here asks me concerning mine How comes Person to stand for this and nothing else From whence comes compleat Substance or peculiar manner of Subsistence to make up the Idea of a Person Whether it be true or false I am not now to enquire but how it comes into this Idea of a Person Has common use of our Language appropriated it to this Sense If not this seems to be a meer Arbitrary Idea and may as well be denied as affirmed And what a fine pass are we come to in your Lordship's way if a meer Arbitrary Idea must be taken into the only true Method of Certainty But if this be the true Idea of a Person then there can be no Vnion of two Natures in one Person For if a compleat intelligent Substance be the Idea of a Person and the divine and humane Natures be compleat intelligent Substances then the Doctrin of the Vnion of two Natures and one Person is quite sunk for here must be two Persons in this way of your Lordship's Again if this be the Idea of a Person then where there are three Persons there must be three distinct compleat intelligent Substances and so there cannot be three Persons in the same individual Essence And thus both these Doctrins of the Trinity and Incarnation are past recovery gon if this way of your Lordship's hold These my Lord are your Lordship's very Words what force there is in them I will not enquire but I must beseech your Lordship to take them as Objections I make against your Notion of Person to shew the danger of it and the inconsistency it has with the Doctrin of the Trinity and Incarnation of our Saviour and when your Lordship has removed the Objections that are in them against your own definition of Person mine also by the very same Answers will be cleared Your Lordship's Argument in the following Words to page 65. seems to me as far as I can collect to lie thus Your Lordship tells me that I say That in Propositions whose Certainty is built on clear and perfect Ideas and evident deductions of Reason there no Proposition can be received for divine Revelation which contradicts them This Proposition not serving your Lordship's turn so well for the conclusion you designed to draw from it your Lordship is pleased to enlarge it For you ask But suppose I have Ideas sufficient for Certainty what is to be done then From which Words and your following Discourse if I can understand it it seems to me that your Lordship supposes it reasonable for me to hold That where-ever we are any how certain of any Propositions whether their Certainty be built on clear and perfect Ideas or no there no Proposition can be received for divine Revelation which contradicts them And thence your Lordship concludes That because I say we may make some Propositions of whose Truth we may be certain concerning things whereof we have not Ideas in all their parts perfectly clear and distinct therefore my Notion of Certainty by Ideas must overthrow the credibility of a Matter of Faith in all such Propositions which are offered to be believed on the account of divine Revelation A Conclusion which I am so unfortunate as not to find how it follows from your Lordship's Premisses because I cannot any way bring them into Mode and Figure with such a Conclusion But this being no strange thing to me in my want of skill in your Lordship's way of writing I in the mean time crave leave to ask Whether there be any Propositons your Lordship can be certain of that are not divinely revealed And here I will presume that your Lordship is not so Sceptical but that you can allow Certainty attainable in many things by your natural Faculties Give me leave then to ask your Lordship Whether where there be Propositions of whose Truth you have certain Knowledge you can receive any Proposition for divine Revelation which contradicts that Certainty Whether that Certainty be built upon the Agreement of Ideas such as we have or on whatever else your Lordship builds it If you cannot as I presume your Lordship will say you cannot I make bold to return you your Lordship's Questions here to me in your own Words Let us now suppose that you are to judge of a Proposition delivered as a Matter of Faith where you have a Certainty by Reason from your Grounds such as they are Can you my Lord assent to this as a Matter of Faith when you are already certain of the contrary by your way How is this possible Can you believe that to be true which you are certain is not true Suppose it be That there are two Natures in one Person the Question is Whether you can assent to this as a Matter of Faith hf you should say where there are only Probabilities on the other side I grant that you then allow Revelation is to prevail But when you say you have Certainty by Ideas or without Ideas to the contrary I do not see how it is possible for you to assent to a Matter of Faith as true when you are certain from your method that it is not true For how can you believe against Certainty because the Mind is actually determined by Certainty And so your Lordship's Notion of Certainty by Ideas or without Ideas be it what it will must overthrow the credibility of a matter of Faith in all such Propositions which are offered to be believed on the account of Divine Revelation This Argumentation and Conclusion is good against your Lordship if it be good against me For Certainty is Certainty and he that is certain is certain and cannot assent to that as true which he is certain is not true whether he supposes Certainty to consist in the preception of the agreement or disagreement of Ideas such as a Man has or in any thing else For whether those who have attained Certainty not by the way of Ideas can believe against Certainty any more than those who have attained Certainty by Ideas we shall then see when your Lordship shall be pleased to shew the World your way to Certainty without Ideas Indeed if what your Lordship insinuates in the beginning of this Passage which we are now upon be true your Lordship is safer in your way without Ideas i. e. without immediate objects of the Mind in Thinking if there be any such way as to the understanding divine Revelation right than those who make use of Ideas But yet you are still as far as they from assenting to that as true which you are certain is not true Your Lordship's Words are So great a difference is there between forming Ideas first and then judging of Revelation by them and the believing of Revelation on its proper Grounds and the interpreting the Sense of it by the due measures of Reason If it be the priviledge of those alone who renounce Ideas i. e. the immediate objects of the Mind in Thinking to
is the Proposition here to be proved would remain still unproved For I might say things inconsistent with this Proposition That Knowledge consists in the Perception of the Connection and Agreement or Disagreement and Repugnancy of our Ideas and yet that Proposition be true and very far from tending to Scepticism unless your Lordship will argue that every Proposition that is inconsistent with what a Man any where says tends to Scepticism and then I should be tempted to infer that many Propositions in the Letters your Lordship has honoured me with will tend to Scepticism Your Lordship's second Argument is from my saying We have no Ideas of the mechanical Affections of the minute Particles of Bodies which hinders our certain Knowledge of universal Truths concerning natural Bodies from whence your Lordship concludes That since we can attain to no Science as to Bodies or Spirits our Knowledge must be confin'd to a very narrow compass I grant it but I crave leave to mind your Lordship again That this is not the Proposition to be proved A little Knowledge is still Knowledge and not Scepticism But let me have affirm'd our Knowledge to be comparatively very little How I beseech your Lordship does that any way prove that this Proposition Knowledge consists in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of our Ideas any way tends to Scepticism which was the Proposition to be proved But the Inference your Lordship shuts up this Head with in these Words So that all Certainty is given up in the way of Knowledge as to the visible and invisible World or at least the greatest part of them shewing in the first part of it what your Lordship should have inferred and was willing to infer does at last by these Words in the Close Or at least the greatest part of them I guess come just to nothing I say I guess for what them by Grammatical Construction is to be referred to seems not clear to me Your third Argument being just of the same kind with the former only to shew That I reduce our Knowledge to a very narrow compass in respect of the whole extent of Beings is already answered In the fourth place your Lordship sets down some Words of mine concerning Reasoning and Demonstration and then concludes But if there be no way of coming to Demonstration but this I doubt we must be content without it Which being nothing but a Declaration of your doubt is I grant a very short way of proving any Proposition and I shall leave to your Lordship the Satisfaction you have in such a Proof since I think it will scarce convince others In the last place your Lordship argues that because I say That the Idea in the Mind proves not the Existence of that thing whereof it is an Idea therefore we cannot know the actual Existence of any thing by our Senses because we know nothing but by the perceived Agreement of Ideas But if you had been pleased to have consider'd my Answer there to the Scepticks whose Cause you here seem with no small vigour to manage you would I humbly conceive have found that you mistake one thing for another viz. The Idea that has by a former Sensation been lodged in the Mind for actually receiving any Idea i. e. actual Sensation which I think I need not go about to prove are two distinct things after what you have here quoted out of my Book Now the two Ideas that in this Case are perceived to agree and do thereby produce Knowledge are the Idea of actual Sensation which is an Action whereof I have a clear and distinct Idea and the Idea of actual Existence of something without me that causes that Sensation And what other Certainty your Lordship has by your Senses of the existing of any thing without you but the perceived Connection of those two Ideas I would gladly know When you have destroyed this Certainty which I conceive is the utmost as to this Matter which our infinitely Wise and Bountiful Maker has made us capable of in this State your Lordship will have well assisted the Scepticks in carrying their Arguments against Certainty by Sense beyond what they could have expected I cannot but fear my Lord that what you have said here in favour of Scepticism against Certainty by Sense for it is not at all against me till you shew we can have no Idea of actual Sensation without the Proper Antidote annexed in shewing wherein that Certainty consists if the account I give be not true after you have so strenuously endeavoured to destroy what I have said for it will by your Authority have laid no small Foundation of Scepticism which they will not fail to lay hold of with advantage to their Cause who have any Disposition that way For I desire any one to read this your fifth Argument and then judge which of us two is a promoter of Scepticism I who have endeavoured and as I think proved Certainty by our Senses or your Lordship who has in your Thoughts at least destroyed these Proofs without giving us any other to supply their place All your other Arguments amount to no more but this That I have given Instances to shew that the extent of our Knowledge in comparison of the whole extent of Being is very little and narrow which when your Lordship writ your Vindication of the Doctrin of the Trinity were very fair and ingenuous Confessions of the shortness of Humane Vnderstanding with respect to the Nature and Manner of such things which we are most certain of the Being of by constant and undoubted Experience Though since you have shewed your dislike of them in more places than one particularly p. 33. and again more at large p. 43. and at last you have thought fit to represent them as Arguments for Scepticism And thus I have acquitted my self I hope to your Lordship's Satisfaction of my promise to answer your Accusation of a tendency to Scepticism But to return to your second Letter where I left off In the following Pages you have another Argument to prove my way of Certainty to be none but to lead to Scepticism which after a serious perusal of it seems to me to amount to no more but this That Des Cartes and I go both in the way of Ideas and we differ Ergo the placing of Certainty in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas is no way of Certainty but leads to Scepticism which is a Consequence I cannot admit And I think is no better than this Your Lordship and I differ and yet we go both in the way of Ideas Ergo the placing of Knowledge in the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas is no way of Certainty at all but leads to Scepticism Your Lordship will perhaps think I say more than I can justifie when I say Your Lordship goes in the way of Ideas for you will tell me you do not place
explain what my Friend and I found difficult in your Discourse concerning Person I answer That these two names Man and Drill are perfectly Arbitrary whether founded on real distinct Properties or no so perfectly Arbitrary that if Men had pleased Drill might have stood for what Man now does and Vice versa I answer farther That these two Names stand for two abstract Ideas which are to those who know what they mean by these two Names the distinct Essences of two distinct Kinds and as particular Existences or things Existing are found by Men who know what they mean by these Names to agree to either of those Ideas which these Names stand for these Names respectively are applied to those particular things and the things said to be of that Kind This I have so fully and at large explained in my Essay that I should have thought it needless to have said any thing again of it here had it not been to shew my readiness to answer any Questions you shall be pleased to ask concerning any thing I have writ which your Lordship either finds difficult or has forgot In the next place your Lordship comes to dear what you had said in answer to this Question put by your self What is this distinction of Peter Iames and Iohn founded upon To which you answered That they may be distinguished from each other by our Senses as to difference of Features distance of Place c. But that is not all for supposing there was no external difference yet there is a difference between them as several Individuals in the same common Nature These Words when my Friend and I came to consider we owned as your Lordship here takes notice that we could understand no more by them but this That the ground of Distinction between several Individuals in the same common Nature is That they are several Individuals in the same common Nature Hereupon your Lordship tells me The Question now is what this distinction is founded upon Whether on our observing the difference of Features distance of Place c. or on some antecedent ground Pursuant hereunto as if this were the Question you in the next Paragraph as far as I can understand it make the ground of the Distinction between these Individuals or the principium individuationis to be the Vnion of the Soul and Body But with Submission my Lord the Question is Whether I and my Friend were to blame because when your Lordship in the Words above cited having removed all other grounds of Distinction said there was yet a difference between Peter and James as several Individuals in the same common Nature we could understand no more by it but this That the ground of Distinction between several Individuals in the same common Nature is That they are seral Individuals in the same common Nature Let the ground that your Lordship now assigns of the Distinction of Individuals be what it will or let what you say be as clear as you please viz. That the ground of their Distinction is in the Vnion of Soul and Body it will I humbly conceive be nevertheless true That what you said before might amount to no more but this That the ground of the Distinction between several Individuals in the same common Nature is That they are several Individuals in the same common Nature and therefore we might not be to blame for so understanding it For the Words which our Understandings were then imploied about were those which you had there said and not those which you would say five Months after Though I must own that those which your Lordship here says concerning the Distinction of Individuals leave it as much in the dark to me as what you said before But perhaps I do not understand your Lordship's Words right because I conceive that the principium individuationis is the same in all the several Species of Creatures Men as well as Others and therefore if the Vnion of Soul and Body be that which distinguishes two Individuals in the Humane Species one from another I know not how two Cheries or two Atoms of Matter can be distinct Individuals since I think there is in them no Vnion of a Soul and Body And upon this ground it will be very hard to tell what made the Soul and the Body Individuals as certainly they were before their Union But I shall leave what your Lordship says concerning this Matter to the Examination of those whose Health and Leisure allows them more time than I have for this weighty Question wherein the Distinction of two Men or two Cheries consists for fear I should make your Lordship's Country-man a little wonder again to find a grave Philosopher make a serious Question of it To your next Paragraph I answer That if the true Idea of a Person or the true Signification of the Word Person lies in this That supposing there was no other difference in the several Individuals of the same kind yet there is a difference between them as several Individuals in the same common Nature it will follow from hence that the name Person will agree to Bucephalus and Podargus as well as to Alexander and Hector But whether this Consequence will agree with what your Lordship says concerning Person in another place I am not concerned I am only answerable for this Consequence Your Lordship is pleased here to call my endeavour to find out the meaning of your Words as you had put them together trifling Exceptions To which I must say That I am heartily sorry that either my Understanding or your Lordship's way of Writing obliges me so often to such trifling I cannot as I have said answer to what I do not understand and I hope here my trifling in searching out your Lordship's meaning was not much out of the way because I think every one will see by the Steps I took that the Sense I found out by it was that which your Words implied and your Lordship does not disown it but only replys That I should not have drawn that which was the natural Consequence from it because that Consequence would not well consist with what you had said in another place What your Lordship adds farther to clear your saying That an individual intelligent Substance is rather supposed to the making of a Person than the proper definition of it though in your definition of Person you put a compleat intelligent Substance must have its effect upon others Understandings I must suffer under the short sightedness of my own who neither understood it as it stood in your first Answer nor do I now as it is explained in your second Your Lordship being here as you say come to the end of this Debate I should here have ended too and it was time my Letter being grown already to too great a Bulk But I being ingaged by Promise to Answer some Things in your first Letter which in my Reply to it I had
this will not clear it for the Ideas of Accidents are simple Ideas and carry nothing along with them but the impression made by sensible Objects In this Passage I conclude your Lordship had some regard to the Entertainment of that part of your Readers who would be thought Men as well by being risible as rational Creatures For I cannot imagine you meant this for an Argument if you did I have this plain simple answer That by carrying with them a Supposition I mean according to the ordinary import of the Phrase That sensible Qualities imply a Substratum to Exist in And if your Lordship please to change one of these equivalent Expressions into the other all the Argument here I think will be at an end What will become of the Sport and Smiling I will not answer Hitherto I do not see any thing in my Words brought by your Lordship that proves That upon my Principles we can come to no Certainty of Reason that there is Substance in the World but the contrary Your Lordship's next Words are to tell the World that my Simile about the Elephant and Tortoise is to ridicule the Notion of Substance and the Europaean Philosophers for asserting it But if your Lordship please to turn again to my Essay you will find those Passages were not intended to ridicule the Notion of Substance or those who asserted it whatever that it signifies But to shew that though Substance did support Accidents yet Philosophers who had found such a support necessary had no more a clear Idea of what that support was than the Indian had of that which supported his Tortoise tho' sure he was it was something Had your Pen which quoted so much of the nineteenth Sect. of the thirteenth Chap. of my second Book but set down the remaining line and an half of that Paragraph you would by these Words which follow there So that of Substance we have no Idea of what it is but only a confused obscure one of what it does have put it past doubt what I meant But your Lordship was pleased to take only those which you thought would serve best to your purpose And I crave leave to add now these remaining ones to shew my Reader what was mine 'T is to the same purpose I use the same Illustration again in that other place which you are pleased to cite likewise which your Lordship says you did only to shew that it was a deliberate and as I thought lucky similitude It was upon serious consideration I own that I entertained the Opinion that we had no clear and distinct Idea of Substance But as to that Similitude I do not remember that it was much deliberated on Such unaccurate Writers as I am who aim at nothing but plainness do not much study Similes And for the Fault of Repetition you have been pleased to Pardon it But supposing you had proved That that Simile was to ridicule the Notion of Substance published in the Writings of some Europaean Philosophers it will by no means follow from thence That upon my Principles we cannot come to any Certainty of Reason that there is any such thing as Substance in the World Men's Notions of a thing may be laughed at by those whose Principles establish the Certainty of the thing it self and one may laugh at Aristotle's Notion of an Orb of Fire under the Sphere of the Moon without Principles that will make him uncertain whether there be any such thing as Fire My Simile did perhaps serve to shew that there were Philosophers whose Knowledge was not so clear nor so great as they pretended If your Lordship thereupon thought that the vanity of such a pretension had something ridiculous in it I shall not contest your Judgment in the Case For as humane Nature is framed 't is not impossible that whoever is discovered to pretend to know more than really he does will be in danger to be laughed at In the next Paragraph your Lordship bestows the Epithite of Dull on Burgersdicius and Sanderson and the Tribe of Logicians I will not Question your right to call any Body Dull whom you please But if your Lordship does it to insinuate that I did so I hope I may be allowed to say thus much in my own Defence that I am neither so Stupid or Ill-natured to discredit those whom I quote for being of the same Opinion with me And he that will look into the eleventh and twelfth Pages of my Reply which your Lordship refers to will find that I am very far from calling them Dull or speaking diminishingly of them But if I had been so Ill-bred or Foolish as to have called them Dull I do not see how that does at all serve to prove this Proposition That upon my Principles we can come to no Certainty of Reason that there is any such thing as Substance any more than what follows in the next Paragraph Your Lordship in it asks me as if it were of some great importance to the Proposition to be proved whether there be no difference between the bare being of a thing and its Subsistence by its self I answer Yes there is a difference as I understand those Terms and then I beseech your Lordship to make use of it to prove the Proposition before us But because you seem by this Question to conclude That the Idea of a thing that subsists by its self is a clear and distinct Idea of Substance I beg leave to ask Is the Idea of the manner of Subsistence of a thing the Idea of the thing it self If it be not we may have a clear and distinct Idea of the manner and yet have none but a very obscure and confused one of the thing For Example I tell your Lordship that I know a thing that cannot subsist without a support and I know another thing that does subsist without a support and say no more of them can you by having the clear and distinct Ideas of having a support and not having a support say that you have a clear and distinct Idea of the thing that I know which has and of the thing That I know which has not a support If your Lordship can I beseech you to give me the clear and distinct Ideas of these which I only call by the general name Things that have or have not supports for such there are and such I shall give your Lordship clear and distinct Ideas of when you shall please to call upon me for them though I think your Lordship will scarce find them by the general and confused Idea of Thing nor in the clearer and more distinct Idea of having or not having a support To shew a blind Man that he has no clear and distinct Idea of Scarlet I tell him that his Notion of it that it is a Thing or Being does not prove he has any clear or distinct Idea of it but barely that he takes it to be something he knows not
to have other Titles than bare Scepticism bestowed upon it and would have raised no small Out-cry against any one who is not to be supposed to be in the right in all that he says and so may securely say what he pleases Such as I the Prophanum Vulgus who take too much upon us if we would examine have nothing to do but to hearken and believe though what he said should subvert the very Foundations of the Christian Faith What I have above observed is so visibly contained in your Lordship's Argument That when I met with it in your Answer to my first Letter it seemed so strange from a Man of your Lordship's Character and in a Dispute in defence of the Doctrin of the Trinity that I could hardly perswade my self but it was a slip of your Pen But when I found it in your second Letter made use of again and seriously enlarged as an Argument of Weight to be insisted upon I was convinced that it was a Principle that you heartily imbraced how little favourable soever it was to the Articles of the Christian Religion and particularly those which you undertook to defend I desire my Reader to peruse the Passages as they stand in your Letters themselves and see whether what you say in them does not amount to this That a Revelation from God is more or less credible according as it has a stronger or weaker confirmation from Humane Reason For 1. Your Lordship says You do not question whether God can give Immortality to a material Substance but you say it takes off very much from the evidence of Immortality if it depends wholly upon God's giving that which of its own Nature it is not capable of To which I reply any ones not being able to demonstrate the Soul to be Immaterial takes off not very much nor at all from the evidence of its Immortality if God has revealed that it shall be Immortal because the Veracity of God is a Demonstration of the Truth of what he has revealed and the want of an other Demonstration of a Proposition that is demonstratively true takes not off from the Evidence of it For where there is a clear Demonstration there is as much Evidence as any Truth can have that is not Self-evident God has revealed that the Souls of Men shall live for ever But says your Lordship from this Evidence it takes off very much if it depends wholly upon God's giving that which of its own Nature it is not capable of i. e. The Revelation and Testimony of God loses much of its Evidence if this depends wholly upon the good Pleasure of God and cannot be demonstratively made out by natural Reason that the Soul is immaterial and consequently in its own Nature immortal For that is all that here is or can be meant by these Words which of its own Nature it is not capable of to make them to the purpose For the whole of your Lordship's Discourse here is to prove That the Soul cannot be material because then the Evidence of its being immortal would be very much lessened Which is to say That 't is not as credible upon divine Revelation that a material Substance should be immortal as an immaterial or which is all one That God is not equally to be believed when he declares that a material Substance shall be immortal as when he declares that an immaterial shall be so because the Immortality of a material Substance cannot be demonstrated from natural Reason Let us try this Rule of your Lordship 's a little farther God hath revealed that the Bodies Men shall have after the Resurrection as well as their Souls shall live to Eternity Does your Lordship believe the eternal Life of the one of these more than of the other because you think you can prove it of one of them by natural Reason and of the other not Or can any one who admits of divine Revelation in the Case doubt of one of them more than the other Or think this Proposition less credible the Bodies of Men after the Resurrection shall live for ever than this That the Souls of Men shall after the Resurrection live for ever For that he must do if he thinks either of them is less credible than the other If this be so Reason is to be consulted how far God is to be believed and the credit of divine Testimony must receive its force from the Evidence of Reason which is evidently to take away the credibility of divine Revelation in all supernatural Truths wherein the Evidence of Reason fails And how much such a Principle as this tends to the support of the Doctrin of the Trinity or the promoting the Christian Religion I shall leave it to your Lordship to consider I am not so well read in Hobbes or Spinoza as to be able to say what were their Opinions in this Matter But possibly there be those who will think your Lordship's Authority of more use to them in the Case than those justly decried Names And be glad to find your Lordship a Patron of the Oracles of Reason so little to the Advantage of the Oracles of Divine Revelation This at least I think may be subjoined to the Words at the bottom of the next Page That those who have gone about to lessen the Credibility of Articles of Faith which evidently they do who say they are less credible because they cannot be made out demonstratively by Natural Reason have not been thought to secure several of the Articles of the Christian Faith especially those of the Trinity Inoarnation and Resurrection of the Body which are those upon the account of which I am brought by your Lordship into this Dispute I shall not trouble the Reader with your Lordship's Endeavours in the following Words to prove That if the Soul be not an immaterial Substance it can be nothing but Life your very first Words visibly confuting all that you alledge to that purpose They are If the Soul be immaterial Substance it is really nothing but Life which is to say That if the Soul be really a Substance it is not really a Substance but really nothing else but an affection of a Substance for the Life whether of a material or immaterial Substance is not the Substance it self but an affection of it 2. You say Although we think the separate State of the Soul after Death is sufficiently revealed in the Scripture yet it creates a great difficulty in understanding it if the Soul be nothing but Life or a material Substance which must be dissolved when Life is ended For if the Soul be a material Substance it must be made up as others are of the Cohesion of solid and separate Parts how minute and invisible soever they be And what is it which should keep them together when Life is gone So that it is no easie matter to give an account how the Soul should be capable of Immortality unless it be an immaterial