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Manner, the Statue which they had erected to him; but they diftinguish'd the Inhabitant from the House, and the Sword from the Scabbard: But you confound both the one and the other. Befides, according to your Opinion, we daily eat and drink the God that we worship, nay, we tread him under our Feet. And whatever Matter fuffers when 'tis violently tofs'd or driven, when 'tis cut, burnt, ground, or tormented any other Way, God fuffers in that: For you fay that Matter is God; and, fince 'tis divine, it cannot be infenfible. Nothing can be more foreign from all Reafon than this: But ftill you are preffed with an Abfurdity of a blacker Dye. You not only make God fuffer, but, what I hardly dare to pronounce, you make him impious, you make him villainous: For if the Univerfe is God, he must be all its Parts, whether they are animated or unanimated, bafe or noble, pure or impure, nay, the most profligate, and most accurs'd either of Men or Devils. But we ought with a religious Care, to abftain from these unutterable Things.

THESE, and other Things of this Nature, unworthy the Majefty of the supreme Deity, are infeparable from your Hypothefis, which depreffes the Nature of God, and confounds it with Matter. Nor, on the other Side, do you lefs contend against Reason, when you are for exalting Matter, in fpite of its Unwillingness and its Reluctancy, into a divine

us,

divine Nature, and cloathing it with Perfections, of which it is moft incapable. Let if you pleafe, recollect what all Men understand by the Word GOD: They certainly all understand a Nature that is infinitely perfect. But is there any Man alive who can perfuade himself and others, that all Perfections are inherent in Matter, that they all fpring from that Root, that they all flow from that Fountain? In the first Place, the Mafs of Matter has in itself neither Force nor Action; nor could it receive either from abroad, if there were nothing more excellent than itself; And then, after it had received it from fomething elfe, it could not poffibly exercise it, unless by the Divifion of itself into various Parts, and the local Motion of thofe Parts. But neither does Divifibility, nor local Motion, agree with infinite Perfection. Secondly, if the Mafs of Matter contains and includes in itself neither Force nor Action, much lefs does it contain and include in itself Cogitation; and least of all, Cogitations infinitely perfect, infinite Wisdom, Power, and Goodness; befides the other Perfections, in which the Sovereign Power incomparably out-fhines all Nature.

BUT you will fay, perhaps, (that I may not be in the leaft indulgent to my own Caufe,) that Cogitation, indeed, is not manifeftly included and contain'd in the Conception of Matter, or of the Mafs of Bodies, but that, perhaps, 'tis fecretly or remotely contain'd,

contain'd, beyond our Capacity and Ken of Soul. To this I answer, that among all the Ideas of the human Soul, there is none which is either more prefent, or of which it has a clearer View, than the Idea of Matter, or of an extended Subftance. We most evidently conceive all its Dimensions; befides its Divifibility, Mobility, Figures, Pofitions, and Proportions. And the Sciences which treat of thefe Proprieties of Matter, are of all the most evident, and the most demonftrable. And when we can find no Connexion between Cogitation and any of these Proprieties of Matter, or any other Propriety of it, that falls within the Compass of human Understanding, it feems to be a groundless Sufpicion, and without the least Appearance of Truth, that this most excellent Propriety, or Perfection of Matter, according to your Imagination, fhould be contain'd in the fame Idea, and yet should not fhine out in it; and that we fhould not, with our utmost Effort of Mind, be able to come at it there, or to derive it from thence.

ISAY this most excellent Propriety of Matter; for the other Proprieties which I enumerated are of small Moment, of little Dignity, if they are compared with Thought, and all the Perfections which flow from Thought; these constitute the divine Nature, and all that is noble and eminent in human Nature: The others have neither Life, nor Senfe, nor any Thing of the Force and Virtue of the great

est

eft of Beings. Thus that Idea which appear'd to us, of all Ideas, the most entire and the most accomplish'd, viz. the Idea of Matter, or of corporeal Nature, is cut short by one Half, and that the more noble Half: God has conceal'd from us, to our great Difadvantage, if not to our great Wrong, that which was most noble and most worthy to be known in the Nature and Notion of Bodies, by impofing this defective, and therefore fallacious, Idea on us. But this is a Calumny that has been invented against God, and against Men: Whatever is proper to Matter is included in its Idea; and whatever is foreign to it, and of another Kind, as Thought, and the Power of thinking, that neither is, nor ought to be included in it, unless you would include any Thing in any Thing, and entirely confound the Distinction of Things.

BUT that we may proceed in our Argument: The divine and corporeal Nature are fo far from agreeing, that they are repugnant to each other, and contradictory. One is infinitely perfect, the other manifeftly and variously imperfect, in itself enervate and impotent, and every Way obnoxious to fuffer from external Force: One of them alway the fame, the other liable to perpetual Mutations: One of them fimple and uniform; the other, by various Modifications diverfify'd, and by Compofitions numberless. By which 'tis abundantly manifeft, that there

is fo far from being any Connexion, Affinity, or Similitude, between divine and corporeal Nature, that there is an apparent Repugnancy, and that confequently God is incorporeal.

Now this Foundation being laid down, that I may come the nearer to what I propofed, I affert, in the fecond Place, that befides God, there may be fomething incorporeal in the Nature of Things. This, without Delay or Contention, is manifeftly deduc'd from the Premifes; for fince God is incorporeal, 'tis plain from thence that an incorporeal Nature implies no Contradiction, or that 'tis a poffible Nature. Now, to produce a poffible Thing, can never be impoffible: And when the fame God that is incorporeal is likewife omnipotent, 'tis in his Power really and actually to produce whatever is not impoffible.

THIRDLY, and laftly, we affirm, that the human Soul is of an incorporeal Nature, or that 'tis a Subftance incorporeal. I could here before this Propofition infert another, more general, and, as it were, intermediate, viz. that 'tis not only poffible there should be, but that there really and actually are, exifting in the Universe, incorporeal Subftances, befides God; and then could have added, that fuch in its Kind is the human Soul. But we will, if you please, in this Chapter comprehend them both. First then, I affert, that in the vaft Compass of

the