sown in Corruption and Weakness and Dishonour Either therefore he must speak of the same Body or his meaning cannot be comprehended For what doth all this relate to a Conscious Principle The Apostle speaks plainly of that Body which was once quickened and afterwards falls to Corruption and is to be restored with more noble Qualities For this Corruptible must put on Incorruption and this Mortal must put on Immortality I do not see how he could more expressly affirm the Identity of this Corruptible Body with that after the Resurrection and that without any Respect to the Principle of Self-consciousness and so if the Scripture be the sole Foundation of our Faith this is an Article of it and so it hath been always understood by the Christian Church And your Idea of Personal Identity is inconsistent with it for it makes the same Body which was here united to the Soul not to be necessary to the Doctrine of the Resurrection but any Material Substance being united to the same Principle of Consciousness makes the same Body The Dispute is not how far Personal Identity in it self may consist in the very same Material Substance for we allow the Notion of Personal Identity to belong to the same Man under several changes of Matter but whether it doth not depend upon a Vital Vnion between the Soul and Body and the Life which is consequent upon it and therefore in the Resurrection the same Material Substance must be reunited or else it cannot be called a Resurrection but a Renovation i. e. it may be a New Life but not a raising the Body from the Dead 2. The next Articles of Faith which your Notion of Ideas is inconsistent with are no less than those of the Trinity and of the Incarnation of our Saviour The former by the first Article of our Church is expressed by three Persons in the Vnity of the Divine Nature the latter is said Art 2. to be by the Vnion of the Divine and Humane Nature in one Person Let us now see whether your Ideas of Nature and Person can consist with these But before I come to that I must endeavour to set this Matter right as to the Dispute about the Notion of Nature and Person which you have endeavour'd with all your Art to perplex and confound and have brought in several Interlocutors to make it look more like an Entertainment Of which afterwards The Original Question was whether we could come to any Certainty about the Distinction of Nature and Person in the Way of Ideas and my business was to prove that we could not because we had no simple Ideas by Sensation or Reflection without which you affirm that our Vnderstanding seems to you not to have the least Glimmering of Ideas and that we have nothing in our Minds which did not come in one of these two Ways These are your own Words And then I undertook to shew that it was not possible for us to have any simple Ideas of Nature and Person by Sensation or Reflection and that whether we consider'd Nature as taken for Essential Properties or for that Substance wherein that Property lies whether we consider it in distinct Individuals or abstractly still my Design was to shew that in your Way of Ideas you could come to no Certainty about them And as to Person I shew'd that the Distinction of Individuals is not founded meerly on what occurs to our Senses but upon a different manner of Subsistence which is in one Individual and is not communicable to another And as to this I said that we may find within our selves an intelligent Substance by inward Perception but whether that make a Person or not must be understood some other way for if the meer intelligent Substance make a Person then there cannot be the Union of two such Natures but there must be two Persons Which is repugnant to the Article of the Incarnation of our Saviour That this was the true State of the Question will appear to any one that will vouchsafe to look into it But what said you in your first Letter in Answer to it As to Nature you say That it is a Collection of several Ideas combined into one complex abstract Idea which when they are found united in any Individual existing though joyned in that Existence with several other Ideas that individual or particular Being is truly said to have the Nature of a Man or the Nature of a Man to be in him forasmuch as these simple Ideas are found united in him which answer the â—omplex abstract Idea to which the specifick Name is given by any one which abstract specifick Idea he keeps the same when he applies the specifick Name standing for it to distinct Individuals And as to Person in the way of Ideas you say that the Word Person in it self signifies nothing and so no Idea belonging to it nothing can be said to be the true Idea of it But as soon as the common Vse of any Language has appropriated it to any Idea then that is the true Idea of a Person and so of Nature Against this I objected in my Answer to that Letter that if these Terms really signifie nothing in themselves but are only abstract and complex Ideas which the common Use of Language hath appropriated to be the signs of two Ideas then it is plain that they are only Notions of the Mind as all abstracted and complex Ideas are and so one Nature and three Persons can be no more To this you answer in your second Letter That your Notion of the Terms Nature and Person is that they are two sounds that naturally signifie not one thing more than another nor in themselves signifie any thing at all but have the signification which they have barely by Imposition Whoever imagined that Words signifie any otherwise than by Imposition But the Question is whether these be meer Words and Names or not Or whether there be not a real Foundation in things for such a Distinction between Nature and Person Of which I gave this evident Proof that if it were not the same Nature in different Individuals every Individual must make a different Kind And what Answer do you give to this plain Reason Nothing particular that I can find But in the general you say that all that you can find that I except against in your Notion of Nature and Person is nothing but this viz. that these are two sounds which in themselves signifie nothing And is this all indeed Did not I tell you in these Words which I am forced to repeat on this occasion although I am very unwilling to fill Pages with Repetitions The Question now between us comes to this whether the common Nature or Essence of things lies only in an abstract Idea or a general Name and the real Essence consists only in particular Beings from which that Nature is abstracted The Question is not whether in forming
the Notion of common Nature the Mind doth not abstract from the Circumstances of particular Beings but it is whether there be not an Antecedent Foundation in the Nature of things upon which we form this abstract Idea For if there be then it cannot be called an Universal Name only or a meer sign of an Idea which we have formed from putting many simple Ideas together which Name belongs to all of such a sort as have those simple Ideas united together In these Words which you cannot deny to be in the place mention'd I thought I had stated the Case fairly between us And why do you not return an Answer to them But instead of that you only mention another Passage more liable to cavilling where I say That upon your Notions of Nature and Person I do not see how it is possible to defend the Doctrine of the Trinity For if these Terms really signifie nothing in themselves but are only abstract and complex Ideas which the common Use of Language hath appropriated to be the sign of two Ideas then it is plain that they are only Notions of the Mind as all abstract and complex Ideas are and so one Nature and three Persons can be no more Upon this you charge me with affirming that of you which you never said viz. that these Terms are only abstract or complex Ideas but your Words are Taking therefore Nature and Person for the sign of two Ideas they are put to stand for and by enumerating all the simple Ideas that are contained in the complex Idea that each of them is made to stand for we shall immediately see the whole difference that is between them These are your own Words Now from thence it appears that Nature and Person are Terms which are the signs of two Ideas by your own Confession but you never made these or any other Terms to be Ideas and you should be ashamed of such Iargon But have not you said in your Essay that it is a very common Practice for Names to be made use of instead of the Ideas themselves especially if the Ideas be very complex Nature and Person you grant to be complex Ideas and these Terms you confess are appropriated to be the signs of two Ideas Therefore here is an Ambiguity in the Use of these Words for they are complex Ideas themselves and they are made the signs of them and so the Words of the Sentence are capable of both those Senses For it is true according to you that these Terms Nature and Person really signifie nothing in themselves but are only complex and abstract Ideas and those Terms are appropriated to be the signs of two Ideas So that Nature and Person are both Ideas themselves and those Terms are the Signs of two Ideas and the Sense had not been liable to Exception if And had been inserted For if these Terms really signifie nothing in themselves but are only abstract and complex Ideas And which the common Use had appropriated to be the Signs of two Ideas c. But whether this be properly expressed or not according to your Sense of Ideas the Weight of the Controversie depends not at all upon it but whether Nature and Person can be any other but abstract Ideas according to your own plain Expressions and if they are so they are no more than Notions of the Mind and then the Consequence must hold that One Nature and three Persons can be no more Upon which I said I did not see how it was possible to defend the Doctrine of the Trinity and I now add of the Incarnation which was the thing I undertook to make out But you very freely say whether I rightly deduce from it this Consequence viz. And so one Nature and three Persons can be no more is what you neither know not are concerned to examin Which I think is an Expression could hardly drop from a Person who did know how to declare his Belief of three Persons in the Vnity of the Divine Nature But you pretend these are none of your Notions of Nature and Person nor indeed any thing you can understand But it is plain that this Consequence follows from your own Notions of Nature and Person as they are set down expresly by your self in the former Letter You tell me I made this Inference a little in haste Whether a Man write in haste or not the World will judge by what appears and not by what he or any other saith And I think it will appear that I did not make this Inference in haste but from a deliberate Consideration of your Notion of the Ideas of Nature and Person But by those Terms signifying nothing in themselves you say that you meant that they are two sounds that naturally signifie not one thing more than another nor in themselves signifie any thing at all but have the signification which they have barely by Imposition And was this truly all that you meant by it And do you think that Peter and Iames and Iohn signifie any thing by Nature Are not all Words made significative by Imposition But is there no difference in the signification of Words as they stand for signs of Things If they be Words for particular Substances then you grant that there is something really existing which is meant by those Words but if they relate only to the Conceptions of the Mind then they signifie them and no more And the Question is which of these two you meant by those Words Nature and Person And you plainly affirm both of them to be complex Ideas which are made only by an Act of the Mind and therefore your meaning can be no otherwise understood You presume that upon more leisurely thoughts both my self and the rest of Mankind will concur with you I never affected Singularity and am ready to comply with the rest of Mankind in any reasonable thing But you say that this Notion of Nature and Person That they are two Words that signifie only by Imposition is what will hold in the common Sense of Mankind No doubt of it But I must again and again tell you that is not the Point in Question but whether they are only abstract and complex Ideas which have no other Being but in the Mind And to this you answer not a Word I do not in the least think as you suggest that it is necessary to the Defense of the Trinity that these two Articulate sounds should have Natural significations and that unless they are used in those significations it were impossible to defend the Doctrine of the Trinity But I do affirm that those who make Nature and Person to be only abstract and complex Ideas can neither defend nor reasonably believe it And this is making no extraordinary Supposition necessary to the Belief or Defence of it but only that which in the common Sense of Mankind is necessary to it For if you have expressed your
own Mind in your former Letter that must guide us in your Notion of Nature and Person where you undertook to explain them For if Nature and Person be abstract and complex Ideas as you say and such are only Acts of the Mind I do not see how it is possible for you to reconcile these Notions with the Articles of the Trinity and Incarnation I do not go about to accuse you of denying these Doctrines I hope you do not But I impute all this Hesitancy and doubting only to your Notions of Ideas which you had been so long forming in your Mind that as it often happens in such Cases one darling favourite Notion proves too hard for some Points of far greater Consequence when they are found inconsistent with it And because you had first fixed your Notion of Ideas and taken much Pains about them you thought all other things were to be entertained as they appear'd consistent with them But you could not but find that the Articles of three Persons and one Nature and two Natures and one Person were not reconcileable with your Ideas of Nature and Person which is that they are complex Ideas which depend upon the Act of the Mind for this were to make the two Natures in Christ to be only two complex Ideas For if Nature as you say be a Collection of several Ideas combined into one complex abstract Idea then two Natures can be nothing else but two such Collections or two abstracted and complex Ideas It may be said that when you make Nature an abstracted and complex Idea you speak of a specifick Idea but the Humane Nature in Christ was a particular Substance and this you assert to be a real thing and not to depend on the Act of the Mind But this doth not clear the Matter For in your former Letter you said that all the Ideas we have of particular distinct Substances are nothing but several Combinations of simple Ideas which in Corporeal Substances are sensible Qualities in Incorporeal are Operations of the Mind The utmost then which the Idea of Humane Nature in Christ comes to is that there were in him the sensible Qualities and Intellectual Operations of a Man with an unknown Substance to support them which belongs not to the simple Ideas but is supposed by them This is all I can make of your way of Ideas and so the Incarnation of Christ is the assuming the sensible Qualities and intellectual Operations of a Man to which a Substratum doth belong but is no Part of the simple Ideas So that we can have no Idea at all of the Humane Nature of Christ but only an Inference that since those are but Accidents there must be a Substratum to support them and consequently there was a particular Substance in him made up of Mind and Body But if this had come in the Way of Ideas yet it cannot make out the Humane Nature of Christ. For if it were in him no otherwise than in other Men then the Mystery of the Incarnation is quite gone and Christ is to be consider'd but like other Men which doth not answer to what the Scripture saith of the Word 's being made Flesh and that God was manifest in the Flesh. There must be therefore something beyond the meer Humane Nature in him and either it must be only some Divine Operation upon and with it and that is no Substance or if it be a Substance it must either cohabit with it or else be united to it If it only co-habits then there are two Persons dwelling together in one Body and the Actions of one cannot be attributed to the other If there be a real Union between them so as the Acts belong to one Person then there must be such a Manner of Existence in the Humane Nature of Christ which is different from it in other Persons For in all others the Acts belong to the Humane Person but if it were so in Christ then the Divine Acts of Christ must flow from the Humane Nature as the Principle of them which is to confound the Divine and Humane Nature and Operations together If they come from the Divine Person then the Humane Nature must have another kind of Subsistence than it hath in others or else there must be two Persons and Person being as you say a Forensick Term there must be two different Capacities of Rewards and Punishments which is so absurd an Opinion as I think no one will assert If there be then but one Person and two Natures how can you possibly reconcile this to your Way of Ideas Person say you in it self signifies nothing but as soon as the common use of any Language has appropriated it to any Idea then that is the true Idea of a Person i. e. Men may call a Person what they please for there is nothing but common use required to it They may call a Horse or a Tree or a Stone a Person if they think fit but since the common use of Language hath appropriated it to an Intelligent Being that is a Person And so you tell us That Person stands for a Thinking Intelligent Being that hath Reason and Reflection and can consider it self as it self the same thinking Being in different times and place How comes Person to stand for this and nothing else From whence comes Self-consciousness in different times and places to make up this 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 Hath the 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 the Way of Ideas if a meer Arbitrary Idea must be taken into the only true Method of Certainty But of that afterwards We now proceed in the Way of Ideas as you give it us But if this be the true Idea of a Person then there can be no Union of two Natures in one Person For if an Intelligent Conscious Being be the Idea of a Person and the Divine and Human Nature be Intelligent Conscious Beings then the Doctrine of the Union of two Natures and one Person is quite sunk for here must be two Persons in this Way of Ideas Again if this be the Idea of a Person then where there are three Persons there must be three distinct Intelligent Beings and so there cannot be three Persons in the same individual Essence And thus both these Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation are past recovery gone if this Way of Ideas hold So great a difference there is between forming Ideas first and then judging of Revelation by them and the believing of Revelation on its proper Grounds and interpreting the Sense of it by the due Measures of Reason You may pretend what you please that you hold the Assurance of Faith and the Certainty by
For the Nature of Man as in Peter is distinct from that same Nature as it is in Iames and Iohn otherwise they would be but One Person as well as One Nature And what Reply is made to this You cannot understand what this is a Proof of It is plain that I meant it of a Particular Subsistence and if you cannot for your Life understand such easie things how can I for my Life help it Read the Words over again which are before them and join them together And this is the Common Nature with a Particular Subsistence proper to each of them for the Nature of Man as in Peter is distinct from that same Nature as it is in Iames and Iohn But I am really ashamed to be put to explain such things I hope Ideas do not give another Turn to Common Sense But you say That otherwise they could not be three Persons is to prove it by a Proposition unintelligible to you because you do not yet apprehend what a Person is Of that in its proper place These Words of mine follow And this Distinction of Persons in them is discerned both by our Senses as to their different Accidents and by our Reason because they have a separate Existence not coming into it at once and in the same manner And is this unintelligible too You say It will hold as well for three Physical Atoms which are three distinct Individuals and have three distinct Natures in them as certainly as three distinct Men. But are three Atoms as much three Persons as three Men But you cannot discern the distinction by our Senses as to their Accidents nor by your Reason as to separate Existence because God might create them at once Therefore we cannot distinguish three Humane Persons that way In this Reasoning in the Way of Ideas Or in any Way Suppose we put the Common Nature of an Animal for the Common Nature of Man What follows Therefore three Animals are three distinct Persons as well as three Men I thought there was some cause for your Disliking the Common Principles and Methods of Reasoning I am forced to give but short touches at such things which I cannot answer more largely without being thought to make Marks of Distinction Come we now therefore to the Second Sense of Nature as it is taken abstractly without Respect to Individual Persons and then I said it makes an entire Notion of it self For however the same Nature may be in different Individuals yet the Nature in it self remains one and the same which appears from this evident Reason that otherwise every Individual must make a different kind Is this to be understood any better No. An entire Notion of it self is an Expression never met with before An entire Idea of it self had been very plain and easie but this is not to talk with Men in their own Dialect But if we put it so the Difficulty remains What Difficulty It then makes no more an entire Notion than the Nature of Peter Is it not the same Nature considered as common to all Individuals distinct from that Nature as in Peter I wish among all the Ways of inlarging Knowledge you could think of some new Way of conveying Notions into Mens Minds for I find your Way of Ideas will never do it For you cannot be brought one step beyond the first Cast of Ideas And you will not allow that which I give for an Evident Reason to prove any thing towards clear Apprehensions of one Common Nature But if Nature be one and the same in different Individuals then there must be one Common Nature which makes an entire Notion of it self If it be not one and the same then every Individual must make a Distinct Kind Can any thing be more evident But you give one common Answer I understand not any thing that is meant in this whole Paragraph as to the right Apprehension of one Common Nature And so I am very well content to leave it to the Reader 's Understanding And now I come at last to the Idea of a Person And here I am glad to find something you do understand Which is great News This say you I understand very well that supposing Peter James and John to be all three Men and Man being a Name for one Kind of Animals they are all of the same Kind Do you mean that they have the same common Essence or have only the same common Name If you mean the former there must be a common Nature if only the latter that cannot make them of the same Kind For Kind signifies nothing but a meer Name without it If it be asked you whether Men and Drills be of the same Kind or not Could you give no other Answer but that the Specifick Name Man stands for one sort and the Specifick Name Drill for the other and therefore they are not of the same Kind Are those Names arbitrary or are they founded on real and distinct Properties If they be arbitrary they have no other Difference but what a Dictionary gives them If they are founded on real and distinct Properties then there must be a real Difference of Kinds founded in Nature which is as much as I desire But to go on You understand too very well that Peter is not James and James is not John but that there is a Difference in these Individuals You understand also that they may be distinguished from each other by our Senses as to different Features and Distance of Place c. But what follows you say You do not understand viz. that supposing there were no such external Difference yet there is a Difference between them as Individuals of the same Nature For all that this comes to as far as you can understand is 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 You understand it seems that they are several Individuals that Peter is not James and James is not John and the Question is what this Distinction is founded upon Whether upon our observing the Difference of Features Distance of Place c. or on some antecedent Ground I affirm that there is a Ground of the Distinction of Individuals antecedent to such accidental Differences as are liable to our Observation by our Senses And the Ground I go upon is this that the true Reason of Identity in Man is the vital Union of Soul and Body And since every Man hath a different Soul united to different Particles of Matter there must be a real Distinction between them without any respect to what is accidental to them For if Peter have a Soul and Body different from Iames and Iames from Iohn they must have different Principles of Individuation without any respect to Features or Place c. You say You cannot suppose a Contradiction viz. that there is no difference of Place between them But that is