I have now being new ones, such as I had not then, but are brought me by lapse of time; yet my yesterday's existence was the cause of my present, for if I had not been then I should not have been now which manner of existing they think unworthy to be ascribed to God, as wanting that stability and independency on prior time suitable to our idea of a necessary Being. Wherefore they supposed eternity a standing point with God, or a perpetual Now, so that all past and future ages are as actually present before him as this instant moment is with us. And we hear divines still talking in the same strain of an' eternity before all time, or when time was not, or when time shall be no more, and asserting positively that the past is not gone, nor the future yet to come with respect to God. Perhaps they pronounce too confidently upon a matter whereto the human faculties cannot reach, for if we pursue our abstractions to the utmost, either upon time or space, I fear we shall find them both unmanageable subjects, concerning which we can determine nothing with certainty. Nevertheless, they would not want foundation for what they say, if they would deliver themselves a little more reservedly, and give it only as the more probable opinion, that the efflux and succession of time is owing to the power and Will of God, and therefore may take place only among his creatures.

3. We have already remarked there is no visible repugnancy against supposing the course of time might have been accelerated or retarded I do not mean that twenty years might have passed in ten or taken up forty to run them out, for this were a contradiction, but that the whole order of them might have been removed higher or lower, so that the Augustan age, or that of our remote descendants, might have been the present. In which case the efflux of time would require some cause to fix it where it is: and therefore must depend upon the Will of God to determine that no more or no less of it should be expired. Nor are there no grounds to suspect that even with ourselves the present moment may contain an interval of time though extremely short, for else how should we get the idea of time at all? Mr. Locke says we get it by observing a succession of ideas, and this way I can readily allow that we come by the measures of minutes, hours, days, and years, which we use in computation: but succession implies a previous idea of first and last before it can be attained, for a variety of ideas affords us no notion of succession unless we perceive one come before the other; nor can it be imagined that their degrees of vividness or faintness will do the business, for let a man stand with a candle in his hand between two looking-glasses, he will see a number of flames in the glass before him, each fainter than the

others, yet the whole scene will appear quiescent, nor exhibit any idea of succession. And the ideas of things in our remembrance, though fainter as more remote, would do the like unless we had another idea of precedence annexed to them. So then our idea of precedence seems to be an original, not derived from any other, but gotten by our manner of existence extending to a length of time wherein there is a first and a last.

4. And I may offer to the consideration of the curious whether this does not stand confirmed by the evidence of our senses in their discernment of motion, of which they have an immediate sensation in some velocities but not in others. For you may see the motion of a stone thrown across you very plainly, but you cannot see that in the short hand of your watch. If indeed you look at it again an hour after, you will see that it has moved, because finding it in a different place from where it was before but this is a logical inference gathered from the joint testimony of your present sense and your memory of the figure to which it pointed the first time whereas your knowledge of the stone moving came by direct sensation without aid of the memory or reflexive faculty. Now to see a body move I apprehend we must have an actual perception of it at once in two distinguishable places though it cannot actually be in those two places at once, from whence it seems to follow that our acts of immediate perception have a certain duration containing a beginning and end both present to us together, and whatever moves so slow as that the spaces it passes over within that duration are not distinguishable by our senses appears to us quiescent. If any one shall think the discernment of motion effected by that continuance of play in our sensitive organs after the impulse of objects ceasing, mentioned in the chapter on reflection, he will not find it warranted by experience: for a stone may be thrown very swiftly yet without drawing any trail behind, though you observe it ever so carefully, and a live coal whirled very smoothly round upon a wheel will present no idea of movement at all, but appear a quiescent fiery ring. The distinction of places to our sense depends, not upon the real distance between them, but upon their apparently subtending an angle at our eye, which the same extent of latitude may do when near us that cannot do it when removed farther off. Therefore the moon seems to stand still when we look upon her, because the change of place she makes during a single perception does not suffer to subtend an angle: whereas did she hang so low as almost to touch our atmosphere we should see her whisk over us with an amazing rapidity. Hence if any curious person can ascertain precisely what is the least discernible angle and slowest visible motion, he may com

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pute how many of our moments or present times there are in a minute for by contriving to make a body move equably with that slow pace in a circle whose centre lies at the eye, and casting up how many of those least discernible angles compose an entire circle, he may reckon just so many moments in the time of one circumvolution made by the body. But if we have a measurable Now of our own, the whole of which is present to us together, we may augment it in the same manner we did the sphere of our presence, until it stretch to the utmost length we can contain in our imagination, and that will make the fullest idea we can form of eternity.

5. Many persons perhaps will not readily enter into what has been here said concerning the standing point or perpetual Now, and truly if they do not find it occur easily to their comprehension they may even pass it over, as being scarce worth the while to take much trouble in studying it. For we do not find the conception of a continual perishing and renewal of time by an uninterrupted succession of moments debases our idea of God; and it would be difficult to make a common man feel the force of the schoolmen's objection or see any hurt in supposing him to exist in that manner, so long as we apprehend the succession to have had no beginning and to meet with no stop. We have indeed a certain period set to our lives, and therefore the lapse of every moment takes away something from the stock of futurity we had in store but eternity is an inexhaustible fund, therefore time may go on continually perishing without being ever totally destroyed, so that though we should imagine God existing by moments, he will never want moments to exist in. And as he has been pleased to give our spirits an individuality which all the powers of nature cannot dissolve, the efflux of time is no loss to them, who have the same inexhaustible fund for a perpetual supply. Wherefore there is no occasion to alter the common conceptions of mankind upon this matter, or perplex them with objections requiring an answer that few can understand.

CHAP. XIV.

OMNIPOTENCE.

THE very train of reasoning, leading us to acknowledge a God, evinces his omnipotence, or rather, if I may so speak, finds omnipotence in the way towards his existence: for we infer a God because we want a cause from whence all the effects and powers we have any knowledge of must originally proceed. Whatever is done or possible to be done must be done by some agent, and the aggregate of all powers and possibilities make up omnipotence, which we can place in no other subject than God, whom therefore we justly style Almighty. It is true we find power divided among the substances falling under our notice, one wanting what another has: but then the powers of all must derive from some one cause, whom we cannot suppose to want the powers he has given to other things, besides another power not found in any of them, that of creating and allotting primary properties and original stations. Mr. Locke tells us, that active powers alone properly deserve the name, and I think we need make no difficulty of ascribing all those we find in substances to God: for we cannot well doubt that he might if he pleased resist and impel, that is, stop or confer motion like body, or excite perceptions and judgments like our organs; and that he does admit like space appears manifest from the substances we see, each whereof must co-exist in the same place with that which is omnipresent throughout all immensity: nor can we any more doubt of his possessing in an eminent degree all the active powers discoverable in spirits. And for passive powers, such as mobility, inertness, and perceptivity, particularly that of pain, or uneasiness, though we must not attribute them to him, yet are they all effects of an active power exerted at their creation. We see the course of nature proceed by second causes having their several portions of power allotted in small parcels among them, and these allotments requiring so many operations of active power in conferring them, bespeak an omnipotence in the First Cause.

2. Thus the contemplation of the works of nature and all the powers we can discover operating therein, gives us our first notion of omnipotence: but the mind of man does not rest here, for there requires something further than actual operation to complete the idea of power. We find many instances in ourselves wherein we might have acted otherwise than we have done, and conceive ourselves able to take another course in our future 61

VOL. I.

measures than that we shall pursue : nor can we avoid thinking the same of God, for if we were to confme his power to the works he has actually performed, we should destroy that choice which distinguishes him from blind necessity, unthinking chance, or whatever else has been assigned for a first cause: neither can a power pinned down to one particular way of acting, be properly called a power. This extends our idea of power to possibilities as well as real events, and what has never happened nor will ever happen, is esteemed its object equally with what has already or will hereafter come to pass. And now we conceive omnipotence a power to do anything without those impediments and restrictions which obstruct us and all created substances in our operations.

3. Yet still there arises another idea perplexing our imagination with the suggestion of absolute impossibilities, which appear such even to omnipotenee itself, and therefore seem to restrain and limit it within a certain compass: such as making a body exist in several places, causing two and two to make five, annihilating time and space, undoing past events or producing contrary ones. But all these things imply contradictions, and contradictions are generally held to be no objects of power, as their possibility would infer a defect rather than enlargement of power: for if upon a power being exerted to produce a particular event, another might likewise ensue, it would show a deficiency in the agent as being unable to prevent another issue from taking effect besides that he intended. But after all I do not know why we should pronounce anything absolutely impossible, but rather conclude that what appears so has been rendered impossible by those laws which God has established immutably and to suppose him acting contrary to them is supposing him to do otherwise than he has determined to do, which I am sure is no instance of power. He has made body local, and to exist in several places it must be a different thing from what he intended it: he has fixed certain relations between numbers, and to alter those relations would be introducing a confusion he has not thought proper to throw upon us: he has annexed the ideas of time and place to all our ideas of substances, and to separate them would be giving rise to other conceptions than he has thought fitting for us: he has made the past unalterable, and determined that no operation shall have any more than one issue, and to suppose otherwise would be supposing him to have done what he has not done. Therefore, wherever there appears a palpable impossibility we may depend upon the thing never happening, without ascribing the impossibility to any other than the appointment of God, who has established the