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The God of deistic rationalism, in effect, the God of the logical proofs of His existence, the ens realissimum and the immobile prime mover, is nothing more than a Supreme Reason, but in the same sense in which we can call the law of universal gravitation the reason of the falling of bodies, this law being merely the explanation of the phenomenon.
The logical, rational God, the ens summum, the primum movens, the Supreme Being of theological philosophy, the God who is reached by the three famous ways of negation, eminence and causality, viæ negationis, eminentiæ, causalitatis, is nothing but an idea of God, a dead thing.
If the embryon be received into a fluid, whose stimulus is different in some degree from the natural, as in the production of mule-animals, the new irritabilities or sensibilities acquired by the increasing or growing organized parts may differ, and thence produce parts not similar to the father, but of a kind belonging in part to the mother; and thus, though the original stamen or living ens was derived totally from the father, yet new irritabilities or sensibilities being excited, a change of form corresponding with them will be produced.
To come to the particulars, there are three sort of things which the law of nature requireth of man, as both schoolmen and modern doctors have rightly taught. The first, it requireth as he is ens; the second, as he is animal; and the third, as he is homo ratione præditus.
This virtue requires a metallic body in which to inhere. The general concept is not unfamiliar, of a virtue or power or ferment which was attached to a material object, and it is this type of explanation which was so preponderant in, for example, Porta's Natural Magick. Van Helmont speaks of the "first being," which translates the Latin Ens, of Venus or copper.
Now what further concerns the Spirit of Venus or Copper in Physick, you must last of all take notice and observe, that it is throughout in its virtue and power discerned to be very wholsom and beneficial, not only that Spirit which lies in the first Ens, but also that very Spirit which is found in the last Matter, its virtue, power and operation is, that it is preferred before all other Medicines in the Rising of the Matrix: It's like is not yet found particularly against the Falling Sickness.
Is it not more worthy the exalted mind of the GREAT PARENT OF PARENTS, ens entium, more consistent with truth, to suppose that his wisdom in giving these immutable, these eternal laws to the macrocosm, foresaw every thing that could possibly be requisite for the happiness of the beings contained in it; that therefore he left it to the invariable operation of a system, which never can produce any effect that is not the best possible that circumstances however viewed will admit: that consequently the natural activity of the human mind, which is itself the result of this eternal action, was purposely given to man, that he might endeavour to fathom, that he might strive to unravel, that he might seek out the concatenation of these laws, in order to furnish remedies against the evils produced by ignorance.
But although pure speculative reason is far from sufficient to demonstrate the existence of a Supreme Being, it is of the highest utility in correcting our conception of this being on the supposition that we can attain to the cognition of it by some other means in making it consistent with itself and with all other conceptions of intelligible objects, clearing it from all that is incompatible with the conception of an ens summun, and eliminating from it all limitations or admixtures of empirical elements.
Ens realissimum is the only ens reale; all else is mere appearance. Just here, however, lies an indication of another line of thought. For what is an appearance, and what is it that appears? It can only be reality that thus appears; the 'mere' appearance is yet an 'appearance of reality. It might seem that this is to catch, not at a straw, but at the shadow of a straw.
To complete his embarrassment, a dangerous insurrection broke out in the territory of the Ens, where the ill-timed religious zeal of the government had provoked the Protestants to resistance; and thus fanaticism lit its torch within the empire, while a foreign enemy was already on its frontier.
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