment. May we be allowed then to credit those speculative men, who tell us, _it is in these permanent and comprehensive_ FORMS _that the_ DEITY _views at once, without looking abroad, all possible productions both present, past, and future; that this great and stupendous view is but a view of himself, where all things lie enveloped in their Principles and Exemplars, as being essential to the fulness of this universal Intellection_?"
I shall exhibit but one other specimen of the mode of speculating about these imaginary Beings, from another great master of the ancient philosophy, Cudworth. Both Aristotle and Plato, he says, "acknowledged two sorts of Entities, the one mutable, or subject to flux and motion, such as are especially individual corporeal things; the other immutable, that always rest or stand still, which are the proper objects of certain, constant, and immutable knowledge, that therefore cannot be mere nothings, non-entities.
"Which latter kind of being, that is, the immutable essence, as a distinct thing from individual sensibles, Aristotle plainly asserts against Heraclitus, and those other flowing philosophers in these words: 'We would have these philosophers to know, that besides sensible things that are always mutable, there is another kind of being or entity of such things as are neither subject to motion, corruption, nor generation.' And elsewhere he tells us, that this immovable essence { 255} is the object of theoretical knowledge, of the first philosophy, and of the pure mathematics.
"Now these immutable entities are the universal _rationes_, or intelligible natures and essences of all things, which some compare to unities, but Aristotle to numbers; which formally considered, are indivisible: saith he, 'The essences of things are like to numbers;' because if but the least thing be added to any number, or subtracted from it, the number is destroyed.