A drawing of the clock
in the
Strasbourg
Cathedral
Rel 198ROBERT BOYLE (1627-1691), taken from Vol. 5 of The Works
(i.e., the collected works -- all that he wrote)This brief selection from the late 17th century is typical of what would come to be called "deist" theology. Boyle knows he is going to say something that will disturb traditional religious people. So he begins by putting himself on the side of religion against old Aristotle, who thought that the world did not have to be created, because it was eternal, and therefore did not have a Creator. Note that Boyle's Creator, however, does not intervene in creation. God sustains the world in existence, just as Aquinas claimed; God is the "continual preserver and upholder" of the universe. This is God's " ordinary and general concourse." But note what Boyle says about whether there are divine interpostions [interventions], or whether God plays the puppetmaster.
Near the end of this selection is the reason to choose it for you to read -- the reference to the Strasbourg clock. Constructed in 1574 it was a wondrous contraption of wheels and interconnected machinery to calculate the movements of all the parts of the known universe -- the fixed stars, the planets, the moons, earth, and the sun. If human beings could make such a machine, the argument went, could not God construct a universe of mechanical perfection? Unfortunately the Strasbourg clock is said to have been so complicated that it was extremely difficult to repair, and unlike Boyle's universe it did need repairs now and then.
And let me tell you freely, that though I will not say, that Aristotle meant the mischief his doctrine did, yet I am apt to think, that the grand enemy of God's glory made great use of Aristotle's authority and errors, to detract from it.
For as Aristotle, by introducing the opinion of the eternity of the world, (whereof he owns himself to have been the first broacher) did at least, in almost all men's opinion, openly deny God the production of the world; so, by ascribing the admirable works of God to what he calls nature, he tacitly denies him the government of the world: which suspicion if you judge severe, I shall not, at more leisure, refuse to acquaint you, (in a distinct paper) why I take divers of Aristotle's opinions relating to religion to be more unfriendly, not to say pernicious, to it, than those of several other heathen philosophers.
And here give me leave to prevent an objection, that some may make, as if to deny the received notion of nature, a man must also deny providence, of which nature is the grand instrument. For, in the first place, my opinion hinders me not at all from acknowledging God to be the author of the universe, and the continual preserver and upholder of it; which is much more than the peripatetic hypothesis, which (as we were saying) makes the world eternal, will allow its embracers to admit: and those things, which the school-philosophers ascribe to the agency of nature interposing according to emergencies, I ascribe to the wisdom of God in the first fabric of the universe, which he so admirably contrived, that, if he but continue his ordinary and general concourse, there will be no necessity of extraordinary interpositions, which may reduce him to seem, as it were, to play after-games; all those exigencies, upon whose account philosophers and physicians seem to have devised what they call nature, being foreseen and provided for in the first fabric of the world; so that mere matter, so ordered, shall, in such and such conjunctures of circumstances, do all, that philosophers ascribe on such occasions to their almost omniscient nature, without any knowledge of what it does, or acting otherwise than according to the catholic laws of motion. And methinks the difference betwixt their opinion of God's agency in the world, and that, which I would propose, may be somewhat adumbrated by saying, that they seem to imagine the world to be after the nature of a puppet, whose contrivance indeed may be very artificial, but yet is such, that almost every particular motion the artificer is fain (by drawing sometimes one wire or string, sometimes another) to guide and oftentimes over-rule the actions of the engine; whereas, according to us, it is like a rare clock, such as may be that at Strasburgh [sic], where all things are so skillfully contrived, that the engine being once set a moving, all things proceed, according to the artificer's first design, and the motions of the little statues, that at such hours performs these or those things, do not require, like those of puppets, the peculiar interposing of the artificer, or any intelligent agent employed by him, but perform their functions upon particular occasions, by virtue of the general and primitive contrivance of the whole engine.