which cannot fully comprehend the nature of everything whereof they can entertain ideas: nor do those who employ them pretend to draw any certain conclusions from them, but only throw them out as a rub in the way of their adversaries. I never heard of any who were converted to atheism, by contemplating the necessary existence of space, but being first prepossessed against the admission of one active, intelligent, and self-existent cause, they endeavor to perplex the question by suggesting another Being alike self-existent and necessary: so that this is an after-thought, not weighing with them in their determination, but used only, in the schoolmen's phrase, as an argument to the man. We discern neither time nor space by our senses, they being ideas of reflection gathered from the situation of objects and the successive changes observable in them. We find the idea of both necessary to the existence of substances, and if we suppose those substances annihilated, still the idea of that space and time wherein they might have existed remains: if we go to imagine those again annihilated, it will amount to the supposition of a place wherein there is no place, and a time wherein there is no time, which is contradictory: but this depends upon our conception which cannot penetrate so thoroughly into substances but that they may exist in a manner we cannot conceive. We have seen that time requires a cause to determine what particular point of it shall be the present: and if space be anything real or more than a mode of existence in other things, it likewise requires a cause to assign it properties distinct from those of body and spirit. Nor should I be singular if I were to suppose both time and space receiving their reality from the First Cause, but having so firm an establishment given them that we can neither by experience discern, nor in imagination conceive, their non-existence.

CHAP. X.

INCOMPREHENSIBILITY.

PERHAPS there has been no transaction throughout all history more frequently quoted in theological treatises than the conversation of Simonides with king Hiero, who desiring him to explain what God was, Simonides asked a day to consider of it; at the end of this day, instead of giving his answer, he asked for two more, and when these were expired he requested four: for, says he, the more I consider the subject I find the difficulties double upon

me. This answer of his being so frequently taken notice of shows how well it tallies with the sentiments of all who have turned their thoughts upon the like contemplation. Nor is there any wonder that it should, for we knowing nothing of causes unless by their effects, seeing none of the immediate operations of the First Cause, and being confined to a narrow corner of nature, cannot expect to have a full comprehension of the Author of Nature, from whom flow many other effects besides those falling within the reach of our observation. We have just now seen insuperable difficulties in the contemplation of time and space, we have before met with the like in the divisibility of matter, the propagation of force from body to body, and have found mysteries in the action of our own minds, which must proceed always upon motives and ideas, and yet we have no idea of those fibres or other parts of our organization which are the immediate subject of our action. Since then we lie involved in obscurity with respect to our very selves and the objects most nearly surrounding us, how can we attain a perfect knowledge of that cause concerning which we know nothing more than can be gathered from those materials? The very idea of a First Cause is unsuitable to our imagination, for we see all things proceed in a chain wherein there is nothing first, each cause being likewise an effect of others preceding. Nor can we, who are confined to certain measures in our conceptions, comprehend that wherein everything is infinite as having nothing external to limit it. But since our ideas and our language are taken from objects familiar to our experience, it is unavoidable that we must think and speak very imperfectly of God: the terms we employ are for the most part figurative, containing some remote similitude, but not fully expressive of the thing we would signify.

2. We hear it currently asserted that God is a spirit, nor do I find fault with the appellation, as having no properer to substitute in its room for we know of no more than two substances, Matter and Spirit, therefore since we are sure he is not matter nor contains any material mixture, we can call him no otherwise than spirit. But we cannot suppose this an adequate term, for we may discover so much of him as to show that he is as different from the spirits of men as they are from matter. We know that our own spirits are moveable and passive, residing in some particular station and confined to objects touching the sphere of our presence, receiving an impulse from that matter whereto we are vitally united, transferring us from place to place, necessarily affected with pleasure, pain, and other perceptions, by the various play of our organs, extremely scanty in our knowledge, liable to error and delusion, and never exerting our activity without ideas

to instigate and direct us: none of which particulars can be ascribed to God, whom we must therefore acknowledge a being of his own kind not to be ranked in the same class with any others.

3. So likewise when we declared God intelligent, it was because we had no other word to express our meaning by, for if we had declared him non-intelligent, it would have conveyed the same idea we have of senseless matter, acting necessarily by transmission of impulse, and therefore by no means capable of being a first cause. He that made the eye, shall not he see? and he that formed the ear, shall not he hear? but those who propounded these questions never intended to represent God as provided with optic and auditory nerves, or receiving sound and vision in the manner we do. So likewise if we go on to ask, he that gave man knowledge, shall not he understand? neither does it follow that understanding is the same in him as it is in us: for the thoughts of God are not as our thoughts, nor his ways like our ways. We understand by organs of sensation and reflection, by traces lying in our memory, and slow deductions of reason: nor could we understand anything unless there were something exterior to be understood; or how much soever we may fancy ourselves containing our stores of knowledge within ourselves, they were first deposited there by objects striking upon us from without. Divines tell us that God is a pure act, by which I suppose they mean that his acts contain no mixture of passion, nor require materials or instruments to make them take effect as ours do; for we cannot act without organs of motion, nor subjects to receive our action, nor ideas to determine our volition: but in creation God acted upon Nothing, without instruments to assist, or objects to direct him in the execution. I must own this pure agency is to me an inexplicable idea, yet is this no reason for rejecting it: for we have found upon a careful survey of nature, that all substances and operations conceivable require a cause to assign their several stations, properties, and directions; but this cause must necessarily be inconceivable, for else there would be something conceivable that did not require a cause, which is contrary to the result of our survey taken from experience and reason, the only two sources from whence we can derive any knowledge.

4. Nor was it ever controverted among theists that God is incomprehensible, being of a nature peculiar to himself, and different in species from all other substances. It has been said that man was made after the likeness of God, but this likeness prevails no otherwise than our being less dissimilar than the stocks and stones we toss about; just as the top of a mole-hill is nearer the sun than the bottom, and therefore resembles that glorious luminary in be

ing raised above the surface of the earth: for we cannot imagine but that the faculties and operations of man differ in kind as well as degree from those of his Maker. Perhaps it might be said with more strictness of truth, that the idea of God is taken from the likeness of man, for our conceptions being all derived from ourselves and the objects affecting us, we can form none other than what is made up of materials furnished us by our experience and our reflection. Therefore we select whatever powers and endowments we can find among ourselves, separating from them all we deem a weakness and imperfection, and heightening them to the utmost pitch imagination can reach; the aggregate of all these makes our idea of God: whose image it is no wonder we resemble, the features of it being formed from archetypes in our own mind: nor are we without excuse in taking this method, as being the only one in our power to take. But a similitude employed from mere necessity will not justify us in pursuing it too far, nor drawing the conclusions we might do if we had a clear and perfect knowledge of the subject. Wherefore I can see nothing in the doctrine of likeness warranting those high-flown expressions used by some, that the soul of man is a ray and emanation of the divinity, and that God has communicated some sparks of his own perfections to us, or that the divine intelligence is no more than perfect reason, proceeding in the same manner with ours, but having a larger field of premises to work upon.

5. From this inability to apprehend the divine Being, any otherwise than by ideas taken from ourselves, it follows that our conception of him must be very imperfect, and what is worse, frequently erroneous: for we are not always competent judges of what is power or weakness, but often mistake the latter for the former, which induces us to ascribe our own passions, frailties, and imperfections to God, under the notion of excellencies. And this may plead some excuse in extenuation for the atheists; for perhaps the description which any man would give of the Supreme Being, might be demonstrated in some parts of it impossible and inconsistent: besides that the ideas sometimes inculcated by designing persons for their private ends and those entertained by the vulgar are manifestly absurd. But it is no rule that a thing may not be true, because some on purpose, and others by mistake, have blended it with a mixture of falsehood: wherefore it would become such as profess a freedom of thought and due exercise of their reason, to examine whether everything suggested concerning a Deity be without foundation; for there is no reason to reject the whole of an opinion, because the frailty of man has grafted some inconsistencies upon it.

6. For how incomprehensible soever the divine nature may be, there are some propositions we may affirm with certainty concerning it: nobody can doubt that the power of God is the same in America as in Europe, the same yesterday and to-morrow as today, that he was not born of parents, is not nourished by food, nor shall grow old and decay like ourselves; that all created substances take their stations, from whence fortune arises, by his appointment; that the order of succession, which is the course of nature, proceeds according to his direction; with many other the like assertions which need only the proposing to be assented to. Let us then endeavor to collect what we can discover clearly concerning the divine nature from such observations as we are able to make upon the things about us upon the best exercise of our reason, which though small in quantity may prove sufficient for us to draw any inferences therefrom that we may want to regulate our present conduct, or ascertain our future expectations; leaving all unavailing speculations for the amusement of those who may want something better to employ their leisure.

CHAP. XI.

UNITY.

THERE will be little room to expatiate upon this article, it being too clear to admit of a proof: for it seems a self-evident proposition that the First cause must be One, because if there were more they would want some prior cause to assign them their several stations and properties. And indeed this point with respect to the active cause has never been doubted of, unless by Zoroaster and the Magi, together with their followers the Manicheans: for the heathen polytheisin was no exception, their gods being no more than celestial men with a little larger powers than those upon earth, but limited in their provinces, confined in their operations, and subject to the infirmities and disappointments of men. Besides, this was only a popular persuasion, never gaining credit among the studious.

2. We hear the Stoics speaking of the sun, the moon, and the stars, as so many gods, but then they did not understand the term in the same sense as we do now; for they held them to be animals having a superior intelligence to man, and moving in their courses by their own energy, but created Beings subordinate to the supreme God, the governor of all things, whom they supposed