_I wonder how_ Aristotle _could conceive the World Eternal, or how he could make two Eternities_:] (that is, that God, and the World both were eternal.) I wonder more at either the ignorance or incogitancy of the _Conimbricenses_, who in their Comment upon the eighth book of _Aristotle's Physicks_, treating of the matter of Creation, when they had first said that it was possible to know it, and that actually it was known (for _Aristotle_ knew it) yet for all this they afterwards affirm, That considering onely the light of Nature, there is nothing can be brought to demonstrate Creation: and yet farther, when they had defined Creation to be the production of a thing _ex nihilo_, and had proved that the World was so created in time, and refused the arguments of the Philosophers to the contrary, they added this, That the World might be created _ab æterno_: for having propos'd this question [_Num aliquid à Deo ex Æternitate procreari potuit?_] they defend the affirmative, and assert that not onely incorporeal substances, as Angels; or permanent, as the celestial Bodies; or corruptible as Men, etc. might be produced and made _ab æterno_, and be conserved by an infinite time, _ex utraq_; _parte_; and that this is neither repugnant to God the Creator, the things created, nor to the nature of Creation: for proof whereof, they bring instances of the _Sun_ which if it had been eternal, had illuminated eternally, (and the virtue of God is not less than the virtue of the Sun.) Another instance they bring of the _divine Word_, which was produced _ab æterno_: in which discourse, and in the instances brought to maintain it, it is hard to say whether the madness or impiety be greater; and certainly if Christians thus argue, we have the more reason to pardon the poor heathen _Aristotle_. _There is in us not three, but a Trinity of Souls._] The _Peripatetiques_ held that men had three distinct Souls; whom the Heretiques, the _Anomæi_, and the _Jacobites_, followed. There arose a great dispute about this matter in _Oxford_, in the year 1276, and it was then determined against _Aristotle_, _Daneus Christ. Eth._ l. 1. c. 4. and _Suarez_ in his Treatise _de causa formali, Quest. An dentur plures formæ in uno composito_, affirmeth there was a Synod that did _anathematize_ all that held with _Aristotle_ in this point. _Sect. 14. Pag. 23._