12 - Natural motions

Summary

Hale thought that God created man with natural philosophy in mind: ‘he was made to be the Spectator of the great work[s] of God, to consider and observe them, to glorify and serve the God that made them; and he is accordingly furnished with an intellective faculty answerable to his condition.’ As an intellectual being, ‘the common high priest of the inanimate and irrational world’, he was placed on earth to ‘gather up as it were the admirable works of the glorious God, and in their behalf to present the praises, suffrages, and acclamations of the whole creation’. A contemplation of the universe, in a spirit combining gratitude and awe, was the original natural religion.

The purpose of Hale's ‘scientific’ writings was always, in a characteristic phrase, to ‘carry up’ the human mind to God; they both proved the Creator's existence and constituted, in themselves, a pious exercise. The philosopher had the privilege and duty of experiencing the order of things as the product of God's will. The physical laws of nature were really divine commands, upheld by the Almighty like ‘a law of Justinian and Trajan.’ A mark of his omnipotence and wisdom, as Hale's earliest work, the Discourse had explained, was his action in accordance with a number of self-imposed rules.