this Proposition Certainty consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas weakens the credibility of this fundament Article that there is a God And so of the immortality of the Soul because I say I know not but Matter may think Your Lordship would infer Ergo my definition of Certainty weakens the credibility of the Revelation of the Souls immortality Your Lordship is pleased here to call this Proposition That Knowledge or Certainty consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas My general grounds of Certainty as if I had some more particular grounds of Certainty Whereas I have no other Ground or Notion of Certainty but this one alone all my Notion of Certainty is contained in that one particular Proposition but perhaps your Lordship did it that you might make the Proposition above quoted viz. No Idea proves the existence of the thing without it self under the Title you give it of the way of Ideas pass for one of my particular Grounds of Certainty whereas it is no more any Ground of Certainty of mine or definition of Knowledge than any other Proposition in my Book Another thing very remarkable in what your Lordship here says is That you make the failing to attain Knowledge by any way of Certainty in some particular Instances to be the finding the uncertainty of the way it self which is all one as to say That if a Man misses by Algebra the certain Knowledge of some Propositions in Mathematicks therefore he finds the way or principles of Algebra to be uncertain or false This is your Lordship's way of reasoning here Your Lordship quotes out of me That I say no Idea proves the existence of the thing without it self And that I say That one cannot be certain that Matter cannot think from whence your Lordship argues That he who says so cannot attain to Certainty that there is a God or that the Soul is immortal and thereupon your Lordship concludes he finds the uncertainty of the Principles he went upon in Point of Reason i. e. that he finds this Principle or Ground of Certainty he went upon in reasoning viz. That Certainty or Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas to be uncertain For if your Lordship means here by Principles he went upon in Point of Reason any thing else but that definition of Knowledge which your Lordship calls my Way Method Grounds c. of Certainty which I and others to the endangering some Articles of Faith go upon I crave leave to say it concerns nothing at all the Argument your Lordship is upon which is to prove That the placing of Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas may be of dangerous consequence to any Article of Faith Your Lordship in the next place says Before we can believe any thing upon the account of Revelation we must suppose there is a God What use does your Lordship make of this Your Lordship thus argues But by my way of Certainty a Man is made uncertain whether there be a God or no. For that to me is the meaning of those Words How can his Faith stand firm as to Divine Revelation when he is made uncertain by his own way whether there be a God or no Or they can to me mean nothing to the Question in hand What is the conclusion from hence This it must be or nothing to the purpose Ergo my defini-nition of Knowledge or which is the same thing my placing of Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas leaves not the Articles of Faith the same credibility they had before To excuse my dulness in not being able to comprehend this consequence pray my Lord consider that your Lordship says Before we can believe any thing upon the account of Revelation it must be supposed that there is a God But cannot he who places Certainty in the perception of the agreement and disagreement of Ideas supposes there is a God But your Lordship means by suppose that one must be certain that there is a God Let it be so and let it be your Lordship's priviledge in Controversie to use one word for another though of a different signification as I think to suppose and be certain are Cannot one that places Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas be certain there is a God I can assure you my Lord I am certain there is a God and yet I own That I place Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas Nay I dare venture to say to your Lordship That I have proved there is a God and see no inconsistency at all between these two Propositions That Certainty consists in the perception of the agreement of disagreement of Ideas and that it is certain there is a God So that this my Notion of Certainty this definition of Knowledge for any thing your Lordship has said to the contrary leaves to this Fundamental Article the same Credibility and the same Certainty it had before Your Lordship says farther To suppose Divine Revelation we must be certain that there is a principle above Matter and Motion in the World Here again my Lord your way of writing makes work for my Ignorance and before I can either admit or deny this Proposition or judge what force it has to prove the Proposition in question I must distinguish it into these different Senses which I think your Lordship's way of speaking may comprehend For your Lordship may mean it thus To suppose Divine Revelation we must be certain i. e. we must believe that there is a principle above Matter and Motion in the World Or your Lordship may mean thus We must be certain i. e. we must know that there is something above Matter or Motion in the World In the next place your Lordship may mean by something above Matter and Motion either simply an intelligent Being for Knowledge without determining what Being it is in is a principle above Matter and Motion Or your Lordship may mean an immaterial intelligent Being so that this undetermined way of expressing includes at least four distinct Propositions whereof some are true and others not so For 1. My Lord if your Lordship means That to suppose a Divine Revelation a Man must be certain i. e. must certainly know that there is an intelligent Being in the World and that that intelligent Being is immaterial from whence that Revelation comes I deny it For a Man may suppose Revelation upon the belief of an intelligent Being from whence it comes without being able to make out to himself by a Scientifical Reasoning that there is such a Being A proof whereof I humbly conceive are the Anthropomorphites among the Christians heretofore who nevertheless rejected not the Revelation of the New Testament and he that will talk with illiterate People in this Age will I doubt not find many who believe
the Bible to be the Word of God though they imagine God himself in the shape of an Old Man sitting in Heaven which they could not do if they knew i. e. had examined and understood any demonstration whereby he is proved to be immaterial without which they cannot know it 2. If your Lordship means That to suppose a Divine Revelation it is necessary to know that there is simply an intelligent Being this also I deny For to suppose a Divine Revelation is not necessary that a Man should know that there is such an intelligent Being in the World I say know i. e. from things that he does know demonstratively deduce the proof of such a Being it is enough for the receiving Divine Revelation to believe that there is such a Being without having by demonstration attained to the Knowledge that there is a God Every one that believes right does not always reason exactly especially in abstract Metaphysical Speculations and if no body can believe the Bible to be of Divine Revelation but he that clearly comprehends the whole deduction and sees the evidence of the demonstration wherein the existence of an intelligent Being on whose Will all other Beings depend is Scientifically proved there are I fear but few Christians among illiterate People to look no farther He that believes there is a God though he does no more than believe it and has not attained to the Certainty of Knowledge i. e. does not see the evident demonstration of it has Ground enough to admit of Divine Revelation The Apostle tells us That he that will come to God must believe that he is But I do not remember the Scripture any where says That he must know that he is 3. In the next place if your Lordship means That to suppose Divine Revelation a Man must be certain i. e. explicitly believe that there is a perfectly immaterial Being I shall leave it to your Lordship's consideration whether it may not be Ground enough for the Supposition of a Revelation to believe that there is an all-knowing unerring Being who can neither deceive nor be deceived without a Man 's precisely determining in his Thoughts whether that unerring omniscient Being be immaterial or no. 'T is past all doubt that every one that examins and reasons right may come to a Certainty that God is perfectly immaterial But it may be a question whether every one who believes a Revelation to be from God may have enter'd into the disquisition of the immateriality of his Being Whether I say every ignorant day Labourer who believes the Bible to be the Word of God has in his mind consider'd materiality and immateriality and does explicitly believe God to be immaterial I shall leave to your Lordship to determine if you think fit more expresly than your Words do here 4. If your Lordship means That to suppose a Divine Revelation a Man must becertain i. e. believe that there is a supreme intelligent Being from whom it comes who can neither deceive nor be deceived I grant it to be true These being the several Propositions either of which may be meant in your Lordship 's so general and to me doubtful way of expressing your self to avoid the length which a particular Answer to each of them would run me into I will venture and it is a venture to answer to an ambiguous Proposition in one Sense when the Author has the liberty of saying he meant it in another a great convenience of general loose and doubtful Expressions I will I say venture to answer to it in the Sense I guess most suited to your Lordship's purpose and see what your Lordship proves by it I will therefore suppose your Lordship's Reasoning to be this That To suppose Divine Revelation a Man must be certain i. e. believe that there is a Principle above Matter and Motion i. e. an immaterial intelligent Being in the World Let it be so what does your Lordship infer Therefore upon the Principles of Certainty by Ideas he i. e. he that places Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas cannot be certain of i. e. believe this This consequence seems a little strange but your Lordship proves it thus Because he does not know but Matter may think Which Argument put into form will stand thus If one who places Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Idea does not know but Matter may think then whoever places Certainty so cannot believe there is an immaterial intelligent Being in the World But there is one who placing Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas does not know but Matter may think Ergo whoever places Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas cannot believe that there is an intelligent immaterial Being This Argumentation is so defective in every part of it that for fear I should be thought to make an Argument for your Lordship in requital for the Answer your Lordship made for me I must desire the Reader to consider your Lordship says We must be certain He cannot be certain because he doth not know which in short is We cannot because he cannot and he cannot because he doth not This consider'd will justifie the Syllogism I have made to contain your Lordship's Argument in its full force I come therefore to the Syllogism it self and there first I deny the Minor which is this There is one who placing Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas doth not know but Matter may think I begin with this because this is the Foundation of all your Lordship's Argument and therefore I desire your Lordship would produce any one who placing Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas does not know but Matter may think The Reason why I press this is because I suppose your Lordship means me here and would have it thought that I say I do not know but that Matter may think But that I do not say so nor any thing else from whence may be infer'd what your Lordship adds in the annexed Words if they can be infer'd from it And consequently all Revelation may be nothing but the effects of an exalted Fancy or the heats of a disorder'd Imagination as Spinosa affirm'd On the contrary I do say It is impossible to conceive that matter either with or without motion could have originally in and from it self Perception and knowledge And having in that Chapter establish'd this Truth That there is an eternal immaterial knowing Being I think no body but your Lordship could have imputed to me the doubting that there was such a Being because I say in another place and to another purpose It is impossible for us by the contemplation of our own Ideas without Revelation to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some Systems of Matter fitly disposed a power to perceive and think or else joined and fixed to
reason to complain of it and of the manner of its being brought in And if you had pleas'd not to have moved other Questions nor brought other Charges against my Book till this which was the Occasion and Subject of my First Letter had been cleared by making out that the Passages you had in your Vindication of the Doctrin of the Trinity quoted out of my Book had something in them against the Doctrin of the Trinity and so were with just reason brought by you as they were into that Dispute there had been no other but that Personal Matter as you call it between us In the Examination of those Pages meant as you said for my Satisfaction and of other parts of your Letter I found contrary to what I expected Matter of renewing and enlarging my complaint and this I took notice of and set down in my Reply which it seems I should not have done The knowledge of the World should have taught me better And I should have taken that for Satisfaction which you were pleased to give in which I could not find any nor as I believe any intelligent or impartial Reader So that your Lordship's care of the World that it should not grow weary of this Controversie and the Fault you find of my mis-imploying Fifty Pages of my Letter reduces it self at last in effect to no more but this That your Lordship should have a liberty to say what you please pay me in what Coin you think fit my part should be to be satisfied with it rest content and say nothing This indeed might be a way not to weary the World and to save 50 Pages of clean Paper and put such an end to the Controversie as your Lordship would not dislike I learn from your Lordship that it is the first part of Wisdom in some Mens Opinions not to begin in such Disputes What the knowledge of the World which is a sort of Wisdom should in your Lordship's Opinion make a Man do when one of your Lordship's Character begins with him is very plain He is not to reply so far as he judges his Defence and the Matter requires but as your Lordship is pleased to allow which some may think no better than if one might not reply at all After having thus rebuked me for having been too copious in my Reply in the next Words your Lordship instructs me what I should have answer'd That I should have clear'd my self by declaring to the World that I owned the Doctrin of the Trinity as it has been received in the Christian Church This as I take it is a meer Personal Matter of the same Woof with a Spanish Sant Benito and as it seems to me designed to sit close to me What must I do now my Lord Must I silently put on and wear this Badge of your Lordship's Favour and as one well understanding the World say not a Word of it because the World soon grows weary of Personal Matters If in Gratitude for this Personal Favour I ought to be silent yet I am forced to tell you That in what you require of me here you possibly have cut out too much Work for a poor ordinary Layman for whom it is too hard to know how a Doctrin so disputed has been received in the Christian Church and who might have thought it enough to own it as delivered in the Scriptures Your Lordship herein lays upon me what I cannot do without owning to know what I am sure I do not know For how the Doctrin of the Trinity has been always received in the Christian Church I confess my self ignorant I have not had time to examine the History of it and to read those Controversies that have been writ about it And to own a Doctrin as received by others when I do not know how those others received it is perhaps a short way to Orthodoxy that may satisfie some Men But he that takes this way to give Satisfaction in my Opinion makes a little bold with Truth and it may be questioned whether such a Profession be pleasing to that God who requires Truth in the inward Parts however acceptable it may in any Man be to his Diocesan I presume your Lordship in your Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrin of the Trinity intends to give it us as it has been received in the Christian Church And I think your Words viz. It is the Sense of the Christian Church which you are bound to defend and no particular Opinions of your own authorize one to think so But if I am to own it as your Lordship has there delivered it I must own what I do not understand For I confess your Exposition of the Sense of the Church wholly transcends my Capacity If you require me to own it with an implicit Faith I shall pay that Deference as soon to your Lordship's Exposition of the Doctrin of the Church as any ones But if I must understand and know what I own it is my Misfortune and I cannot deny it that I am as far from owning what you in that Discourse deliver as I can be from professing the most unintelligible thing that ever I read to be the Doctrin that I own Whether I make more use of my poor Understanding in the Case than you are willing to allow every one of your Readers I cannot tell but such an Understanding as God has given me is the best I have and that which I must use in the apprehending what others say before I can own the Truth of it and for this there is no help that I know That which keeps me a little in countenance is That if I mistake not Men of no mean Parts even Divines of the Church of England and those of neither the lowest Reputation nor Rank find their Understandings fail them on this occasion and stick not to own That they understand not your Lordship in that Discourse and particularly that your 6th Chapter is unintelligible to them as well as me whether the fault be in their and my Understandings the World must be judge But this is only by the by for this is not the Answer I here intend your Lordship Your Lordship tells me That to clear my self I should have owned to the World the Doctrin of the Trinity as it has been received c. Answer I know not whether in a Dispute managed after a new way wherein one Man is argued against and another Man's words all along quoted it may not also be a good as well as a new Rule for the Answerer to reply to what was never objected and clear himself from what was never laid to his Charge If this be not so and that this new way of Attacking requires not this new way of Defence your Lordship's Prescription to me here what I should have done will amongst the most intelligent and impartial Readers pass for a strange Rule in Controversie and such as the learnedst of them will not be able to find
have cleared my self by owning the Doctrin of the Trinity As if I had been ever accused of disowning it But that which shews no small skill in this management is That I am called upon to clear my self by the very same Person who raising the whole Dispute has himself over and over again cleared me and upon that grounds the Satisfaction he pretends to give to me and others in answer to my Complaint of his having without any Reason at all brought my Book into the Controversie concerning the Trinity But to go on If the preceding part of this Paragraph had nothing in it of Defence of this Proposition That those who offer at clear and distinct Ideas bid much fairer for Certainty than I do c. It is certain That what follows is altogether as remote from any such Defence Your Lordship says That Certainty by Sense Certainty by Reason and Certainty by Remembrance are to be distinguished from the Certainty under debate and to be shut out from it And upon this you spend the 11th 12th and 13th Pages Supposing it so how does this at all tend to the defence of this Proposition That those who offer at clear and distinct Ideas bid much fairer for Certainty than I do For whether Certainty by Sense by Reason and by Remembrance be or be not comprehended in the Certainty under debate this Proposition That those who offer at clear and distinct Ideas bid much fairer for Certainty than I do will not at all be confirmed or invalidated thereby The proving therefore That Certainty by Sense by Reason and by Remembrance is to be excluded from the Certainty under debate serving nothing to the defence of the Proposition to be defended and so having nothing to do here let us now consider it as a Proposition that your Lordship has a Mind to prove as serving to some other great purpose of your own or perhaps in some other View against my Book for you seem to lay no small stress upon it by your way of introducing it For you very solemnly set your self to prove That the Certainty under debate is the Certainty of Knowledge and that a Proposition whose Ideas are to be compared as to their agreement or disagreement is the proper object of this Certainty From whence your Lordship infers That therefore this Certainty is to be distinguished from a Certainty by Sense by Reason and by Remembrance But by what Logick this is infer'd is not easy to me to discover For if a Proposition whose Ideas are to be compared as to their agreement or disagreement be the proper object of the Certainty under debate If Propositions whose Certainty we arrive at by Sense Reason or Remembrance be of Ideas which may be compared as to their agreement or disagreement then they cannot be excluded from that Certainty which is to be had by so comparing those Ideas Unless they must be shut out for the very same Reason that others are taken in 1. Then as to Certainty by Sense or Propositions of that kind The Object of the Certainty under debate your Lordship owns is a Proposition whose Ideas are to be compared as to their agreement or disagreement The agreement or disagreement of the Ideas of a Proposition to be compared may be examined and perceived by Sense and is Certainty by Sense And therefore how this Certainty is to be distinguished and shut out from that which consists in the perceiving the agreement or disagreement of the Ideas of any Proposition will not be easy to shew unless one Certainty is distinguished from another by having that which makes the other to be Certainty viz. The perception of the agreement or disagreement of two Ideas as expressed in that Proposition v. g. May I not be certain that a Ball of Ivory that lies before my Eyes is not square And is it not my Sense of Seeing that makes me perceive the disagreement of that square Figure to that round Matter which are the Ideas expressed in that Proposition How then is Certainty by Sense excluded or distinguished from that knowledge which consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas 2. Your Lordship distinguishes the Certainty which consists in the perceiving the agreement or disagreement of Ideas as expressed in any Proposition from Certainty by Reason To have made good this distinction I humbly conceive you would have done well to have shewed that the agreement or disagreement of two Ideas could not be perceived by the intervention of a third which I and as I guess other People call Reasoning or knowing by Reason As for example cannot the sides of a given Triangle be known to be equal by the Intervention of two Circles whereof one of these sides is a common Radius To which 't is like your Lordship will answer what I find you do here about the knowledge of the existence of Substance by the intervention of the existence of Modes That you grant one may come to Certainty of Knowledge in the case but not a Certainty by Ideas but by a Consequence of Reason deduced from the Ideas we have by our Senses This my Lord you have said and thus you have more than once opposed Reason and Ideas as inconsistent which I should be very glad to see proved once after these several occasions I have given your Lordship by excepting against that Supposition But since the word Idea has the ill luck to be so constantly opposed by your Lordship to Reason Permit me if you please instead of it to put what I mean by it viz. the immediate objects of the Mind in thinking for that is it which I would signifie by the word Ideas and then let us see how your answer will run You grant that from the sensible Modes of Bodies we may come to a certain Knowledge that there are Bodily Substances but this you say is not a Certainty by the immediate objects of the Mind in thinking but by a consequence of Reason deduced from the immediate objects of the Mind in thinking which we have by our Senses When you can prove that we can have a Certainty by a consequence of Reason which Certainty shall not also be by the immediate objects of the Mind in using its Reason you may say such Certainty is not by Ideas but by Consequence of Reason But that I believe will not be till you can shew That the Mind can think or reason or know without immediate objects of thinking reasoning or knowing all which Objects as your Lordship knows I call Ideas You subjoin And this can never prove that we have Certainty by Ideas where the Ideas themselves are not clear and distinct The Question is not whether we can have Certainty by Ideas that are not clear and distinct Or whether my Words if by the Particle This you mean my Words set down in the foregoing Page prove any such thing which I humbly conceive they do not But whether Certainty
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
But when you knew what I meant though I expressed it improperly to put Questions in a Word of mine used in a sense different from mine which could not but be apt to insinuate to the Reader that my Notion of Certainty derogated from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or full assurance of Faith as the Scripture calls it is what I guess in another would make your Lordship ask again Is this fair and ingenuous dealing My Lord my Bible expresses the highest degree of Faith which the Apostle recommended to Believers in his time by full assurance But assurance of Faith though it be what assurance soever will by no means down with your Lordship in my writing You say I allow assurance of Faith God forbid I should do otherwise but then you ask Why not Certainty as well as Assurance My Lord I think it may be a Reason not misbecoming a poor Lay-man and such as he might presume would satisfie a Bishop of the Church of England that he found his Bible to speak so I find my Bible speaks of the Assurance of Faith but no â—here that I can remember of the Certainty of Faith though in many places it speaks of the Certainty of Knowledge and therefore I speak so too and shall not I think be condemned for keeping close to the Expressions of our Bible though the Scripture Language as it is does not so well serve your Lordship's turn in the present Case When I shall see in an authentick Translation of our Bible the Phrase chang'd it will then be time enough for me to change it too and call it not the Assurance but Certainty of Faith But till then I shall not be ashamed of it notwithstanding you reproach me with it by terming it The Assurance of Faith as I call it when you might as well have term'd it The Assurance of Faith as our Bibles call it It being plain that by Certainty I meant Knowledge and by Faith the act of Believing that these Words where you ask How comes the Certainty of Faith so hard a Point with me And where you tell me I will allow no Certainty of Faith may make no wrong impression in Mens Minds who may be apt to understand them of the Object and not meerly of the act of Believing I crave leave to say with Mr. Chillingworth That I do heartily acknowledge and believe the Articles of our Faith to be in themselves Truths as certain and infallible as the very common Principles of Geometry or Metaphysicks But that there is not required of us a Knowledge of them and an adherence to them as certain as that of Sense or Science and that for this Reason amongst others given both by Mr. Chillingworth and Mr. Hooker viz. That Faith is not Knowledge no more than three is four but eminently contained in it So that he that knows believes and something more but he that believes many times does not nay if he doth barely and meerly believe he doth never know These are Mr. Chillingworth's own Words That this Assurance of Faith may approach very near to Certainty and not come short of it in a sure and steady influence on the Mind I have so plainly declar'd that no body I think can question it In my Chapter of Reason which has receiv'd the honour of your Lordship's Animadversions I say of some Propositions wherein Knowledge i. e. in my Sense Certainty fails us That their probability is so clear and strong that Assent as necessarily follows it as Knowledge does Demonstration Does your Lordship ascribe any greater Certainty than this to an Article of meer Faith if you do not we are it seems agreed in the thing and so all that you have so emphatically said about it is but to correct a mistake of mine in the English Tongue if it prove to be one A weighty Point and well worth your Lordship's bestowing so many Pages upon I say meer Faith because though a Man may be a Christian who meerly believes that there is a God yet that is not an Article of meer Faith because it may be demonstrated that there is a God and so may certainly be known Your Lordship goes on to ask Have not all Mankind who have talked of Matters of Faith allowed a Certainty of Faith as well as a Certainty of Knowledge To answer a question concerning what all Mankind who have talked of Faith have done may be within the reach of your great Learning As for me my reading reaches not so far The Apostles and the Evangelists I can answer have talked of Matters of Faith but I do not find in my Bible that they have any where spoke for 't is of speaking here the Question is of the Certainty of Faith and what they allow which they do not speak of I cannot tell I say in my Bible meaning the English Translation used in our Church though what all Mankind who speak not of Faith in English can do towards the deciding of this Question I do not see it being about the signification of an English word And whether in propriety of speech it can be applied to Faith can only be decided by those who understand English which all Mankind who have talked of of Matters of Faith I humbly conceive did not To prove that Certainty in English may be applied to Faith you say That among the Romans it was opposed to doubting and for that you bring this Latin Sentence Nil tam certum est quam quod de dubio certum Answ. Certum among the Romans might be opposed to doubting and yet not be applied to Faith because Knowledge as well as Believing is opposed to doubting and therefore unless it had pleased your Lordship to have quoted the Author out of which this Latin Sentence is taken one cannot tell whether Certum be not in it spoken of a thing known and not of a thing believed though if it were so I humbly conceive it would not prove what you say viz. That it i. e. the word Certainty for to that it must refer here or to nothing that I understand was among the Romans applied to Faith for as I take it they never used the English word Certainty and though it be true that the English word Certainty be taken from the Latin word Certus yet that therefore Certainty in English is used exactly in the same sense that Certus is in Latin that I think you will not say for then Certainty in English must signifie Purpose and Resolution of Mind for to that Certus is applied in Latin You are pleased here to tell me That in my former Letter I said That if we knew the Original of Words we should be much helped to the Ideas they were first applied to and made to stand for I grant it true nor shall I unsay it here For I said not that a Word that had its Original in one Language kept always exactly the same Signification in
another Language into which it was from thence transplanted But if you will give me leave to remind you of it I remember that you my Lord say in the same place That little weight is to be laid upon a bare Grammatical Etymology when a Word is used in another sense by the best Authors And I think you could not have brought a more proper instance to verifie that saying than that which you produce here But pray my Lord why so far about Why are we sent to the antient Romans Why must we consult which is no easie task all Mankind who have talked of Faith to know whether Certainty be properly used for Faith or no when to determine it between your Lordship and Me there is so sure a Remedy and so near at hand It is but for you to say wherein Certainty consists This when I gently offer'd to your Lordship in my first Letter you interpreted it to be a design to draw you out of your way I am sorry my Lord you should think it out of your way to put an end a short end to a Controversie which you think of such moment Methinks it should not be out of your way with one blow finally to overthrow an Assertion which you think to be of dangerous consequence to that Article of Faith which your Lordship has endeavoured to defend I proposed the same again where I say For this there is a very easie Remedy It is but for your Lordship to set aside this Definition of Knowledge by giving us a better and this danger is over But you choose rather to have a Controversie with my Book for having it in it and to put me upon the Defence of it This is so express that your taking no notice of it puts me at a loss what to think To say that a Man so great in Letters does not know wherein Certainty consists is a greater presumption than I will be guilty of and yet to think that you do know and will not tell is yet harder Who can think or will dare to say That your Lordship so much concerned for the Articles of Faith and engaged in this dispute with me by your duty for the preservation of them should choose to keep up a Controversie with me rather than remove that danger which my wrong Notion of Certainty threatens to the Articles of Faith For my Lord since the Question is moved and it is brought by your Lordship to a publick Dispute wherein Certainty consists a great many knowing no better may take up with what I have said and rather than have no Notion of Certainty at all will stick by mine till a better be shew'd them And if mine tends to Scepticism as you say and you will not furnish them with one that does not what is it but to give way to Scepticism and let it quietly prevail on Men as either having my Notion of Certainty or none at all Your Lordship indeed says something in excuse in your 75th Page which that my Answer may be in the proper place shall be consider'd when we come there Your Lordship declares That you are utterly against any private Mints of Words I know not what the Publick may do for your particular Satisfaction in the Case but till publick Mints of Words are erected I know no Remedy for it but that you must patiently suffer this matter to go on in the same course that I think it has gone in ever since Language has been in use Here in this Island as far as my knowledge reaches I do not find that ever since the Saxons time in all the alterations that have been made in our Language that any one Word or Phrase has had its Authority from the Great Seal or passed by Act of Parliament When the dazling Metaphor of the Mint and new mill'd Words c. which mightily as it seems delighted your Lordship when you were writing that Paragraph will give you leave to consider this matter plainly as it is you will find that the Coining of Mony in publickly authoriz'd Mints affords no manner of Argument against private Mens medling in the introducing new or changing the signification of old Words every one of which alterations always has its rise from some private Mint The Case in short is this Mony by vertue of the Stamp received in the publick Mint which vouches its intrinsick Worth has authority to pass This use of the publick Stamp would be lost if private Men were suffer'd to offer Mony stamp'd by themselves On the contrary Words are offer'd to the Publick by every private Man Coined in his private Mint as he pleases but 't is the receiving of them by others their very passing that gives them their Authority and Currancy and not the Mint they come out of Horace I think has given a true account of this matter in a Country very jealous of any Usurpation upon the publick Authority Multa renascentur quae jam cecidere cadentque Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula si volet usus Quem penes arbitrium jus norma loquendi But yet whatever change is made in the signification or credit of any word by publick use this change has always its beginning in some private Mint so Horace tells us it was in the Roman Language quite down to his time Ego cur acquirere pauca Si possum invideor quum lingua Catonis Enni Sermonem patrium ditaverit nova rerum Nomina protulerit Licuit semperque licebit Signatum praesente nota procudere nomen Here we see Horace expresly says That private Mints of Words were always Licensed and with Horace I humbly conceive so they will always continue how utterly soever your Lordship may be against them And therefore he that offers to the Publick new mill'd Words from his own private Mint is not always in that so bold an Invader of the publick Authority as you would make him This I say not to excuse my self in the present Case for I deny that I have at all changed the signification of the word Certainty And therefore if you had pleased you might my Lord have spared your saying on this Occasion That it seems our old Words must not now pass in the current Sense And those Persons assume too much Authority to themselves who will not suffer common Words to pass in their general acceptation and other things to the same purpose in this Paragraph till you had proved that in strict propriety of speech it could be said That a Man was certain of that which he did not know but only believed If you had had time in the heat of Dispute to have made a little Reflection on the use of the English word Certainty in strict Speaking perhaps your Lordship would not have been so forward to have made my using it only for precise Knowledge so enormous an impropriety at least you would not have accused it of weakening the Credibility
of any Article of Faith 'T is true indeed People commonly say they are certain of what they barely Believe without doubting But 't is as true that they as commonly say that they Know it too But no Body from thence concludes that Believing is Knowing As little can they conclude from the like vulgar way of Speaking that Believing is Certainty All that is meant thereby is no more but this that the full assurance of their Faith as steadily determins their assent to the imbracing of that Truth as if they actually knew it But however such Phrases as these are used to shew the steadiness and assurance of their Faith who thus Speak yet they alter not the propriety of our Language which I think appropriates Certainty only to Knowledge when in strict and philosophical Discourse it is upon that account contradistinguished to Faith as in this case here your Lordship knows it is whereof there is an express Evidence in my first Letter where I say That I speak of Belief and your Lordship of Certainty and that I meant Belief and not Certainty Your Lordship says Certainty is common to both Knowledge and Faith unless I think it impossible to be certain upon any Testimony whatsoever I think it is possible to be certain upon the Testimony of God for that I suppose you mean where I know that it is the Testimony of God because in such a Case that Testimony is capable not only to make me believe but if I consider it right to make me know the thing to be so and so I may be certain For the veracity of God is as capable of making me know a Proposition to be true as any other way of Proof can be and therefore I do not in such a case barely Believe but know such a Proposition to be true and attain Certainty The sum of your Accusation is drawn up thus That I have appropriated Certainty to the perception of the agreement of disagreement of Ideas in any Proposition and now I find this will not hold as to Articles of Faith and therefore I will allow no Certainty of Faith which you think is not for the advantage of my Cause The truth of matter of Fact is in short this That I have placed Knowledge in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas This definition of Knowledge your Lordship said might be of dangerous Consequence to that Article of Faith which you have endeavoured to defend This I denied and gave this Reason for it viz. That a Definition of Knowledge whether a good or bad true or false Definition could not be of ill or any Consequence to an Article of Faith Because a definition of Knowledge which was one Act of the Mind did not at all concern Faith which was another Act of the Mind quite distinct from it To this then which was the Proposition in Question between us your Lordship I humbly conceive should have answered But instead of that your Lordship by the use of the word Certainty in a Sense that I used it not for you knew I used it only for Knowledge would represent me as having strange Notions of Faith Whether this be for the Advantage of your Cause your Lordship will do well to consider Upon such a use of the word Certainty in a different Sense from what I use it in the force of all your Lordship says under your first Head contained in the two or three next Paragraphs depends as I think for I must own Pardon my Dulness that I do not clearly comprehend the force of what your Lordship there says And it will take up too many Pages to examin it Period by Period In short therefore I take your Lordship's meaning to be this That there are some Articles of Faith viz. the fundamental Principles of natural Religion which Mankind may attain to a Certainty in by Reason without Revelation which because a Man that proceeds upon my Grounds cannot attain to Certainty in by Reason their credibility to him when they are considered as purely matters of Faith will be weakened Those which your Lordship instances in are the Being of a God Providence and the Rewards and Punishments of a future State This is the way as I humbly conceive your Lordship takes here to prove my Grounds of Certainty for so you call my definition of Knowledge to be of dangerous Consequence to the Articles of Faith To avoid Ambiguity and Confusion in the examining this Argument of your Lordship's the best way I humbly conceive will be to lay by the term Certainty which your Lordship and I using in different Senses is the less fit to make what we say to one another clearly understood and instead thereof to use the term Knowledge which with me your Lordship knows is equivalent Your Lordship's Proposition then as far as it has any opposition to me is this That if Knowledge be supposed to consist in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas a Man cannot attain to the Knowledge that these Propositions viz. That there is a God a Providence and Rewards and Punishments in a future State are true and therefore the credibility of these Articles consider'd purely as matters of Faith will be weakened to him Wherein there are these Things to be proved by your Lordship 1. That upon my grounds of Knowledge i. e. upon a supposition that Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas we cannot attain to the Knowledge of the Truth of either of those Propositions viz. That there is a God Providence and Rewards and Punishments in a future State 2. Your Lordship is to prove That the not knowing the Truth of any Proposition lessens the credibility of it which in short amounts to this that want of Knowledge lessens Faith in any Proposition proposed This is the Proposition to be proved if your Lordship uses Certainty in the Sense I use it i. e. for Knowledge in which only use of it will it here bear upon me But since I find your Lordship in these two or three Paragraphs to use the word Certainty in so uncertain a Sense as sometimes to signifie Knowledge by it and sometimes Believing in general i. e. any degree of believing give me leave to add that if your Lordship means by these Words Let us suppose a Person by natural Reason to attain to a Certainty as to the being of a God c. i. e. attain to a belief that there is a God c. or the Souls Immortality I say if you take Certainty in such a Sense then it will be incumbent upon your Lordship to prove That if a Man finds the natural Reason whereupon he entertained the belief of a God or of the immortality of the Soul uncertain that will weaken the credibility of those fundamental Articles as matters of Faith or which is in effect the same That the weakness of the credibility of any article of
Faith from Reason weakens the credibility of it from Revelation For 't is this which these following Words of yours import 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 To prove the first of these Propositions viz. That upon the supposition that Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement of Ideas we cannot attain to the knowledge of the truth of this Proposition that there is a God Your Lordship urges that I have said That no Idea proves the existence of the Thing without it self which Argument reduced to form will stand thus If it be true as I say that no Idea proves the existence of the thing without it self then upon the supposition that Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas we cannot attain to the knowledge of the truth of this Proposition that there is a God Which Argument so manifestly proves not that there needs no more to be said to it than to desire that consequence to be proved Again as to the immortality of the Soul your Lordship urges that I have said that I cannot know but that matter may think therefore upon my ground of Knowledge i. e. upon a supposition that Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas there is an end of the Souls Immortality This consequence I must also desire your Lordship to prove Only I crave leave by the by to point out some things in these Paragraphs too remarkable to be passed over without any Notice One is That you suppose a Man is made certain upon my general grounds of Certainty i. e. knows by the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas that there is a God and yet upon a farther examination of my method he finds that the way of Ideas will not do Here my Lord if by my grounds of Certainty my Method and my way of Ideas you mean one and the same thing then your Words will have a consistency and tend to the same point But then I must beg your Lordship to consider that your Supposition carries a Contradiction in it viz. That your Lordship supposes that by my Grounds my Method and my way of Certainty a Man is made Certain and not made Certain that there is a God If your Lordship means here by my grounds of Certainty my Method and my way of Ideas different things as it seems to me you do then whatever your Lordship may suppose here it makes nothing to the Point in Hand which is to shew that by this my ground of Certainty viz. That Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas a Man first attains to a Knowledge that there is a God and afterwards by the same grounds of Certainty he comes to lose the Knowledge that there is a God which to me seems little less than a Contradiction 'T is likely your Lordship will say you mean no such thing for you alledge this Proposition that no Idea proves the existence of any thing without it self and give that as an Instance that my way of Ideas will not do i. e. will not prove the being of a God 'T is true your Lordship does so But withal my Lord 't is as true that this Proposition supposing it to be mine for it is not here set down in my Words contains not my method or way or notion of Certainty though 't is in that Sense alone that it can here be useful to your Lordship to call it my method or the way by Ideas Your Lordship undertakes to shew That my defining Knowledge to consist in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas weakens the credibility of this fundamental Article of Faith that there is a God what is your Lordship's Proof of it Just this The saying that no Idea proves the existence of the thing without it self will not do Ergo the saying that Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas weakens the credibility of this fundamental Article This my Lord seems to me no Proof and all that I can find that is offered to make it a Proof is only your calling these Propositions my general grounds of Certainty my method of Proceeding the way of Ideas and my own Principles in point of Reason as if that made these two Propositions the same thing and whatsoever were a consequence of one may be charged as a consequence of the other though it be visible that though the latter of these be never so false or never so far from being a Proof of a God yet it will by no means thence follow that the former of them viz. That Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas weakens the credibility of that fundamental Article But 't is but for your Lordship to call them both the way of Ideas and that is enough That I may not be accused by your Lordship for unfair or disingenuous dealing for representing this Matter so I shall here set down your Lordship's Words at large Let us now suppose a Person by natural Reason to attain to a Certainty as to the Being of God and Immortality of the Soul and he proceeds upon J. L's general grounds of Certainty from the agreement or disagreement of Ideas and so from the Ideas of God and the Soul he is made certain of these two Points before mention'd But let us again suppose that such a Person upon a farther Examination of J. L's method of proceeding finds that the way of Ideas in these Cases will not do for no Idea proves the existence of the thing without it self no more than the Picture of a Man proves his Being or the Visions of a Dream make a true History which are J. L's own Expressions And for the Soul he cannot be certain but that Matter may think as J. L. affirms and then what becomes of the Soul's Immateriality and consequently Immortality from its Operations But for all this says J. L. his assurance of Faith remains firm on its own Basis. Now you appeal to any Man of Sense whether the finding of Vncertainty of his own Principles which he went upon in point of Reason doth not weaken the Credibility of these fundamental Articles when they are consider'd purely as 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 These are your Lordship 's own Words and now I appeal to any Man of Sense whether they contain any other Argument against my placing of Certainty as I do but this viz. A Man mistakes and thinks that this Proposition no Idea proves the existence of the thing without it self shews That in the way of Ideas one cannot prove a God Ergo
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
or am supposed to have said or to hold for that I ever said so I do not remember That Reason cannot perceive the connection between the Objects and the Ideas Ergo whoever holds that Knowledge consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas cannot have any assurance of Faith upon divine Revelation My Lord let that Proposition viz. That Reason cannot perceive the connection between the Objects and the Ideas be mine as much as your Lordship pleases and let it be as inconsistent as you please with the assurance of Faith upon divine Revelation How will it follow from thence that the placing of Certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas is the Cause that there cannot be any such thing as the assurance of Faith upon divine Revelation to any Body Though I who hold Knowledge to consist in the perception of the agreement and disagreement of Ideas have the Misfortune to run into this Error viz. That Reason cannot perceive the connection between the Objects and the Ideas which is inconsistent with the assurance of Faith upon divine Revelation yet it is not necessary that all others who with me hold that Certainty consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas should also hold That Reason cannot perceive the connection between the Objects and the Ideas or that I my self should always hold it Unless your Lordship will say that whoever places Certainty as I do in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas must necessarily hold all the Errors that I do which are inconsistent with or weaken the belief of any Article of Faith and hold them incorrigibly Which has as much consequence as if I should argue that because your Lordship who lives at Worcester does sometime mistake in quoting me therefore no Body who lives at Worcester can quote my Words right or your Lordship can never mend your wrong Quotations For my Lord the holding Certainty to consist in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas is no more a necessary cause of holding those erroneous Propositions which your Lordship imputes to me as weakening the credibility of the mentioned Articles of Faith than the place of your Lordship's dwelling is a necessary cause of wrong Quoting I shall not here go about to trouble your Lordship with Divining again what may be your Lordship's precise Meaning in several of the Propositions contained in the Passage above set down especially that remarkably ambiguous and to me obscure one viz. There must be a Certainty as to Sense and Tradition I fear I have wasted too much of your Lordship's and my Reader 's time in that imployment already and there would be no end if I should endeavour to explain whatever I am at a loss about the determined Sense of in any of your Lordship's Expressions Only I will crave leave to beg my Reader to observe That in this first Head which we are upon your Lordship has used the Terms Certain and Certainty near Twenty times but without determining in any of them whether you mean Knowledge or the full assurance of Faith or any degree of Believing though it be evident that in these Pages your Lordship uses Certainty for all these Three Which ambiguous use of the main Word in that Discourse cannot but render your Lordship's Sense clear and perspicuous and your Argument very cogent and no doubt will do so to any one who will be but at the pains to reduce that one Word to a clear determined Sense all through these few Paragraphs Your Lordship says Have not all Mankind who have talked of matters of Faith allowed a Certainty of Faith as well as a Certainty of Knowledge Answ. But did ever any one of all that Mankind allow it as a tolerable way of speaking that believing in general for which your Lordship has used it which contains in it the lowest degree of Faith should be called Certainty Could he who said I Believe Lord help my Vnbelief or any one who is weak in Faith or of little Faith be properly be said to be certain or de dubio certus of what he believes but with a weak degree of Assent I shall not question what your Lordship 's great Learning may Authorize But I imagine every one hath not skill or will not assume the liberty to speak so If a Witness before a Judge asked upon his Oath whether he were certain of such a thing should answer yes he was certain and upon farther demand should give this account of his Certainty That he believed it would he not make the Court and Auditors believe strangely of him For to say that a Man is certain when he barely believes and that perhaps with no great Assurance of Faith is to say that he is certain where he owns an Vncertainty For he that says he barely believes acknowledges that he Assents to a Proposition as true upon bare probability And where any one Assents thus to any Proposition his Assent excludes not a possibility that it may be otherwise and wherein any one's Judgment there is a possibility to be otherwise there one cannot deny but there is some Uncertainty and the less cogent the Probabilities appear upon which he Assents the greater the Uncertainty So that all barely probable Proofs which procure Assent always containing some visible possibility that it may be otherwise or else it would be demonstration and consequently the weaker the Probability appears the weaker the Assent and the more the Uncertainty It thence follows that where there is such a mixture of Uncertainty there a Man is so far uncertain and therefore to say That a Man is certain where he barely believes or assents but weakly though he does believe seems to me to say That he is certain and uncertain together But though bare Belief always include some degrees of Uncertainty yet it does not therefore necessarily include any degree of wavering the evidently strong probability may as steadily determine the Man to Assent to the Truth or make him take the Proposition for true and act accordingly as Knowledge makes him see or be certain that it is true And he that doth so as to Truths reveal'd in the Scripture will shew his Faith by his Works and has for ought I can see all the Faith necessary to a Christian and requir'd to Salvation My Lord when I consider the length of my Answer here to these few Pages of your Lordship's I cannot but bemoan my own dulness and own my unfitness to deal with so learned an Adversary as your Lordship in Controversie For I know not how to answer but to a Proposition of a determin'd Sense Whilst it is vague and uncertain in a general or equivocal use of any of the Terms I cannot tell what to say to it I know not but such comprehensive ways of expressing ones self may do well enough in declamation but in reasoning there can be no judgment made
till one can get to some positive determined Sense of the Speaker If your Lordship had pleased to have condescended so far to my low Capacity as to have delivered your meaning here determined to any one of the Senses above set down or any other that you may have in these Words I gather'd them from it would have saved me a great deal of writing and your Lordship loss of time in reading I should not say this here to your Lordship were it only in this one place that I find this inconvenience It is every where in all your Lordship's Reasonings that my want of Understanding causes me this difficulty and against my Will multiplies the words of my Answer For notwithstanding all that great deal that I have already said to these few Pages of your Lordship's yet my defence is not clear and set in its due light unless I shew in particular of every one of those Propositions some whereof I admit as true others I deny as not so that it will not prove what is to be proved viz. That my placing of Knowledge in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas lessens the credibility of any Article of Faith which it had before Your Lordship having done with the Fundamental Articles of Natural Religion you come in the next place to those of Revelation to enquire as your Lordship says Whether those who embrace the Articles of Faith in the way of Ideas can retain their Certainty of those Articles when these Ideas are quitted What this Enquiry is I know not very well because I neither understand what it is to imbrace Articles of Faith in the way of Ideas nor know what your Lordship means by retaining their Certainty of those Articles when these Ideas are quitted But 't is no strange thing for my short Sight not always distinctly to discern your Lordship's meaning Yet here I presume to know that this is the thing to be proved viz. That my definition of Knowledge does not leave to the Articles of the Christian Faith the same credibility they had before The Articles your Lordship instances in are 1. The Resurrection of the dead And here your Lordship proceeds just in the same method of arguing as you did in the former your Lordship brings several Passages concerning Identity out of my Essay which you suppose inconsistent with the belief of the Resurrection of the same Body and this is your Argument to prove that my defining of Knowledge to consist in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas alters the Foundations of this Article of Faith and leaves it not the same credibility it had before Now my Lord granting all that your Lordship has here quoted out of my Chapter of Identity and diversity to be as false as your Lordship pleases and as inconsistent as your Lordship would have it with the Article of the Resurrection from the dead nay granting all the rest of my whole Essay to be false how will it follow from thence that the placing Certainty in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas weakens the credibility of this Article of Faith That the dead shall rise Let it be that I who place Certainty in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas am guilty of Errors that weaken the credibility of this Article of Faith others who place Certainty in the same Perception may not run into those Errors and so not have their belief of this Article at all shaken Your Lordship therefore by all the long discourse you have made here against my Notion of Personal Identity to prove that it weakens the credibility of the Resurrection of the dead should you have proved it never so clearly has not I humbly conceive said therein any one word towards the proving That my definition of Knowledge weakens the credibility of this Article of Faith For this my Lord is the Proposition to be proved as your Lordship cannot but remember if you please to recollect what is said in your 21st and following Pages and what in the 95th Page of my second Letter quoted by your Lordship it was designed as an answer to And so I proceed to the next Articles of Faith your Lordship instances in Your Lordship says 2. The next Articles of Faith which my Notion of Ideas is inconsistent with are no less than those of the Trinity and the Incarnation of our Saviour Where I must humbly crave leave to observe to your Lordship that in this second Head here your Lordship has changed the Question from my Notion of Certainty to my Notion of Ideas For the Question as I have often had occasion to observe to your Lordship is Whether my Notion of Certainty i. e. my placing of Certainty in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas alters the Foundation and lessens the credibility of any Article of Faith This being the Question between your Lordship and me ought I humbly conceive most especially to have been kept close to in this Article of the Trinity because 't was upon the account of my Notion of Certainty as prejudicial to the Doctrine of the Trinity that my Book was first brought into this Dispute But your Lordship offers nothing that I can find to prove That my definition of Knowledge or Certainty does any way lessen the credibility of either of the Articles here mentioned unless your insisting upon some supposed Errors of mine about Nature and Person must be taken for proofs of this Proposition That my definition of Certainty lessens the credibility of the Articles of the Trinity and our Saviour's Incarnation And then the Answer I have already given to the same way of Argumentation used by your Lordship concerning the Articles of a God Revelation and the Resurrection I think may suffice Having as I beg leave to think shewn that your Lordship has not in the least proved this Proposition That the placing of Certainty in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas weakens the credibility of any one Article of Faith which was your former Accusation against this as your Lordship is pleased to call it new Method of Certainty of so dangerous consequence to that Article of Faith which your Lordship has endeavoured to defend and all that your terrible Representation of it being as I humbly conceive come to just nothing I come now to vindicate my Book from your new Accusation in your last Letter and to shew that you no more prove the Passages you alledge out of my Essay to have any inconsistency with the Articles of Christian Faith you oppose them to than you have proved by them That my definition of Knowledge weakens the credibility of any of those Articles 1. The Article of Christian Faith your Lordship begins with is that of the Resurrection of the dead and concerning that you say The Reason of believing the Resurrection of the same Body upon my Grounds is from the Idea of
and affirm That every one if he pleases may have a clear and distinct Idea of a Man to himself i. e. which he makes the word Man stand for Which if he makes known to others in his Discourse with them about Man all verbal Dispute will cease and he cannot be mistaken when he uses the term Man And if this were but done with most of the glittering Terms brandised in Disputes it would often be seen how little some Men have to say who with equivocal Words and Expressions make no small noise in Controversie Your Lordship concludes this part by saying Thus you have shew'd how inconsistent my way of Ideas is with true Certainty and of what use and necessity these general Principles of Reason are Answ. By the Laws of Disputation which in another place you express such a regard to one is bound not to change the Terms of the Question This I crave leave humbly to offer to your Lordship because as far as I have looked into Controversie I do not remember to have met with any one so apt shall I say to forget or change the question as your Lordship This my Lord I should not venture to say but upon very good Grounds which I shall be ready to give you an account of whenever you shall demand it of me One Example of it we have here you say you have shew'd how inconsistent my way of Ideas is with true Certainty and of what use and necessity these general Principles of Reason are My Lord if you please to look back to the 105th Page you will see what you there promised was to shew the difference of my method of Certainty by Ideas and the method of Certainty by Reason And particularly in the Pages between that and this the Certainty of Principles which you say is one of those two Things wherein the way of Certainty by Reason lies Instead of that your Lordship concludes here that you have shew'd two Things 1. How inconsistent my way of Ideas is with true Certainty Whereas it should be to shew the inconsistency or difference of my method of Certainty by Ideas and the method of Certainty by Reason Which are Two very different Propositions And before you undertake to shew That my method of Certainty is inconsistent with true Certainty it will be necessary for you to define and tell us wherein true Certainty consists which your Lordship hitherto has shewn no great forwardness to do 2. Another thing which you say you have done is That you have shewn of what use and necessity these general Principles of Reason are Answ. Whether by these General Principles you mean those Propositions which you set down p. 108. and call there Maxims or any other Propositions which you have not any where set down I cannot tell But whatsoever they are that you mean here by these I know not how the usefulness of these your General Principles be they what they will came to be a Question between your Lordship and me here If you have a Mind to shew any mistakes of mine in my Chapter of Maxims which you say you think extraordinary for the Design of it I shall not be unwilling to be rectified but that the usefulness of Principles is not what is here under debate between us I with Submission affirm That which your Lordship is here to prove is That the Certainty of Principles which is the way of Certainty by Reason is different from my way of Certainty by Ideas Upon the whole I crave leave to say in your Words That thus I have I humbly conceive made it appear that you have not shewed any difference much less any inconsistency of my method of Certainty by Ideas and the method of Certainty by Reason in that first Part which you assign of Certainty by Reason viz. Certainty of Principles I come now to the second Part which you assign of Certainty by Reason viz. Certainty of Deductions I only crave leave first to set down these Words in the latter end of your Discourse which we have been considering where your Lordship says you begin to think J. S. was in the right when he made me say That I had discoursed with very rational Men who denyed themselves to be Men Answ. I do not know what may be done by those who have such a Command over the Pronouns They and Them as to put they themselves for they I shall therefore desire my Reader to turn to that Passage of my Book and see whether he too can be so lucky as your Lordship and can with you begin to Think that by these Words Who have actually denyed that they i. e. Infants and Changelings are Men. I meant who actually denyed that they themselves were Men. Your Lordship to prove my method of Certainty by Ideas to be different from and inconsistent with your second Part of the Certainty by Reason which you say lies in the Certainty of Deductions begins thus That you come now to the Certainty of Reason in making Deductions and here you shall briefly lay down the Grounds of Certainty which the ancient Philosophers went upon and then compare my way of Ideas with them To which give me leave my Lord to Reply 1. That I humbly conceive it should have been Grounds of Certainty in making Deductions which the ancient Philosophers went upon or else they will be nothing to the Proposition which your Lordship has undertaken here to prove Now of the Certainty in making Deductions I see none of the Ancients produced by your Lordship who say any thing to shew wherein it consists but Aristotle Who as you say in his Method of infering one thing from another went upon this common Principle of Reason that what things agree in a Third agree among themselves And it so falls out That so far as he goes towards the shewing wherein the Certainty of Deductions consists he and I agree as is evident by what I say in my Essay And if Aristotle had gon any farther to shew how we are certain that those two Things agree with a Third he would have placed that Certainty in the Perception of that Agreement as I have done and then he and I should have perfectly agreed I presume to say if Aristotle had gon farther in this matter he would have placed our Knowledge or Certainty of the Agreement of any two Things in the Perception of their Agreement And let not any one from hence think I attribute too much to my self in saying That that accute and judicious Philosopher if he had gone farther in that matter would have done as I have done For if he omitted it I imagin it was not that he did not see it but that it was so Obvious and Evident that it appear'd superfluous to name it For who can doubt that the Knowledge or being Certain that any two Things agree consists in the Perception of their Agreement What else can it possibly consist in It is
to any Idea or thought belonged at all to Ideas In all the places you have produced out of my Essay concerning Matter Motion Time Duration and Light Which are those Ideas your Lordship is pleased to instance in to prove That I have confessed it of some I crave leave humbly to offer it to your Lordship that there is not any such Confession However you go on to prove it The Proposition then to be proved is That I confess that these are far from being self-evident Ideas 'T is necessary to set it down and carry it in our Minds for the Proposition to be proved is I find a very slippery thing and apt to slide out of the way Your Lordship's Proof is That according to me we can have no Intuition of these Things which are so Obvious to us and consequently we can have no self-evident Ideas of them The force of which Proof I confess I do not understand We have no Intuition of the obvious thing Matter and the obvious thing Motion Ergo we have no self-evident Ideas of them Granting that they are obvious Things and that obvious as they are we have as you express it no Intuition of them it will not follow from thence that we have no Intuition of the Ideas we signify by the names Matter and Motion and so have no self-evident Ideas of them For whoever has in his Mind an Idea which he makes the name Matter or Motion stand for has no doubt that Idea there and sees or has in your phrase an Intuition of it there and so has a self-evident Idea of it if Intuition according to your Lordship makes a self-evident Idea for of self-evident Ideas as I have before remarked I have said nothing nor made any such distinction as self-evident and not self-evident Ideas and if intuition of an Idea does not make a self-evident Idea the want of it is in vain brought here to prove the Idea of Matter or Motion not self-evident But your Lordship proceeds to Instances and your first Instance is in Matter and here for fear of mistaking let us remember what the Proposition to be proved is viz. That according to me we have no intuition as you call it of the Idea of Matter Your Lordship begins and tells me that I give this account of the Idea of Matter That it consists in a solid Substance every where the same Whereupon you tell me You would be glad to come to a certain Knowledge of these two things First The manner of the Cohesion of the parts of Matter and the Demonstration of the divisibility of it in the way of Ideas Answer It happened just as I feared the Proposition to be proved is slip'd already quite out of sight You own that I say Matter is a solid Substance every where the same This Idea which is the Idea I signifie by the Word Matter I have in my Mind and have an intuition of it there How then does this prove That according to me there can be no intuition of the Idea of Matter Leaving therefore this Proposition which was to be proved you bring places out of my Book to shew That we do not know wherein the Union and Cohesion of the parts of Matter consists and that the divisibility of Matter involves us in difficulties neither of which either is or proves That according to me we cannot have an intuition of the Idea of Matter which was the Proposition to be proved and seems quite forgotten during the three following Pages wholly imploied upon this Instance of Matter You ask indeed whether I can imagine That we have intuition into the Idea of Matter But those Words seem to me to signifie quite another thing than having an intuition of the Idea of Matter as appears by your Explication of them in these Words subjoined Or that it is possible to come to a Demonstration about it by the help of any intervening Ideas whereby it seems to me plain that by intuition into it your Lordship means Demonstration about it i. e. some Knowledge concerning Matter and not a bare view or intuition of the Idea you have of it And that your Lordship speaks of Knowledge concerning some affection of Matter in this and the following Question and not of the bare intuition of the Idea of Matter is farther evident from the Introduction of your two Questions wherein you say There are two things concerning Matter that you would be glad to come to a certain Knowledge of So that all that can follow or in your Sense of them does follow from my Words quoted by you is that I own That the Cohesion of its parts is an affection of Matter that is hard to be explained but from them it can neither be infer'd nor does your Lordship attempt to infer That any one cannot view or have an intuition of the Idea he has in his own Mind which he signifies to others by the Word Matter and that you did not make any such Inference from them is farther plain by your asking in the place above quoted not only whether I can imagine That it is possible to come to a Demonstration about it But your Lordship also adds By the help of any intervening Ideas For I do not think you demand a Demonstration by the help of intervening Ideas to make you to see i. e. have an intuition of your own Idea of Matter It would mis-become me to understand your Lordship in so strange a Sense for then you might have just Occasion to ask me again whether I could think you a Man of so little Sense I therefore suppose as your Words import That you demand a Demonstration by the help of intervening Ideas to shew you how the parts of that thing which you represent to your self by that Idea to which you give the name Matter Cohere together which is nothing to the question of the intuition of the Idea though to cover the change of the question as dextrously as might be intuition of the Idea is changed into intuition into the Idea as if there were no difference between looking upon a Watch and looking into a Watch i. e. between the Idea that taken from an obvious View I signifie by the name Watch and have in my Mind when I use the Word Watch and the being able to resolve any Question that may be proposed to me concerning the inward Make and Contrivance of a Watch. The Idea which taken from the outward visible parts I give the name Watch to the Idea I perceive or have an intuition of in my Mind equally whether or no I know any thing more of a Watch than what is represented in that Idea Upon this change of the question all that follows to the bottom of the next Page being to shew that from what I say it follows that there be many Difficulties concerning Matter which I cannot resolve many questions concerning it which I think cannot be demonstratively
should not have incur'd much Blame even where I had missed it This I perceive too late was the wrong way I should have kept my self still safe upon the reserve Had I learnt this Wisdom of Thrase in Terence and resolved with my self Hic ego ero post Principia perhaps I might have deserv'd the Commendation was given him Illuc est Sapere ut hos instruxit ipsus sibi cavit loco But I deserved to be soundly Corrected for not having profited by Reading so much as this comes to But to return to your Accusation here which altogether stands thus Why in a Chapter of Reason are the other two Senses neglected We might have expected here full Satisfaction as to the Principles of Reason as distinct from the Faculty but the Author of the Essay wholly avoids it What I guess these Words accuse me to have avoided I think I have shewn already that I did not avoid Before you conclude you say you must observe that I prove That Demonstration must be by Intuition in an extraordinary manner from the Sense of the Word He that will be at the Pains to read that Paragraph which you quote for it will see that I do not prove that it must be by Intuition because it is called Demonstration but that it is called Demonstration because it is by Intuition And as to the Propriety of it what your Lordship says in the following Words It would be most proper for ocular Demonstration or by the Finger will not hinder it from being proper also in mental Demonstration as long as the Perception of the Mind is properly expressed by seeing Against my observing that the Notation of the word Imported shewing or making to see your Lordship farther says Demonstration among some Philosophers signified only the conclusion of an Argument whereby we are brought from something we did perceive to something we did not which seems to me to agree with what I say in the Case viz. That by the agreement of Ideas which we do perceive we are brought to perceive the agreement of Ideas which before we did not perceive To which no doubt will be answered as in a like Case * Not by a way of Intuition but by a Deduction of Reason i. e. we perceive not in a way that affords us Intuition or a Sight but by Deductions of Reason wherein we see nothing Whereas my Lord I humbly conceive That the force of a Deduction of Reason consists in this That in each step of it we see what a Connection it has i. e. have an Intuition of the certain Agreement or Disagreement of the Ideas as in Demonstration or an Intuition or Perception that they have a probable or not so much as a probable Connection as in other Deductions of Reason You farther overthrow the necessity of intuitive Knowledge in every step of a Demonstration by the Authority of Aristotle who says Things that are self-evident cannot be Demonstrated And so say I too in several Places of my Essay When your Lordship can shew any Inconsistency between these two Propositions viz. That intuitive Knowledge is necessary in each step of a Demonstration and things that are self-evident cannot be Demonstrated then I shall own you have overthrown the necessity of Intuition in every step of a Demonstration by Reason as well as by Aristotle's Authority In the remainder of this Paragraph I meet with nothing but your Lordship finding Fault with some who in this Age have made use of Mathematical Demonstrations in Natural Philosophy Your Lordship 's two Reasons against this way of advancing Knowledge upon the sure Grounds of Mathematical Demonstration are these 1. That Des Cartes a Mathematical Man has been guilty of Mistakes in his System Answer When Mathematical Men will build Systems upon Fancy and not upon Demonstration they are as liable to Mistakes as others And that Des Cartes was not led into his Mistakes by Mathematical Demonstrations but for want of them I think has been Demonstrated by some of those Mathematicians who seem to be meant here 2. Your second Argument against accommodating Mathematicks to the nature of material things is That Mathematicians cannot be certain of the manner and degrees of force given to Bodies so far distant as the fixed Stars nor of the Laws of Motion in other Systems A very good Argument why they should not proceed Demonstratively in this our System upon Laws of Motion observed to be established here A Reason that may perswade us to put out our Eyes for fear they should mislead us in what we do see because there be things out of our sight 'T is great pity Aristotle had not understood Mathematicks as well as Mr. Newton and made use of it in Natural Philosophy with as good success His Example had then authorized the accommodating of it to Material things But 't is not to be ventured by a Man of this Age to go out of the Method which Aristotle has prescribed and which your Lordship out of him has set down in the following Pages as that which should be kept to For it is a dangerous Presumption to go out of a Tract chalked out by that supposed Dictator in the common Wealth of Letters though it led him to the Eternity of the World I say not this That I do not think him a very great Man he made himself so by not keeping precisely to beaten Tracts which servile Subjection of the Mind if we may take my Lord Bacon's Word for it kept the little Knowledge the World had from growing greater for more than a few Ages That the breaking loose from it in this Age is a Fault is not directly said but there is enough said to shew there is no great Approbation of such a Liberty Mathematicks in gross 't is plain are a grievance in Natural Philosophy and with Reason For Mathematical Proofs like Diamonds are hard as well as clear and will be touched with nothing but strict Reasoning Mathematical Proofs are out of the reach of Topical Arguments and are not to be attacked by the equivocal use of Words or Declamation that make so great a part of other Discourses nay even of Controversies How well you have proved my way by Ideas guilty of any tendency to Scepticism the Reader will see but this I will crave leave to say That the secluding Mathematical Reasoning from Philosophy and instead thereof reducing it to Aristotelian Rules and Sayings will not be thought to be much in favour of Knowledge against Scepticism Your Lordship indeed says You did not by any means take off from the laudable Endeavours of those who have gone about to reduce Natural Speculations to Mathematical Certainty What can we understand by this but your Lordship 's great Complaisance and Moderation who notwithstanding you spend four Pages to shew that the Endeavours of Mathematical Men to accommodate the Principles of that Science to the Nature of
this you undertake to prove from my own Principles that we may be certain That the first eternal Thinking Being or Omnipotent Spirit cannot if he would give to certain Systems of created sensible Matter put together as he sees fit some degrees of Sense Perception and Thought For this my Lord is my Proposition and this the utmost that I have said concerning the Power of Thinking in Matter Your first Argument I take to be this That according to me the Knowledge we have being by our Ideas and our Idea of Matter in general being a solid Substance and our Idea of Body a solid extended figured Substance if I admit Matter to be capable of Thinking I confound the Idea of Matter with the Idea of a Spirit To which I answer No no more than I confound the Idea of Matter with the Idea of an Horse when I say that Matter in general is a solid extended Substance and that an Horse is a material Animal or an extended solid Substance with Sense and Spontaneous Motion The Idea of Matter is an extended solid Substance where-ever there is such a Substance there is Matter and the Essence of Matter whatever other Qualities not contained in that Essence it shall please God to superadd to it For example God creates an extended solid Substance without the superadding any thing else to it and so we may consider it at rest To some parts of it he superadds Motion but it has still the Essence of Matter Other parts of it he frames into Plants with all the Excellencies of Vegetation Life and Beauty which is to he found in a Rose or a Peach-tree c. above the Essence of Matter in general but it is still but Matter To other parts he adds Sense and Spontaneous Motion and those other Properties that are to be found in an Elephant Hitherto 't is not doubted but the Power of God may go and that the Properties of a Rose a Peach or an Elephant superadded to Matter change not the Properties of Matter but Matter is in these things Matter still But if one venture to go one step further and say God may give to Matter Thought Reason and Volition as well as Sense and Spontaneous Motion there are Men ready presently to limit the Power of the Omnipotent Creator and tell us he cannot do it because it destroys the Essence or changes the essential Properties of Matter To make good which Assertion they have no more to say but that Thought and Reason are not included in the Essence of Matter I grant it but whatever Excellency not contained in its Essence be superadded to Matter it does not destroy the Essence of Matter if it leaves it an extended solid Substance where-ever that is there is the Essence of Matter and if every thing of greater Perfection superadded to such a Substance destroys the Essence of Matter what will become of the Essence of Matter in a Plant or an Animal whose Properties far exceed those of a meer extended solid Substance But 't is farther urged That we cannot conceive how Matter can Think I grant it but to argue from thence that God therefore cannot give to Matter a Faculty of Thinking is to say God's Omnipotency is limited to a narrow Compass because Man's Understanding is so and brings down God's infinite Power to the size of our Capacities If God can give no Power to any parts of Matter but what Men can account for from the Essence of Matter in general If all such Qualities and Properties must destroy the Essence or change the essential Properties of Matter which are to our Conceptions above it and we cannot conceive to be the natural Consequence of that Essence it is plain that the Essence of Matter is destroyed and its essential Properties changed in most of the sensible parts of this our System For 't is visible that all the Planets have Revolutions about certain remote Centers which I would have any one explain or make conceiveable by the bare Essence or natural Powers depending on the Essence of Matter in general without something added to that Essence which we cannot conceive for the moving of Matter in a crooked Line or the attraction of Matter by Matter is all that can be said in the Case either of which it is above our Reach to derive from the Essence of Matter or Body in general though one of these two must unavoidably be allowed to be superadded in this instance to the Essence of Matter in general The Omnipotent Creator advised not with us in the making of the World and his ways are not the less Excellent because they are past our finding out In the next place the vegetable part of the Creation is not doubted to be wholly Material and yet he that will look into it will observe Excellencies and Operations in this part of Matter which he will not find contained in the Essence of Matter in general nor be able to conceive how they can be produced by it And will he therefore say That the Essence of Matter is destroyed in them because they have Properties and Operations not contained in the essential Properties of Matter as Matter nor explicable by the Essence of Matter in general Let us advance one step farther and we shall in the Animal World meet with yet greater Perfections and Properties no ways explicable by the Essence of Matter in general If the Omnipotent Creator had not superadded to the Earth which produced the irrational Animals Qualities far surpassing those of the dull dead Earth out of which they were made Life Sense and Spontaneous Motion nobler Qualities than were before in it it had still remained rude senseless Matter and if to the Individuals of each Species he had not superadded a Power of Propagation the Species had perished with those Individuals But by these Essences or Properties of each Species superadded to the Matter which they were made of the Essence or Properties of Matter in general were not destroyed or changed any more than any thing that was in the Individuals before was destroyed or changed by the Power of Generation superadded to them by the first Benediction of the Almighty In all such Cases the superinducement of greater Perfections and nobler Qualities destroys nothing of the Essence or Perfections that were there before unless there can be shewed a manifest Repugnancy between them but all the Proof offered for that is only That we cannot conceive how Matter without such superadded Perfections can produce such Effects which is in Truth no more than to say Matter in general or every part of Matter as Matter has them not but is no Reason to prove that God if he pleases cannot superadd them to some parts of Matter unless it can be proved to be a Contradiction that God should give to some parts of Matter Qualities and Perfections which Matter in general has not though we cannot conceive how Matter is invested with them or how it
Particle of it having some bulk has its Parts connected by ways inconceiveable to us So that all the Difficulties that are raised against the Thinking of Matter from our Ignorance or narrow Conceptions stand not at all in the way of the Power of God if he pleases to ordain it so nor proves any thing against his having actually endued some parcels of Matter so disposed as he thinks fit with a Faculty of Thinking till it can be shewn that it contains a Contradiction to suppose it Though to me Sensation be comprehended under Thinking in general yet in the foregoing Discourse I have spoke of Sense in Brutes as distinct from Thinking Because your Lordship as I remember speaks of Sense in Brutes But here I take liberty to observe That if your Lordship allows Brutes to have Sensation it will follow either that God can and doth give to some parcels of Matter a Power of Perception and Thinking or that all Animals have immaterial and consequently according to your Lordship immortal Souls as well as Men and to say that Fleas and Mites c. have immortal Souls as well as Men will possibly be looked on as going a great way to serve an Hypothesis and as it would not very well agree with what your Lordship says 2 Answ. p. 64. to the Words of Solomon quoted out of Eccles. C. 3. I have been pretty large in making this Matter plain that they who are so forward to bestow hard Censures or Names on the Opinions of those who differ from them may consider whether sometimes they are not more due to their own And that they may be perswaded a little to temper that Heat which supposing the Truth in their current Opinions gives them as they think a Right to lay what Imputations they please on those who would fairly examin the Grounds they stand upon For talking with a Supposition and Insinuations that Truth and Knowledge nay and Religion too stands and falls with their Systems is at best but an imperious way of begging the Question and assuming to themselves under the pretence of Zeal for the Cause of God a Title to Infallibility It is very becoming that Mens Zeal for Truth should go as far as their Proofs but not go for Proofs themselves He that attacks received Opinions with any thing but fair Arguments may I own be justly suspected not to mean well nor to be led by the Love of Truth but the same may be said of him too who so defends them An Error is not the better for being common nor Truth the worse for having lain neglected And if it were put to the Vote any where in the World I doubt as things are managed whether Truth would have the Majority at least whilst the Authority of Men and not the examination of Things must be its Measure The imputation of Scepticism and those broad Insinuations to render what I have writ suspected so frequent as if that were the great Business of all this Pains you have been at about me has made me say thus much my Lord rather as my Sense of the way to establish Truth in its full Force and Beauty than that I think the World will need to have any thing said to it to make it distinguish between your Lordship's and my Design in Writing which therefore I securely leave to the Judgment of the Reader and return to the Argument in Hand What I have above said I take to be a full Answer to all that your Lordship would infer from my Idea of Matter of Liberty and of Identity and from the power of Abstracting You ask How can my Idea of Liberty agree with the Idea that Bodies can operate only by Motion and Impulse Answ. By the omnipotency of God who can make all things agree that involve not a Contradiction 'T is true I say That Bodies operate by impulse and nothing else And so I thought when I writ it and yet can conceive no other way of their operation But I am since convinced by the Judicious Mr. Newton's incomparable Book that 't is too bold a Presumption to limit God's Power in this Point by my narrow Conceptions The gravitation of Matter towards Matter by ways unconceivable to me is not only a Demonstration that God can if he pleases put into Bodies Powers and ways of Operation above what can be derived from our Idea of Body or can be explained by what we know of Matter but also an unquestionable and every where visible Instance that he has done so And therefore in the next Edition of my Book I shall take care to have that Passage rectified As to Self-consciousness your Lordship asks What is there like Self-consciousness in Matter Nothing at all in Matter as Matter But that God cannot bestow on some parcels of Matter a Power of Thinking and with it Self-consciousness will never be proved by asking How is it possible to apprehend that meer Body should perceive that it doth perceive The weakness of our Apprehension I grant in the Case I confess as much as you please that we cannot conceive how a solid no nor how an unsolid created Substance thinks but this weakness of our Apprehensions reaches not the Power of God whose weakness is stronger than any thing in Men. Your Argument from Abstraction we have in this Question If it may be in the power of Matter to think how comes it to be so impossible for such organized Bodies as the Brutes have to enlarge their Ideas by Abstraction Answ. This seems to suppose that I place Thinking within the natural Power of Matter If that be your Meaning my Lord I neither say nor suppose that all Matter has naturally in it a Faculty of Thinking but the direct contrary But if you mean that certain parcels of Matter ordered by the Divine Power as seems fit to him may be made capable of receiving from his Omnipotency the Faculty of Thinking that indeed I say and that being granted the Answer to your Question is easie since if Omnipotency can give Thought to any solid Substance it is not hard to conceive that God may give that Faculty in an higher or lower Degree as it pleases him who knows what Disposition of the Subject is suited to such a particular way or degree of Thinking Another Argument to prove That God cannot endue any parcel of Matter with the Faculty of Thinking is taken from those Words of mine where I shew by what connection of Ideas we may come to know That God is an Immaterial Substance They are these The Idea of an eternal actual knowing Being with the Idea of Immateriality by the intervention of the Idea of Matter and of its actual Division divisibility and want of Perception c. From whence your Lordship thus argues Here the want of Perception is owned to be so essential to Matter that God is therefore concluded to be Immaterial Ans. Perception and Knowledge in that one Eternal Being
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
For if in this present Case the credibility of this Proposition The Souls of Men shall five for ever revealed in the Scripture be lessened by confessing it cannot be demonstratively proved from Reason though it be asserted to be most highly probable Must not by the same Rule its credibility dwindle away to nothing if natural Reason should not be able to make it out to be so much as probable or should place the probability from natural Principles on the other side For if meer want of Demonstration lessens the credibility of any Proposition divinely revealed must not want of probability or contrary probability from natural Reason quite take away its credibility Here at last it must end if in any one Case the Veracity of God and the credibility of the Truths we receive from him by Revelation be subjected to the verdicts of humane Reason and be allowed to receive any accession or diminution from other Proofs or want of other Proofs of its Certainty or Probability If this be your Lordship's way to promote Religion or defend its Articles I know not what Argument the greatest Enemies of it could use more effectual for the Subversion of those you have undertaken to defend this being to resolve all Revelation perfectly and purely into Natural Reason to bound its Credibility by that and leave no room for Faith in other things than what can be accounted for by Natural Reason without Revelation Your Lordship insists much upon it as if I had contradicted what I had said in my Essay by saying That upon my Principles it cannot be demonstratively proved that it is an immaterial Substance in us that Thinks however probable it be He that will be at the pains to read that Chapter of mine and consider it will find that my Business there was to shew that it was no harder to conceive an immaterial than a material Substance and that from the Ideas of Thought and a Power of moving of Matter which we experienced in out selves Ideas originally not belonging to Matter as Matter there was no more difficulty to conclude there was an immaterial Substance in us than that we had material Parts These Ideas of Thinking and Power of moving of Matter I in another place shew'd did demonstratively lead us to the certain knowledge of the Existence of an immaterial Thinking Being in whom we have the Idea of Spirit in the strictest Sense in which Sense I also applyed it to the Soul in that 23d Chapter of my Essay the easily conceivable possibility nay great probability that that thinking Substance in us is immaterial giving me sufficient Ground for it In which Sense I shall think I may safely attribute it to the thinking Substance in us till your Lordship shall have better proved from my Words That it is impossible it should be immaterial For I only say That it is possible i. e. involves no Contradiction that God the omnipotent immaterial Spirit should if he pleases give to some parcels of Matter disposed as he thinks fit a Power of Thinking and Moving Which parcels of Matter so endued with a Power of Thinking and Motion might properly be called Spirits in contradistinction to unthinking Matter In all which I presume there is no manner of Contradiction I justified my use of the word Spirit in that Sense from the Authorities of Cicero and Virgil applying the Latin word Spiritus from whence Spirit is derived to the Soul as a thinking Thing without excluding Materiality out of it To which your Lordship replies That Cicero in his Tusculan Questions supposes the Soul not to be a finer sort of Body but of a different Nature from the Body That he calls the Body the Prison of the Soul And says That a wise Man's Business is to draw off his Soul from his Body And then your Lordship concludes as is usual with a Question Is it possible now to think so great a Man look'd on the Soul but as a modification of the Body which must be at an end with Life Answ. No it is impossible that a Man of so good Sense as Tully when he uses the word Corpus or Body for the gross and visible parts of a Man which he acknowledges to be mortal should look on the Soul to be a modification of that Body in a Discourse wherein he was endeavouring to persuade another that it was immortal It is to be acknowledge'd that truly great Men such as he was are not wont so manifestly to contradict themselves He had therefore no Thought concerning the modification of the Body of Man in the Case He was not such a Trifler as to examin whether the modification of the Body of a Man was immortal when that Body it self was mortal And therefore that which he reports as Dicoearchus's Opinion he dismisses in the beginning without any more ado c. 11. But Cicero's was a direct plain and sensible Enquiry viz. What the Soul was to see whether from thence he could discover its Immortality But in all that Discourse in his first Book of Tusculan Questions where he lays out so much of his Reading and Reason there is not one Syllable shewing the least Thought that the Soul was an immaterial Substance but many Things directly to the contrary Indeed 1. he shuts out the Body taken in the Sense he uses Corpus all-a-long for the sensible organical parts of a Man and is positive that is not the Soul And Body in this Sense taken for the Humane Body he calls the Prison of the Soul and says a wise Man instancing in Socrates and Cato is glad of a fair opportunity to get out of it But he no where says any such thing of Matter He calls not Matter in general the Prison of the Soul nor talks a Word of being separate from it 2. He concludes That the Soul is not like other Things here below made up of a Composition of the Elements c. 27. 3. He excludes the two gross Elements Earth and Water from being the Soul c. 26. So far he is clear and positive But beyond this he is uncertain beyond this he could not get For in some Places he speaks doubtfully whether the Soul be not Air or Fire Anima sit animus ignisve nescio c. 25. And therefore he agrees with Panoetius that if it be at all Elementary it is as he calls it Inflammata Anima inflamed Air and for this he gives several Reasons c. 18 19. And though he thinks it to be of a peculiar Nature of its own yet he is so far from thinking it immaterial that he says c. 19. That the admitting it to be of an aereal or igneous Nature would not be inconsistent with any thing he had said That which he seems most to incline to is That the Soul was not at all Elementary but was of the same Substance with the Heavens which Aristotle to distinguish from the four Elements and the changeable Bodies here below which he supposed made up of