good will of such endeavours, and judge whether such arts savour not a little of the spirit of the Inquisition.

For, if I mistake not, it is the method of that holy office, and the way of those revered guardians of what they call the christian faith, to raise reports or start occasions of suspicion concerning the orthodoxy of any one they have no very good will towards, and require him to clear himself; gilding all this with the care of religion, and the profession of respect and tenderness to the person himself, even when they deliver him up to be burnt by the secular power.

I shall not, my lord, say, that you have had any illwill to me; for I never deserved any from you. But I shall be better able to answer those, who are apt to think the method you have taken has some conformity, so far as it has gone, with what protestants complain of in the Inquisition; when you shall have cleared this matter a little otherwise, and assigned a more sufficient reason for bringing me into the party of those that oppose the doctrine of the Trinity, than only because the author of Christianity not mysterious has, in the beginning of his book, half a score lines which you guess he borrowed out of mine. For that, in truth, is all the matter of fact upon which all this dust is raised; and the matter so advanced by degrees, that now I am told, "I should have cleared myself, by owning the doctrine of the Trinity;" as if I had been' ever accused of disowning it. But that which shows no small skill in this management is, that I am called upon to clear myself, 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 me and others, in answer to my complaint of his having, without any reason at all, brought my book into the controversy 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 three 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 yourself 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 logic this is inferred, 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 show; 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 showed 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, it 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 signify 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 show, 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 by reason be excluded from the certainty under debate? which I humbly conceive you have not from my words, or any other way, proved.

3. The third sort of propositions that your lordship excludes, are those whose certainty we know by remembrance: but in these two the agreement or disagreement of the ideas contained in them is perceived; not always

indeed, as it was at first, by an actual view of the connexion of all the intermediate ideas, whereby the agreement or disagreement of those in the proposition was at first perceived; but by other intermediate ideas, that show the agreement or disagreement of the ideas contained in the proposition, whose certainty we remember.

As in the instance you here make use of, viz. that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones: the certainty of which proposition we know by remembrance," though the demonstration hath slipt out of our minds;" but we know it in a different way from what your lordship supposes. The agreement of the two ideas, as joined in that proposition, is perceived; but it is by the intervention of other ideas than those which at first produced that perception. I remember, i. e. I know (for remembrance is but the reviving of some past knowledge) that I was once certain of the truth of this proposition, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones. The immutability of the same relations between the same immutable things, is now the idea that shows me, that if the three angles of a triangle were once equal to two right ones, they will always be equal to two right ones; and hence I come to be certain, that what was once true in the case, is always true; what ideas once agreed, will always agree; and consequently what I once knew to be true, I shall always know to be true as long as I can remember that I once knew it.

Your lordship says, "that the debate between us is about certainty of knowledge, with regard to some proposition whose ideas are to be compared as to their agreement or disagreement:" out of this debate, you say, certainty by sense, by reason, and by remembrance, is to be excluded. I desire you then, my lord, to tell what sort of propositions will be within the debate, and to name me one of them; if propositions, whose certainty we know by sense, reason, or remembrance, are excluded.

However, from what you have said concerning them, your lordship in the next paragraph concludes them out