THE WORKS OF RALPH CUDWORTH, D.D. CONTAINING THE TRUE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE, SERMONS, &c. A NEW EDITION, WITH REFERENCES TO THE SEVERAL QUOTATIONS IN THE THE TRUE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE. CHAP. IV. CONTINUED. XXXIV. HITHERTO have we declared the sense of the Pagans in general, those also being included, who supposed God to be a being elevated above the world, that they agreed in these two things: First, the breaking and crumbling, as it were, of the simple Deity, and parcelling out of the same into many particular notions and partial considerations, according to the various manifestations of its power and pro vidence in the world; by the personating and deifying of which severally they made, as it were, so many gods of one. The chief ground whereof was this: because they considered not the Deity according to its simple nature, and abstractly only, but concretely also with the world, as he displayeth himself therein, pervadeth all, and diffuseth his virtues through all. For as the sun, reflected by grosser vapours, is sometimes multiplied, and the same object beheld through a polyedrous glass, by reason of those many super |