where it has its Sourse 't is visible must be essentially inseparable from it therefore the actual want of Perception in so great part of the particular parcels of Matter is a Demonstration that the first Being from whom Perception and Knowledge is inseparable is not Matter How far this makes the want of Perception an essential property of Matter I will not dispute it suffices that it shews That Perception is not an essential Property of Matter and therefore Matter cannot be that eternal original Being to which Perception and Knowledge is Essential Matter I say naturally is without Perception Ergo says your Lordship want of Perception is an essential Property of Matter and God doth not change the essential Properties of things their Nature remaining From whence you infer That God cannot bestow on any parcel of Matter the nature of Matter remaining a Faculty of Thinking If the Rules of Logick since my days be not changed I may safely deny this Consequence For an Argument that runs thus God does not Ergo he cannot I was taught when I came first to the University would not hold For I never said God did But That I see no Contradiction in it that he should if he pleased give to some systems of sensless Matter a Faculty of Thinking and I know no Body before Des Cartes that ever pretended to shew that there was any Contradiction in it So that at worst my not being able to see in Matter any such Incapacity as makes it impossible for Omnipotency to bestow on it a Faculty of Thinking makes me opposite only to the Cartesians For as far as I have seen or heard the Fathers of the Christian Church never pretended to domonstrate that Matter was incapable to receive a Power of Sensation Perception and Thinking from the Hand of the omnipotent Creator Let us therefore if you please suppose the form of your Argumentation right and that your Lordship means God cannot And then if your Argument be good it proves That God could not give to Baalam's Ass a Power to speak to his Master as he did for the want of rational Discourse being natural to that Species 't is but for your Lordship to call it an Essential Property and then God cannot change the Essential Properties of things their Nature remaining Whereby it is proved That God cannot with all his Omnipotency give to an Ass a Power to speak as Balaam's did You say my Lord you do not set Bound's to God's Omnipotency For he may if he please change a Body into an Immaterial Substance i. e. take away from a Substance the Solidity which it had before and which made it Matter and then give it a Faculty of thinking which it had not before and which makes it a Spirit the same Substance remaining For if the same Substance remains not Body is not changed into an Immaterial Substance But the solid Substance and all belonging to it is Annihilated and an Immaterial Substance Created which is not change of one thing into another but the destroying of one and making another de novo In this change therefore of a Body or Material Substance into an immaterial let us observe those distinct Considerations First you say God may if He Pleases take away from a Solid Substance Solidity which is that which makes it a Material Substance or Body and may make it an Immaterial Substance i. e. a Substance without Solidity But this privation of one Quality gives it not another the bare taking away a lower or less Noble Quality does not give it an Higher or Nobler that must be the gift of God For the bare Privation of one and a meaner Quality cannot be the Position of an Higher and better unless any one will say that Cogitation or the Power of thinking results from the Nature of Substance it self which if it do then where ever there is Substance there must be Cogitation or a Power of thinking Here then upon your Lordship 's own Principles is an Immaterial Subâ—ance without the Faculty of thinking In the next place you will not deny but God may give to this Substance thus deprived of Solidity a Faculty of thinking for you suppose it made capable of that by being made Immaterial whereby you allow that the same numerical Substance may be sometimes wholly Incogitative or without a Power of thinking and at other times perfectly Cogitative or indued with a Power of thinking Further you will not deny but God can give it Solidity and make it Material again For I conclude it will not be denied that God can make it again what it was before Now I crave leave to ask your Lordship why God having given to this Substance the Faculty of thinking after Solidity was taken from it cannot restore to it Solidity again without taking away the Faculty of thinking When you have Resolved this my Lord you will have proved it impossible for God's Omnipotence to give to a Solid Substance a Faculty of thinking but till then not having proved it impossible and yet denying that God can do it is to deny that he can do what is in it self Possible which as I humbly conceive is visibly to set Bound's to God's Omnipotency tho' you say here you do not set Bound's to God's Omnipotency If I should imitate your Lordship's way of Writing I should not omit to bring in Epicurus here and take notice that this was his way Deum verbis ponere re tollere And then add that I am certain you do not think he promoted the great ends of Religion and Morality For 't is with such Candid and Kind insinuations as these that you bring in both Hobbes and Spinosa into your Discourse here about God's being able if he please to give to some parcels of Matter ordered as he thinks fit a Faculty of thinking Neither of those Authors having as appears by any Passages you bring out of them said any thing to this Question nor having as it seems any other business here but by their Names skilfully to give that Character to my Book with which you would recommend it to the World I pretend not to enquire what measure of Zeal nor for what guides your Lordships Pen in such a way of Writing as yours has all along been with me Only I cannot but consider what Reputation it would give to the Writings of the Fathers of the Church if they should think Truth required or Religion allowed them to imitate such Patterns But God be thanked there be those amongst them who do not admire such ways of managing the Cause of Truth or Religion They being sensible that if every one who believes or can pretend he has Truth on his side is thereby Authorized without proof to insinuate what ever may serve to prejudice Mens minds against the other side there will be great ravage made on Charity and Practice without any gain to Truth or Knowledge And that the Liberties frequently taken by Disputants
your Words which you did not intend me in them But on the other side I would not willingly neglect to acknowledge any Civility from your Lordship in the full extent of it The Business is a little nice because what is contain'd in those two Passages cannot by a less skilful Hand than yours be well put together though they immediately follow one another This I am sure falls out very untowardly that your Lordship should drive me who had much rather have been otherwise imployed to drive your Lordship to do that which you were unwilling to do The World sees how much I was driven For what Censures what Imputations must my Book have lain under if I had not cleared it from those Accusations your Lordship brought against it when I am charged now with Evasions for not clearing my self from an Accusation which you never brought against me But if it be an Evasion not to answer to an Objection that has not been made what is it I beseech you my Lord to make no reply to Objections that have been made Of which I promise to give your Lordship a List whenever you shall please to call for it I forbear it now for fear that if I should say all that I might upon this new Accusation it would be more than would suit with your Lordship's liking and you should complain again that you have opened a Passage which brings to your mind Ramazzini and his Springs of Modena But your Lordship need not be afraid of being overwhelmed with the Ebullition of my Thoughts nor much trouble your self to find a way to give check to it Meer Ebullition of Thoughts never overwhelms or sinks any one but the Author himself but if it carries Truth with it that I confess has force and it may be troublesome to those that stand in its way Your Lordship says You see how dangerous it is to give occasion to one of such a fruitful Invention as I am to write I am obliged to your Lordship that you think my Invention worth concerning your self about though it be so unlucky as to have your Lordship and me always differ about the measure of its Fertility In your first Answer you thought I too much extended the Fertility of my Invention and ascribed to it what it had no Title to And here I think you make the Fertility of my Invention greater than it is For in what I have answered to your Lordship there seems to me no need at all of a Fertil Invention 'T is true it has been hard for me to find out whom you writ against or what you meant in many places As soon as that was found the Answer lay always so obvious and so easie that there needed no labour of Invention to discover what one should reply The Things themselves where there were any strip'd of the Ornaments of Scholastick Language and the less obvious ways of learned Writings seemed to me to carry their Answers visibly with them This permit me my Lord to say That however fertil my Invention is it has not in all this Controversie produced one Fiction or wrong Quotation But before I leave the Answer you dictate permit me to observe that I am so unfortunate to be blamed for owning what I was not accused to disown and here for not owning what I was never charged to disown The like Misfortune have my poor Writings They offend your Lordship in some places because they are new and in others because they are not new Your next Words which are a new Charge I shall pass over till I come to your Proof of them and proceed to the next Paragraph Your Lordship tells me You shall wave all unnecessary Repetitions and come immediately to the matter of my Complaint as it is renewed in my Second Letter What your Lordship means by unnecessary Repetitions here seems to be of a piece with your blaming me in the foregoing Page for having said too much in my own defence and this taken altogether confirms my Opinion That in your Thoughts it would have been better I should have replyed nothing at all For you having set down here near twenty Lines as a necessary Repetition out of your former Letter your Lordship omits my answer to them as wholly unnecessary to be seen and consequently you must think was at first unnecessary to have been said For when the same Words are necessary to be repeated again if the same reply which was made to them be not thought fit to be repeated too it is plainly judged to be nothing to the purpose and should have been spared at first 'T is true your Lordship has set down some few Expressions taken out of several parts of my Reply but in what manner the Reader cannot clearly see without going back to the Original of this Matter He must therefore pardon me the trouble of a deduction which cannot be avoided where Controversie is managed at this rate which necessitates and so excuses length of the Answer My Book was brought into the Trinitarian Controversie by these steps Your Lordship says That 1. The Vnitarians have not explained the Nature and Bounds of Reason 2. The Author Of Christianity not Mysterious to make amends for this has offer'd an account of Reason 3. His Doctrin concerning Reason supposes that we must have clear and distinct Ideas of whatever we pretend to any Certainty of in our Mind 4. Your Lordship calls this a new way of Reasoning 5. This Gentleman of this new way of Reasoning in his First Chapter says something which has a conformity with some of the Notions in my Book But it is to be observed he speaks them as his own Thoughts and not upon my Authority nor with taking any notice of me 6. By vertue of this he is presently entituled to I know not how much of my Book and divers Passages of my Essay are quoted and attributed to him under the Title of The Gentlemen of the new way of Reasoning for he is by this time turned into a Troop and certain unknown if they are not all contained in this one Author's Doublet They and These are made by your Lordship to lay about them shrewdly for several Pages together in your Lordship's Vindication of the Doctrin of the Trinity c. with Passages taken out of my Book which your Lordship was at the pains to quote as Theirs i. e. certain unknown Anti-trinitarians Of this your Lordship's way strange and new to me of dealing with my Book I took notice To which your Lordship tells me here you replyed in these following words which your Lordship has set down as no unnecessary Repetition Your Words are It was because the Person who opposed the Mysteries of Christianity went upon my Grounds and made use of my Words although your Lordship declared withal That they were used to other purposes than I intended them and your Lordship confessed that the Reason why you
needed no Words or Principles of mine to be produced unless your Lordship would prove that which was never denied But if it were to prove this viz. That it was a Supposition of mine That clear and distinct Ideas were necessary to Certainty and that to prove this to be a Supposition of mine My Words were produced and my Principles of Certainty laid down and none else I answer I do not remember any Words or Principles of mine produced to shew any ground for such a Supposition that I placed Certainty only in clear and distinct Ideas and if there had been any such produced your Lordship would have done Me and the Reader a favour to have marked the Pages wherein one might have found them produced unless your Lordship thinks you make amends for quoting so many Pages of my second Letter which might have been spared by neglecting wholly to quote any of your own where it needed When your Lordship shall please to direct me to those places where such Words and Principles of mine were produced to prove such a Supposition I shall readily turn to them to see how far they do really give ground for it But my bad Memory not suggesting to me any thing like it your Lordship I hope will pardon me if I do not turn over your Defence of the Trinity and your First Letter to see whether you have any such Proofs which you your self seem so much to doubt or think so meanly of that you do not so much as point out the places where they are to be found though we have in this very Page so eminent an Example that you are not sparing of your Pains in this kind where you have the least thought that it might serve your Lordship to the meanest purpose But though you produced no Words or Principles of mine to prove this a Supposition of mine yet in your next Words here your Lordship produces a Reason why you your self supposed it For you say You could not imagine that I could place Certainty in the agreement or disagreement of Ideas and not suppose those Ideas to be clear and distinct so that at last the Satisfaction you give me why my Book was brought into a Controversie wherein it was not concerned is that your Lordship imagined I supposed in it what I did not suppose in it And here I crave leave to ask Whether the Reader may not well suppose that you had a great mind to bring my Book into that Controversie when the only handle you could find for it was an imagination of a Supposition to be in it which in truth was not there Your Lordship adds That I finding my self joined in such Company which I did not desire to be seen in I rather chose to distinguish my self from them by denying clear and distinct Ideas to be necessary to Certainty If it might be permitted to another to guess at your Thoughts as well as you do at mine he perhaps would turn it thus That your Lordship finding no readier way as you thought to set a mark upon my Book than by bringing several Passages of it into a Controversie concerning the Trinity wherein they had nothing to do and speaking of them under the name of Those and Them as if your Adversaries in that Dispute had made use of those Passages against the Trinity when no one Opposer of the Doctrin of the Trinity that I know or that you have produced ever made use of one of them you thought fit to jumble my Book with other Peoples Opinions after a new way never used by any other writer that I ever heard of If any one will consider what your Lordship has said for my Satisfaction wherein you have as I humbly conceive I have shewn produced nothing but Imaginations of Imaginations and Suppositions of Suppositions he will I conclude without straining of his Thoughts be carried to this Conjecture But Conjectures apart your Lordship says That I finding my self joined in such Company which I did not desire to be seen in I rather chose to distinguish my self If keeping to my Book can be called distinguishing my self You say I rather chose Rather than what my Lord I beseech you Your learned way of Writing I find is every where beyond my Capacity and unless I will guess at your meaning which is not very safe beyond what I can certainly understand by your Words I often know not what to answer to 'T is certain you mean here that I prefer'd distinguishing my self from them I found my self joined with to something but to what you do not say If you mean to owning that for my Notion of Certainty which is not my Notion of Certainty this is true I did and shall always rather choose to distinguish my self from any them than own that for my Notion which is not my Notion If you mean that I prefer'd my distinguishing my self from them to my being joined with them you make me choose where there neither is nor can be any Choice For what is wholly out of one's Power leaves no room for Choice And I think I should be laughed at if I should say I rather choose to distinguish my self from the Papists than that it should Rain For it is no more in my Choice not to be joined as your Lordship has been pleased to join me with the unknown They and Them than it is in my Power that it should not Rain 'T is like you will say here again this is a nice Criticism I grant my Lord it is about Words and Expressions But since I cannot know your meaning but by your Words and Expressions if this defect in my Understanding very frequently overtake me in your Writings to and concerning me 't is troublesome I confess but what must I do Must I play at blind Man's-buff Catch at what I do not see Answer to I know not what to no meaning i. e. to nothing Or must I presume to know your meaning when I do not For Example suppose I should presume it to be your meaning here That I found my self joined in Company by your Lordship with the Author of Christianity not Mysterious by your Lordship's imputing the same Notions of Certainty to us both That I did not desire to be seen in his Company i. e. to be thought to be of his Opinion in other things And therefore I choose rather to distinguish my self from him by denying clear and distinct Ideas to be necessary to Certainty than to be so joined with him If I should presume this to be the Sense of these your Words here and that by the doubtful signification of the Expression of being joined in Company and seen in Comany used equivocally your Lordship should mean that because I was said to be of his Opinion in one thing I was to be thought to be of his Opinion in all things and therefore disowned to be of his Opinion in that wherein I was of his Opinion because I would not
be thought of his Opinion all through would not your Lordship be displeased with me for supposing you to have such a meaning as this and ask me again Whether I could think you a Man of so little Sense to talk thus And yet my Lord this is the best I can make of these Words which seem to me rather to discover a secret in your way of dealing with me than any thing in me that I am ashamed of For I am not nor ever shall be ashamed to own any Opinion I have because another Man holds the same and so far as that brings me into his Company I shall not be troubled to be seen in it But I shall never think That that entitles me to any other of his Opinions or makes me of his Company in any other sense how much soever that be the design For your Lordship has used no small Art and Pains to make me of his and the Unitarians Company in all that they say only because that Author has ten lines in the beginning of his Book which agrees with something I have said in mine from whence we become Companions so universally united in Opinion that They must be entitled to all that I say and I to all that They say My Lord when I writ my Book I could not design to distinguish my self from the Gentlemen of the new way of Reasoning who were not then in being nor are that I see yet Since I find nothing produced out of the Vnitarians nor the Author of Christianity not Mysterious to shew That they make clear and distinct Ideas necessary to Certainty And all that I have done since has been to shew That you had no Reason to join my Book with Men let them be what they or those you please who founded Certainty only upon clear and distinct Ideas when my Book did not found it only upon clear and distinct Ideas And I cannot tell why the appealing to my Book now should be called a choosing rather to distinguish my self My Reader must pardon me here for this uncouth Phrase of joining my Book with Men. For as your Lordship order'd the matter pardon me if I say in your new way of writing so it was if your own word may be taken in the Case For to give me Satisfaction you insist upon this That you did not join me with those Gentlemen in their Opinions but tell me they used my Notions to other purposes than I intended them and so thee was no need for me to distinguish my self from them when your Lordship had done it for me as you plead all along Though here you are pleased to tell me That I was joined with them and That I found my self joined in such Company as I did not desire to be seen in My Lord I could find my self joined in no Company upon this occasion but what you joined me in And therefore I beg leave to ask your Lordship Did you join me in Company with those in whose Company you here say I do not desire to be seen If you own that you did how must I understand that Passage where you say That you must do that Right to the ingenious Author of the Essay of Humane Vnderstanding from whence these Notions were borrowed to serve other Purposes than he intended them which you repeat again as matter of Satisfaction to me and as a Proof of the care you took not to be misunderstood If you did join me with them what is become of all the Satisfaction in the Point which your Lordship has been at so much Pains about And if you did not join me with them you could not think I found my self joined with them or chose to distinguish my self from Men I was never joined with For my Book was innocent of what made them Gentlemen of the new way of Reasoning There seems to me something very delicate in this matter I should be supposed joined to them and your Lordship should not be supposed to have joined me to them upon so slight or no occasion and yet all this comes solely from your Lordship How to do this to your satisfaction I confess my self to be too dull And therefore I have been at the Pains to examine how far I have this Obligation to your Lordship and how far you would be pleased to own it that the World might understand your Lordship's to me incomprehensible way of writing on this occasion For if you had a Mind by a new and very dexterous way becoming the learning and caution of a great Man to bring me into such Company which you think I did not desire to be seen in I thought such a Pattern set by such an Hand as your Lordship's ought not to be lost by being passed over too slightly Besides I hope that you will not take it amiss that I was willing to see what Obligation I had to your Lordship in the favour your designed me But I crave leave to assure your Lordship I shall never be ashamed to own any Opinion I have because another Man of whom perhaps your Lordship or others have no very good Thoughts is of it nor be unwilling to be so far seen in his Company Though I shall always think I have a right to demand and shall desire to be satisfied why any one makes to himself or takes an occasion from thence in manner that favours not too much of Charity to extend this Society to those Opinions of that Man with which I have nothing to do That the World may see the Justice and good Will of such endeavours and judge whether such arts savour not a little of the Spirit of the Inquisition For if I mistake not 't is the method of that holy Office and the way of those rever'd Guardians of what they call the Christian Faith to raise Reports or start occasions of Suspition concerning the Orthodoxy of any one they have no very good Will towards and require him to clear himself guilding all this with the care of Religion and the Profession of respect and tenderness to the Person himself even when they deliver him up to be Burnt by the secular Power I shall not my Lord say That you have had any ill Will to me for I never deserved any from you But I shall be better able to answer those who are apt to think the Method you have taken has some Conformitie so far as it has gon with what Protestants complain of in the Inquisition when you shall have cleared this matter a little otherwise and assigned a more sufficient Reason for bringing me into the Party of those that oppose the Doctrin of the Trinity than only because The Author of Christianity not Mysterious has in the beginning of his Book half a Score Lines which you guess he borrowed out of mine For that in Truth is all the matter of fact upon which all this Dust is raised and the matter so advanced by degrees that now I am told I should
by Reason be excluded from the Certainty under debate which I humbly conceive you have not from my Words or any other way proved 3. The third sort of Propositions that your Lordship excludes are those whose Certainty we know by Remembrance but in these two the agreement or disagreement of the Ideas contained in them is perceived not always indeed as it was at first by an actual view of the Connection of all the intermediate Ideas whereby the agreement or disagreement of those in the Proposition was at first perceived but by other intermediate Ideas that shew the agreement or disagreement of the Ideas contained in the Proposition whose Certainty we remember As in the instance you here make use of viz. That the three Angles of a Triangle are equal to two right ones The Certainty of which Proposition we know by Remembrance though the Demonstration hath sliped out of our Minds but we know it in a different way from what your Lordship supposes The agreement of the two Ideas as joined in that Proposition is perceived but it is by the intervention of other Ideas than those which at first produced that Perception I remember i. e. I know for Remembrance is but the reviving of some past Knowledge that I was once certain of the truth of this Proposition That the three Angles of a Triangle are equal to two right ones The immutability of the same Relations between the same immutable things is now the Idea that shews me that if the three Angles of a Triangle were once equal to two right ones they will always be equal to two right ones and hence I come to be certain that what was once true in the Case is always true what Ideas once agreed will always agree and consequently what I once knew to be true I shall always know to be true as long as I can remember that I once knew it Your Lordship says That the Debate between us is about Certainty of Knowledge with regard to some Proposition whose Ideas are to be compared as to their agreement or disagreement Out of this Debate you say Certainty by Sense by Reason and by Remembrance is to be excluded I desire you then my Lord to tell what sort of Propositions will be within the Debate and to name me one of them if Propositions whose Certainty we know by Sense Reason or Remembrance are excluded However from what you have said concerning them your Lordship in the next Paragraph concludes them out of the Question your Words are These things then being out of the Question Out of what Question I beseech you my Lord The Question here and that of your own proposing to be defended in the Affirmative is this Whether those who offer at clear and distinct Ideas bid much fairer for Certainty than I do And how Certainty by Sense by Reason and by Remembrance comes to have any particular Exception in reference to this Question 't is my misfortune not to be able to find But your Lordship leaving the examination of the Question under debate by a new state of the Question would pin upon me what I never said Your Words are These things then being put out of the Question which belong not to it The Question truly stated is Whether we can attain to any Certainty of Knowledge as to the truth of a Proposition in the way of Ideas where the Ideas themselves by which we came to that Certainty be not clear and distinct With Submission my Lord that which I say in the Point is That we may be certain of the truth of a Proposition concerning an Idea which is not in all its parts clear and distinct and therefore if your Lordship will have any Question with me concerning this matter the Question truly stated is Whether we can frame any Proposition concerning a thing whereof we have but an obscure and confused Idea of whose Truth we can be certain That this is the Question you will easily agree when you will give your self the trouble to look back to the Rise of it Your Lordship having found out a strange sort of Men who had broached a Doctrin which supposed that we must have clear and distinct Ideas of what ever we pretend to a Certainty of in our Minds was pleased for this to call them the Gentlemen of a new way of Reasoning and to make me one of them I answer'd that I placed not Certainty only in clear and distinct Ideas and so ought not to have been made one of them being not guilty of what made a Gentleman of this new way of Reasoning 'T is pretended still that I am guilty and indeavour'd to be prov'd To know now whether I am or no it must be consider'd what you lay to their Charge as the consequence of that Opinion and that is That upon this Ground we cannot come to any Certainty that there is such a thing as Substance This appears by more places than one Your Lordship asks How is it possible that we may be certain that there are both bodily and spiritual Substances if our Reason depend upon clear and distinct Ideas And again How come we to be certain that there are spiritual Substances in the World since we can have no clear and distinct Ideas concerning them And your Lordship having set down some Words out of my Book as if they were inconsistent with my Principle of Certainty founded only in clear and distinct Ideas You say From whence it follows that we may be certain of the Being of a spiritual Substance though we have no clear and distinct Ideas of it Other places might be produced but these are enough to shew That those who held clear and distinct Ideas necessary to Certainty were accused to extend it thus far that where any Idea was obscure and confused there no Proposition could be made concerning it of whose truth we could be certain v. g. we could not be certain that there was in the World such a thing as Substance because we had but an obscure and confus'd Idea of it In this sense therefore I denyed that clear and distinct Ideas were necessary to Certainty v. g. I denyed it to be my Doctrin That where an Idea was obscure and confus'd there no Proposition could be made concerning it of whose Truth we could be certain For I held we might be certain of the truth of this Proposition That there was Substance in the World though we have but an obscure and confus'd Idea of Substance And your Lordship endeavoured to prove we could not as may be seen at large in that 10th Chapter of your Vindication c. From all which it is evident that the Question between us truly stated is this Whether we can attain Certainty of the truth of a Proposition concerning any thing whereof we have but an obscure and confus'd Idea This being the Question the first thing you say is That Des Cartes was of your Opinion against
of them should not be in all their parts perfectly clear and distinct as is evident in this Proposition that Substance does Exist But you give not off this Matter so For these Words of mine above quoted by your Lordship viz. It being evident that our Knowledge cannot exceed our Ideas where they are imperfect confused or obscure we cannot expect to have certain perfect or clear Knowledge your Lordship has here up again And thereupon charge it on me as a contradiction that confessing our Ideas to be imperfect confused and obscure I say I do not yet place Certainty in clear and distinct Ideas Answer The Reason is plain for I do not say that all our Ideas are imperfect confused and obscure nor that obscure and confused Ideas are in all their parts so obscure and confused that no agreement or disagreement between them and any other Idea can be perceived and therefore my confession of imperfect obscure and confused Ideas takes not away all Knowledge even concerning those very Ideas But says your Lordship Can Certainty be had with imperfect and obscure Ideas and yet no Certainty be had by them Add if you please my Lord by those parts of them which are obscure and confused And then the Question will be right put and have this easie Answer Yes my Lords and that without any contradiction because an Idea that is not in all its parts perfectly clear and distinct and is therefore an obscure and confused Idea may yet with those Ideas with which by any obscurity it has it is not confounded be capable to produce Knowledge by the perception of its agreement or disagreement with them And yet it will hold true that in that part wherein it is imperfect obscure and confused we cannot expect to have certain perfect or clear Knowledge For Example he that has the Idea of a Leopard as only of a spotted Animal must be confessed to have but a very imperfect obscure and confused Idea of that Species of Animals and yet this obscure and confused Idea is capable by a perception of the agreement or disagreement of the clear part of it viz. that of Animal with several other Ideas to produce Certainty Though as far as the obscure part of it confounds it with the Idea of a Lynx or other spotted Animal it can joyn'd with them in many Propositions produce no Knowledge This might easily be understood to be my meaning by these Words which your Lordship quotes out of my Essay viz. That our Knowledge consisting in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of any two Ideas its clearness or obscurity consists in the clearness or obscurity of that Perception and not in the clearness or obscurity of the Ideas themselves Upon which your Lordship asks How is it possible for the Mind to have a clear perception of the agreement of Ideas if the Ideas themselves be not clear and distinct Answer Just as the Eyes can have a clear perception of the agreement or disagreement of the clear and distinct parts of a Writing with the clear parts of another though one or both of them be so obscure and blur'd in other parts that the Eye cannot perceive any agreement or disagreement they have one with another And I am sorry that these Words of mine My Notion of Certainty by Ideas is that Certainty consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas such as we have whether they be in all their parts perfectly clear and distinct or no were not plain enough to make your Lordship understand my meaning and save you all this new and as it seems to me needless trouble In your 15th Page your Lordship comes to your second of the three Answers which you say you had given and would lay together and defend You say 2 you answer'd That it is very possible the Author of Christianity not Mysterious might mistake or misapply my Notions but there is too much reason to believe he thought them the same and we have no reason to be sorry that he hath given me this occasion for the explaining my meaning and for the Vindication of my self in the matters I apprehend he had charged me with These words your Lordship quotes out of the 36th Page of your first Letter But as I have already observed they are not there given as an answer to this that you make me here say and therefore to what purpose you repeat them here is not easie to discern unless it can be thought that an unsatisfactory answer in one place can become satisfactory by being repeated in another where it is as I humbly conceive less to the purpose and no answer at all It was there indeed given as an answer to my saying That I did not place Certainty in clear and distinct Ideas which I said to shew that you had no reason to bring me into the Controversie because the Author of Christianity not Mysterious placed Certainty in clear and distinct Ideas To satisfie me for your doing so your Lordship answers That it was very possible that Author might mistake or misapply my Notions A reason indeed that will equally justifie your bringing my Book into any Controversie For there is no Author so infallible write he in what Controversie he pleases but 't is possible he may mistake or misapply my Notions That was the force of this your Lordship's Answer in that place of your first Letter but what it serves for in this place of your second Letter I have not Wit enough to see The remainder of it I have answer'd in the 37th and 38th Pages of my second Letter and therefore cannot but wonder to see it repeated here again without any notice taken of what I said in answer to it though you set it down here again as you say p. 7. on purpose to defend But all the defence made is only to that part of my Reply which you set down as a fresh Complaint that I make in these Words This can be no reason why I should be joined with a Man that had misapplied my Notions and that no Man hath so much mistaken and misapplied my Notions as your Lordship and therefore I ought rather to be joined with your Lordship And then you with some warmth subjoin But is this fair and ingenuous dealing to represent this Matter so as if your Lordship had joined us together because he had misunderstood and misapplied my Notions Can I think your Lordship a Man of so little Sense to make that the reason of it No Sir says your Lordship it was because he assigned no other Grounds but mine and that in my own Words however now I would divert the meaning of them another way My Lord I did set down your Words at large in my second Letter and therefore do not see how I could be liable to any Charge of unfair or disingenuous dealing in representing the Matter which I am sure you will allow as
a Proof of my not misrepresenting since I find you use it your self as a sure Fence against any such Accusation where you tell me That you have set down my own Words at large that I may not complain that your Lordship misrepresents my Sense The same Answer I must desire my Reader to apply for me to your 73d and 90th Pages where your Lordship makes Complaints of the like kind with this here The Reasons you give for joining me with the Author of Christianity not Mysterious are put down verbatim as you gave them and if they did not give me that Satisfaction they were designed for am I to be blamed that I did not find them better than they were You joined me with that Author because he placed Certainty only in clear and distinct Ideas I told your Lordship I did not do so and therefore that could be no reason for your joining me with him You answer 'T was possible he might mistake or misapply my Notions So that our agreeing in the Notion of Certainty the pretended Reason for which we were joined failing all the reason which is left and which you offer in this Answer for your joining of us is the possibility of his mistaking my Notions And I think it a very natural Inference that if the meer possibility of any ones mistaking me be a reason for my being joined with him Any ones actual mistaking me is a stronger reason why I should be joined with him But if such an Inference shews more than you would have it the satisfactoriness and force of your Answer I hope you will not be angry with me if I cannot change the Nature of things Your Lordship indeed adds in that place That there is too much reason to believe that the Author thought his Notions and mine the same Answ. When your Lordship shall produce that Reason it will be seen whether it were too much or too little Till it is produced there appears no Reason at all and such concealed Reason though it may be too much can be supposed I think to give very little Satisfaction to me or any body else in the Case But to make good what you have said in your Answer your Lordship here replies That you did not join us together because he had misunderstood and misapplied my Notions Answ. Neither did I say That therefore you did join us But this I crave leave to say That all the reason you there gave for your joining us together was the possibility of his mistaking and misapplying my Notions But your Lordship now tells me No Sir this was not the reason of your joining us but it was because he assigned no other Grounds but mine and in my own Words Answ. My Lord I do not remember that in that place you give this as a reason for your joining of us and I could not answer in that place to what you did not there say but to what you there did say Now your Lordship does say it it here here I shall take the liberty to answer it The Reason you now give for your joining me with that Author is because he assigned no other Grounds but mine which however tenderly expressed is to be understood I suppose that he did assign my Grounds Of what I beseech your Lordship did he assign my Grounds and in my Words If it were not my Grounds of Certainty it could be no manner of reason for your joining me with him because the only reason why at first you made him and me with him a Gentleman of the new way of Reasoning was his supposing clear and distinct Ideas necessary to Certainty which was the Opinion that you declared you opposed Now my Lord if you can shew where that Author has in my Words assigned my Grounds of Certainty there will be some Grounds for what you say here But till your Lordship does that it will be pretty hard to believe that to be the ground of your joining us together which being no where to be found can scarce be thought the true reason of your doing it Your Lordship adds However now I would divert the meaning of Them i. e. those my Words an other way Answ. When ever you are pleased to set down those Words of mine wherein that Author assigns my Grounds of Certainty it will be seen how I now divert their meaning another way till then they must remain with several other of your Lordship's invisible Them which are no where to be found But to your asking me Whether I can think your Lordship a Man of that little Sense I crave leave to reply That I hope it must not be concluded that as often as in your way of writing I meet with any thing that does not seem to me satisfactory and I endeavour to shew that it does not prove what it is made use of for that I presently think your Lordship a Man of little Sense This would be a very hard Rule in defending ones self especially for me against so great and learned a Man whose reasons and meaning it is not I find always easie for so mean a Capacity as mine to reach and therefore I have taken great care to set down your Words in most places to secure my self from the imputation of misrepresenting your Sense and to leave it fairly before the Reader to judge whether I mistake it and how far I am to be blamed if I do And I would have set down your whole Letter page by page as I answered it would not that have made my Book too big If I must write under this fear that you apprehend I think meanly of you as often as I think any reason you make use of is not satisfactory in the Point it is brought for the causes of uneasiness would return too often and it would be better once for all to conclude your Lordship infallible and acquiesce in whatever you say than in every page to be so rude as to tell your Lordship I think you have little Sense if that be the interpretation of my endeavouring to shew that your reasons come short any where My Lord when you did me the honour to answer my first Letter which I thought might have passed for a submissive Complaint of what I did not well understand rather than a Dispute with your Lordship you were pleased to insert into it direct Accusations against my Book which looked as if you had a mind to enter into a direct Controversie with me This condescention in your Lordship has made me think my self under the protection of the Laws of Controversie which allow a free examining and shewing the weakness of the Reasons brought by the other side without any offence If this be not permitted me I must confess I have been mistaken and have been guilty in answering you any thing at all For how to answer without answering I confess I do not know I wish you had never writ any thing that I was particularly
for these Words must be supplied to make the Sentence to me intelligible I intend to complain of them too And then you find fault with me for using the indefinite word whoever and as a Reproof for the unreasonableness of it you say But the Words just before tell me who they are But my Words are not whoever they are But my Words are When any one in such a manner applies my Words contrary to what I intended them c. Your Lordship would here have me understand that there are those that have done it and Rebukes me that I speak as if I knew not any one that had done it and that I may not plead Ignorance you say your Words just before told me who they were viz. The Enemies of the Christian Faith What must I do now to keep my Word and satisfie your Lordship Must I complain of the Enemies of the Christian Faith in general that they have applied my Words as aforesaid and then consider as well as I can what Satisfaction they give me and others in it For that was all I promised to do But this would be strange to complain of the Enemies of the Christian Faith for doing what 't is very likely they never all did and what I do not know that any one of them has done Or must I to content your Lordship read over all the writings of the Enemies of the Christian Faith to see whether any one of them has applied my Words i. e. in such a manner as I complained your Lordship has done that if they have I may complain of them too This truly my Lord is more than I have time for and if it were worth while when it is done I perceive I should not content your Lordship in it For you ask me here Is this all I intend only to complain of them for making me a Party in the Controversie against the Trinity No my Lord this is not all I promised too To consider as well as I can what Satisfaction if they offer any they give me and others for so doing And why should not this content your Lordship in reference to others as well as it does in reference to your self I have but one measure for your Lordship and others When others treat me after the manner you have done why should it not be enough to answer them after the same manner I have done your Lordship But perhaps your Lordship has some dextrous meaning under this which I am not quick sighted enough to perceive and so do not reply right as you would have me I must beg my Readers Pardon as well as your Lordships for using so many Words about Passages that seem not in themselves of that importance I confess that in themselves they are not But yet 't is my misfortune that in this Controversie your way of writing and representing my Sense forces me to it Your Lordship's name in writing is established above controle and therefore 't would be ill breeding in one who barely reads what you write not to take every thing for perfect in its kind which your Lordship says Clearness and Force and Consistence are to be presumed always whatever your Lordship's Words be And there is no other Remedy for an Answerer who finds it difficult any where to come at your Meaning or Argument but to make his Excuse for it in laying the particulars before the Reader that he may be Judge where the Fault lies especially where any matter of Fact is contested deductions from the first rise are often necessary which cannot be made in few Words nor without several Repetitions An inconvenience possibly fitter to be endured than that your Lordship in the run of your Learned Notions should be Shackled with the ordinary and strict Rules of Language and in the delivery of your sublimer Speculations be tied down to the mean and contemptible rudiments of Grammar Though your being above these and freed from a servile observance in the use of trivial Particles whereon the connection of Discourse chiefly depends cannot but cause great difficulties to the Reader And however it may be an ease to any great Man to find himself above the ordinary rules of Writing he who is bound to follow the connection and find out his Meaning will have his Task much encreased by it I am very sensible how much this has swelled these Papers already and yet I do not see how any thing less than what I have said could clear those Passages which we have hitherto examined and set them in their due Light Your next Words are these But whether I have not made my self too much a Party in it i. e. the Controversie against the Trinity will appear before we have done This is an Item for me which your Lordship seems so very fond of and so careful to inculcate wherever you bring in any Words it can be tacked to that if one can avoid thinking it to be the main end of your writing one cannot yet but see that it could not be so much in the Thoughts and Words of a great Man who is above such personal Matters and which he knows the World soon grows weary of unless it had some very particular business there Whether it be the Author that has prejudiced you against his Book or the Book prejudiced you against the Author so it is I perceive that both I and my Essay are fallen under your displeasure I am not unacquainted what great stress is often laid upon invidious Names by skilful Disputants to supply the want of better Arguments But give me leave my Lord to say That 't is too late for me now to begin to value those marks of good Will or a good Cause and therefore I shall say nothing more to them as fitter to be left to the examination of the Thoughts within your own breast from what sourse such reasonings spring and whither they tend I am going my Lord to a Tribunal that has a right to judge of Thoughts and being secure that I there shall be found of no Party but that of Truth for which there is required nothing but the receiving Truth in the Love of it I matter not much of what Party any one shall as may best serve his turn denominate me here Your Lordship's is not the first Pen from which I have receiv'd such strokes as these without any great harm I never found freedom of Stile did me any hurt with those who knew me and if those who know me not will take up borrowed Prejudices it will be more to their own harm than mine So that in this I shall give your Lordship little other Trouble but my Thanks sometimes where I find you skilfully and industriously recommending me to the World under the Character you have chosen for me Only give me leave to say That if the Essay I shall leave behind me hath no other fault to sink it but Heresie and inconsistency with the Articles of the Christian Faith
Matter so disposed a thinking immaterial Substance It being in respect of our Notions not much more remote from our Comprehensions to conceive that God can if he pleases superadd to our Idea of Matter a Faculty of Thinking than that he should superadd to it another Substance with a faculty of Thinking From my saying thus That God whom I have proved to be an immaterial Being by his Omnipotency may for ought we know superadd to some parts of Matter a faculty of Thinking it requires some skill for any one to represent me as your Lordship does here as one ignorant or doubtful whether Matter may not think to that degree that I am not certain or I do not believe that there is a Principle above Matter and Motion in the World and consequently all Revelation may be nothing but the effects of an exalted Fancy or the heats of a disordered Imagination as Spinosa affirm'd For thus I or some Body else whom I desire your Lordship to produce stands painted in this your Lordship's Argument from the supposition of a Divine Revelation which your Lordship brings here to prove That the defining of Knowledge as I do to consist in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas weakens the Credibility of the Articles of the Christian Faith But if your Lordship thinks it so dangerous a Position to say It is not much harder for us to conceive that God can if he pleases superadd to Matter a faculty of Thinking than that he should superadd to it another Substance with a faculty of Thinking which is the utmost I have said concerning the faculty of Thinking in Matter I humbly conceive it would be more to your purpose to prove That the infinite omnipotent Creator of all Things out of nothing cannot if he pleases superadd to some parcels of Matter disposed as he sees fit a faculty of Thinking which the rest of Matter has not rather than to represent me with that Candour your Lordship does as one who so far makes Matter a Thinking thing as thereby to question the being of a Principle above Matter and Motion in the World and consequently to take away all Revelation which how natural and genuine a Representation it is of my Sense expressed in the Passages of my Essay which I have above set down I humbly submit to the Reader 's Judgment and your Lordship's Zeal for Truth to determine and shall not stay to examin whether Man may not have an exalted Phancy and the heats of a disorder'd Imagination equally overthrowing Divine Revelation tho' the power of Thinking be placed only in an immaterial Substance I come now to the sequel of your Major which is this If one who places Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas does not know but Matter may Think then whoever places Certainty so cannot believe there is an immaterial intelligent Being in the World The consequence here is from does not to cannot which I cannot but wonder to find in an Argument of your Lordships For he that does not to Day believe or know that Matter cannot be so ordered by God's Omnipotency as to think if that subverts the belief of an immaterial intelligent Being in the World may know or believe it to Morrow or if he should never know or believe it yet others who define Knowledge as he does may know or believe it Unless your Lordship can prove that it is impossible for any one who defines Knowledge to consist in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas to know or believe that Matter cannot Think But this as I remember your Lordship has not any where attempted to prove And yet without this your Lordship's way of Reasoning is no more than to argue that one cannot do a thing because another does not do it And yet upon this strange consequence is built all that your Lordship brings here to prove that my definition of Knowledge weakens the credibility of Articles of Faith v. g. It weakens the credibility of this fundamental Article of Faith that there is a God! How so Because I who have so defined Knowledge say in my Essay That the Knowledge of the Existence of any other thing but of God we can have only by Sensation For there being no necessary connexion of real Existence with any Idea a Man hath in his Memory nor of any other Existence but that of God with the Existence of any particular Man no particular Man can know the Existence of any other Being but only when by actual operating upon him it makes it self perceived by him For the having the Idea of any thing in our Mind no more proves the Existence of that thing than the Picture of a Man evidences his Being in the World or the Visions of a Dream make thereby a true History For so are the Words of my Book and not as your Lordship has been pleased to set them down here and they were well chosen by your Lordship to shew that the way of Ideas would not do i. e. In my way by Ideas I cannot prove there is a God But supposing I had said in that place or any other that which would hinder the proof of a God as I have not might I not see my Error and alter or renounce that Opinion without changing my definition of Knowledge Or could not another Man who defined Knowledge as I do avoid Thinking as your Lordship says I say That no Idea proves the Existence of the thing without it self and so able notwithstanding my saying so to prove that there is a God Again your Lordship argues that my definition of Knowledge weakens the credibility of the Articles of Faith Because it takes away Revelation and your Proof of that is because I do not know whether Matter may not Think The same sort of Argumentation your Lordship goes on with in the next Page where you say Again before there can be any such thing as assurance of Faith upon divine Revelation there must be a Certainty as to Sense and Tradition for there can be no Revelation pretended now without immediate Inspiration and the Basis of our Faith is a Revelation contained in an antient Book whereof the parts were delivered at distant times but conveyed down to us by an universal Tradition But now what if my grounds of Certainty can give us no assurance as to these Things Your Lordship says you do not mean That they cannot demonstrate matters of Fact which it were most unreasonable to expect but that these Grounds of Certainty make all things uncertain for your Lordship thinks you have proved That this way of Ideas cannot give a satisfactory Account as to the Existence of the plainest Objects of the Sense because Reason cannot perceive the connection between the Objects and the Ideas How then can we arrive to any Certainty in perceiving those Objects by their Ideas All the force of which Argument lies in this that I have said
to tell which are those Maxims or how they may be known is I humbly conceive so far from laying any sure grounds of Certainty that it leaves even the very Foundations of it uncertain When your Lordship has thus setled the grounds of your way of Certainty by Reason one may be able to examine whether it be truly the way of Reason and how far my way of Certainty by Ideas differs from it The second Difference that you assign between my way of Certainty by Ideas and yours by Reason is that I say That Demonstration is by way of intuition of Ideas and that Reason is only the Faculty imploy'd in discovering and comparing Ideas with themselves or with others intervening and that this is the only way of Certainty Whereas your Lordship affirms and as you say have proved That there can be no Demonstration by intuition of Ideas but that all the Certainty we can attain to is from general Principles of Reason and necessary Deductions made from them Answ. I have said That Demonstration consists in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of the Intermediate Idea with those whose Agreement or Disagreement it is to shew in each step of the Demonstration And if you will say this is different from the way of Demonstration by Reason it will then be to the Point above-mentioned which you have been so long upon If this be your Meaning here it seems pretty strangely expressed and remains to be proved But if any thing else be your Meaning that Meaning not being the Proposition to be proved it matters not whether you have proved it or no. Your Lordship farther says here That all the Certainty we can attain to is from general Principles of Reason and necessary Deductions made from them This you say you have proved What has been proved is to be seen in what has been already consider'd But if your Proof That all the Certainty we can attain to is from general Principles of Reason and necessary Deductions made from them were as clear and cogent as it seems to me the contrary this will not reach to the Point in Debate till your Lordship has proved That this is opposite to my way of Certainty by Ideas 'T is strange and perhaps to some-may be matter of thought that in an Argument wherein you lay so much stress on Maxims general Principles of Reason and necessary Deductions from them you should never once tell us what in your account a Maxim or general Principle of Reason is nor the Marks it is to be known by nor offer to shew what a necessary Deduction is nor how it is to be made or may be known For I have seen Men please themselves with Deductions upon Deductions and spin Consequences it matter'd not whether out of their own or other Men's Thoughts which when looked into were visibly nothing but meer Ropes of Sand. 'T is true your Lordship says you now come to Certainty of Reason by Deductions But when all that truly learned Discourse which follows is read over and over again I would be glad to be told what it is your Lordship calls a necessary Deduction and by what Criterion you distinguish it from such Deductions as come short of Certainty or even of Truth it self I confess I have read over those Pages more than once and can find no such Criterion laid down in them by your Lordship though a Criterion be there much talked of But whether it be my want of Capacity for your way of Writing that makes me not find any Light given by your Lordship into this Matter Or whether in Truth you have not shewed wherein what you call a necessary Deduction consists and how it may be known from what is not so the Reader must judge This I crave leave to say That when you have shewn what general Principles of Reason and necessary Deductions are the World will then see and not till then whether this your way of Certainty by Reason from general Principles and necessary Deductions made from them be opposite to or so much as different from my way of Certainty by Ideas which was the thing to be shewn In the Paragraph under Consideration you blame me that in my Chapter concerning Reason I have treated it only as a Faculty and not in the other Senses which I there give of that Word This Exception to my Book is I suppose only from your Lordship's general Care of letting nothing pass in my Essay which you think needs an amendment For any particular Reason that brings it in here or ties it on to this part of your Discourse I confess I do not see However to this I Answer 1. The Understanding as a Faculty being the Subject of my Essay it carried me to treat directly of Reason no otherwise than as a Faculty But yet Reason as standing for true and clear Principles and also as standing for clear and fair Deductions from those Principles I have not wholly omitted as is manifest from what I have said of self-evident Propositions intuitive Knowledge and Demonstration in other parts of my Essay So that your Question Why in a Chapter of Reason are the other two Senses of the word Neglected Blaming me for no other Fault that I am really guilty of but want of Order and not putting every thing in its proper Place does not appear to be of so mighty weight but that I should have thought it might have been left to the little Niblers in Controversie without being made use of by so great a Man as your Lordship But the putting things out of their proper Place being that which your Lordship thinks fit to except against in my Writings it so falls out that to this too I can plead not guilty For in that very Chapter of Reason I have not omitted to treat of Principles and Deductions and what I have said there I presume is enough to let others see That I have not neglected to declare my poor Sense about self-evident Propositions and the cogency and evidence of demonstrative or probable Deductions of Reason Though what I have said there not being back'd with Authorities nor warranted by the Names of ancient Philosophers was not worth your Lordship's taking notice of I have I confess been so unwary to write out of my own Thoughts which your Lordship has more than once with some sort of Reprimand taken notice of I own it your Lordship is much in the right The safer way is never to declare ones own Sense in any material Point If I had fill'd my Book with Quotations and Collections of other Mens Opinions it had shewn much more Learning and had much more security in it and I my self had been safe from the Attacks of the Men of Arms in the Common-wealth of Letters But in writing my Book I had no Thoughts of War my Eye was fixed only on Truth and that with so sincere and unbiassed an Endeavour that I thought I
are taken to Represent distinct particular Things Subsisting by themselves in which the supposed or confused Idea of Substance is always the first and chief This would have been a full Answer to all that I think you have under that variety of Heads Objected against my Idea of Substance But your Lordship in your Representation of my Idea of Substance thought fit to leave this Passage out though you are pleased to set down several others produced both before and after it in my first Letter which I think gives me a Right humbly to return your Lordship your own Words And now I freely leave the Reader to judge whether this which your Lordship has given be a tolerable Account of my Idea of Substance The next Point to be considered is concerning the Immateriality of the Soul whereof there is a great deal said The Original of this Controversie I shall set down in your Lordship 's own Words You say The only Reason you had to engage in this Matter was this bold Assertion That the Ideas we have by Sensation or Reflection are the sole Matter and Foundation of all our Reasoning and that our Certainty lies in perceiving the Agreement and Disagreement of Ideas as expressed in any Proposition which last you say are my own words To overthrow this bold Assertion you urge my acknowledgment That upon my Principles it cannot be demonstratively proved that the Soul is Immaterial tho' it be in the highest degree probable And then ask Is not this the giving up the cause of Certainty Answer Just as much the giving up the cause of Certainty on my side as it is on your Lordship's Who tho' you will not please to tell wherein you place Certainty yet it is to be supposed you do place Certainty in something or other Now let it be what you will that you place Certainty in I take the liberty to say that you cannot certainly prove i. e. demonstrate that the Soul of Man is Immaterial I am sure you have not so much as offered at any such proof and therefore you give up the cause of Certainty upon your Principles Because if the not being able to demonstrate that the Soul is Immaterial upon his Principles who declares wherein he thinks Certainty consists be the giving up the cause of Certainty the not being able to demonstrate the Immateriality of the Soul upon his Principles who does not tell wherein Certainty consists is no less a giving up of the cause of Certainty The only odds between these two is more Art and Reserve in the one than the other And therefore my Lord you must either upon your Principles of Certainty demonstrate that the Soul is Immaterial or you must allow me to say that you too give up the cause of Certainty and your Principles tend to Scepticism as much as mine Which of these two your Lordship shall please to do will to me be advantagious for by the one I shall get a Demonstration of the Souls Immateriality of which I shall be very glad and that upon Principles which reaching farther than mine I shall imbrace as better than mine and become your Lordship's professed Convert Till then I shall rest satisfied that my Principles be they as weak and fallible as your Lordship please are no more guilty of any such tendency than theirs who talking more of certainty cannot attain to it in cases where they condemn the way of Ideas for coming short of it You a little lower in the same Page set down these as my Words That I never offered it as a way of Certainty where we cannot reach Certainty I have already told you that I have been sometimes in doubt what Copy you had got of my Essay Because I often found your Quotations out of it did not agree with what I read in mine But by this Instance here and some others I know not what to think since in my Letter which I did my self the Honour to send your Lordship I am sure the Words are not as they are here set down For I say not that I offered the way of Certainty there spoken of which looks as if it were a new way of Certainty that I pretended to teach the World Perhaps the difference in these from my Words is not so great that upon an other occasion I should take notice of it But it being to lead People into an Opinion that I spoke of the way of Certainty by Ideas as something new which I pretended to teach the World I think it worth while to set down my Words themselves which I think are so Penn'd as to shew a great Cantion in me to avoid such an opinion My Words are I think it is a way to bring us to a Certainty in those things which I have offered as Certain but I never thought it a way to Certainty where we cannot reach Certainty What use your Lordship makes of the term offered applied to what I applied it not is to be seen in your next Words which you subjoin to those which you set down for mine But did you not offer to put us into a way of Certainty And what is that but to attain Certainty in such things where we could not otherwise do it Answ. If this your way of reasoning here carries Certainty in it I humbly conceive in your way of Certainty by Reason Certainty may be attained where it could not otherwise be had I only beg you my Lord to shew me the place where I so offer to put you in a way of Certainty different from what had formerly been the way of Certainty that Men by it might attain to Certainty in things which they could not before my Book was writ No Body who reads my Essay with that indifferency which is proper to a Lover of Truth can avoid seeing that what I say of Certainty was not to teach the Wrold a new way of Certainty though that be one great Objection of yours against my Book but to endeavour to shew wherein the old and only way of Certainty consists what was the occasion and design of my Book may be seen plainly enough in the Epistle to the Reader without any need that any thing more should be said of it And I am too sensible of my own Weakness not to profess as I do That I pretend not to teach but to enquire I cannot but wonder what service you my Lord who are a Teacher of Authority mean to Truth or Certainty by condemning the way of Certainty by Ideas Because I own by it I cannot demonstrate that the Soul is Immaterial May it not be worth your considering what advantage this will be to Scepticism when upon the same grounds you Words here shall be turned upon you and it shall be asked What a strange way of Certainty is this your Lordship's way by Reason if it fails us in some of the first Foundations of the real Knowledge of our selves To avoid
to do so may have been the cause that the World in all Ages has received so much harm and so little advantage from Controversies in Religion These are the Arguments which your Lordship has brought to confute one saying in my Book by other Passages in it which therefore being all but Argumenta ad Hominem if they did prove what they do not are of no other use than to gain a Victory over me a thing methinks so much beneath your Lordship that it does not deserve one of your Pages The question is whether God can if he pleases bestow on any parcel of Matter ordered as he thinks fit a faculty of Perception and Thinking You say You look upon a Mistake herein to be of dangerous Consequence as to the great ends of Religion and Morality If this be so my Lord I think one may well wonder why your Lordship has brought no Arguments to Establish the Truth it self which You look on to be of such dangerous consequence to be mistaken in but have spent so many Pages only in a Personal Matter in endeavouring to shew That I had Inconsistencies in my Book which if any such thing had been shewed the Question would be still as far from being decided and the danger of mistaking about it as little prevented as if nothing of all this had been said If therefore your Lordship's Care of the great ends of Religion and Morality have made You think it necessary to clear this Question the World has reason to conclude there is little to be said against that Proposition which is to be found in my Book concerning the Possibility that some parcels of Matter might be so ordered by Omnipotence as to be endued with a faculty of Thinking if God so pleased since your Lordship's Concern for the promoting the great ends of Religion and Morality has not enabled you to produce one Argument against a Proposition that you think of so dangerous consequence to them And here I crave leave to observe That though in your Title Page you promise to prove that my Notion of Ideas is inconsistent with it self which if it were it could hardly be proved to be inconsistent with any thing else and with the Articles of the Christian Faith Yet your Attempts all along have been to prove me in some Passages of my Book inconsistent with my self without having shewn any Proposition in my Book inconsistent with any Article of the Christian Faith I think your Lordship has indeed made use of one Argument of your own But it is such an one that I confess I do not see how it is apt much to promote Religion especially the Christian Religion founded on Revelation I shall set down your Lordship's Words that they may be considered you say That you are of Opinion that the great Ends of Religion and Morality are best secured by the Proofs of the Immortality of the Soul from its Nature and Properties and which you think proves is Immaterial Your Lordship does not question whether God can give Immortality to a Material Substance but you say it takes off very much from the Evidence of Immortality if it depend wholly upon God's giving that which of its own Nature it is not capable of c. So likewise you say If a Man cannot be certain but that Matter may think as I affirm then what becomes of the Soul's Immateriality and consequently Immortality from its Operations But for all this say I his assurance of Faith remains on its own Basis. Now you appeal to any Man of Sense whether the finding the uncertainty of his own Principles which he went upon in point of Reason doth not weaken the Credibility of these fundamental Articles when they are considered purely at Matters of Faith For before there was a natural Credibility in them on the account of Reason but by going on wrong grounds of Certainty all that is lost and instead of being Certain he is more doubtful than ever And if the Evidence of Faith falls so much short of that of Reason it must needs have less effect upon Men's Minds when the Subserviency of Reason is taken away as it must be when the grounds of Certainty by Reason are vanished Iâ— it at all probable That he who finds his Reason deceive him in such Fundamental Points should have his Faith stand firm and unmoveable on the account of Revelation For in Matters of Revelation there must be some Antecedent Principles supposed before we can believe any thing on the account of it More to the same purpose we have some Pages farther where from some of my Words your Lordship says You cannot but observe That we have no Certainty upon my grounds that Self-consciousness depends upon an individual Immaterial Substance and consequently that a Material Substance may according to my Principles have Self-consciousness in it at least that I am not certain of the contrary Whereupon your Lordship bids me consider whether this doth not a little affect the whole Article of the Resurrection What does all this tend to But to make the World believe that I have lessened the Credibility of the Immortality of the Soul and the Resurrection by saying That though it be most highly probable that the Soul is Immaterial yet upon my Principles it cannot be demonstrated because it is not impossible to God's Omnipotency if he pleases to bestow upon some parcels of Matter disposed as he sees fit a faculty of thinking This your Accusation of my lessening the Credibility of these Articles of Faith is founded on this That the Article of the Immortality of the Soul abates of its Credibility If it be allowed That its Immateriality which is the supposed Proof from Reason and Philosophy of its Immortality cannot be demonstrated from natural Reason Which Argument of your Lordship's bottoms as I humbly conceive on this That Divine Revelation abates of its Credibility in all those Articles it proposes porportionably as Humane Reason fails to support the Testimony of God And all that your Lordship in those Passages has said when Examined will I suppose be found to import thus much viz. Does God promise any thing to Mankind to be believed It is very fit and credible to be believed if Reason can demonstrate it to be true But if Humane Reason comes short in the Case and cannot make it out its Credibility is thereby lessened which is in effect to say That the Veracity of God is not a firm and sure foundation of Faith to rely upon without the concurrent Testimony of Reason i. e. with Reverence be it spoken God is not to be believed on his own Word unless what he reveals be in it self credible and might be believed without him If this be a way to promote Religion the Christian Religion in all its Articles I am not sorry that it is not a way to be found in any of my Writings for I imagine any thing like this would and I should think deserv'd