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Defense of an Essay &e
things, to be truly and properly God, are such that few, we believe, will be found to contend for it. Even Cudworth in his great zeal to bring in the heathen philosophers of Greece as good theists, is obliged to rank those among his imperfect theists, who do not hold that God "is the cause of all things," as stated in his definition above given. Of what he calls imperfect theism he thus speaks; “and though in a strict and proper sense, they only be theists who acknowledge one God perfectly omnipotent, the sole original of all things, and as well the cause of matter, as of any thing else, yet it seems reasonable that such consideration should be had of the infirmity of human under- standings, as to extend the word further, that it may comprehend within it those also, who assert one intellectual principle sclf-cristent from eternity, the framer and governor of the whole world, though not the creator of the matter."
The American Missionary" and others also, build much on the traditionary knowledge of God, which the Chinese possessed in high antiquity. Let it be shown then from the Yih King, or the Shú King or the Shí King, that Shúngti is God, according to this defini- tion of even imperfect theism; i. e. that he is asserted in a single passa- ge, to be self-existent from eternity, or that he out of preëxisting matter made the heavens and the earth and all things that exist. That those unacquainted with the Chinese classics may be able to form some judgment on this matter, we shall give the cosmogony of the Yih King from the pen of M. Visdelou.
"This book (i. e. the Yih King) informs us what they consider the first principle to be. Tải Kih, (1) generated the two figures; these two figures generated the four forms, and these four forms generated the eight diagrams. This statement is very enig- matical, and therefore it is necessary to explain it. Tải-kih signifies the great summit (grand comble), a metaphorical expression derived from the roof of a house, of which the transverse part, which is at the top, is called kih, because it is the highest part of the roof. Now, as all the rafters are supported on the top of the roof, so also are all things supported on this first principle. We must here carefully observe that this first principle is said to generate (engendrer), and not to make (faire).”
"The Chinese explain alegorically the two figures yang and yin by the two kinds of matter, or the universal matter divided into two
“(1.) Tải kih is the primary air, which by motion and rest. from which result heat and cold, moisture and drought &c., generated the five elements, vhich compose all things.”