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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 perception 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 show 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 due measures of reason." If it be the privilege of those alone who renounce ideas, i. e. the immediate objects of the mind in thinking, to believe revelation on its proper grounds, and the interpreting the sense of it, by the due measures of reason; I shall not think it strange, that any one who undertakes to interpret the sense of revelation, should renounce ideas, i. e. that he who would think right of the meaning of any text of Scripture, should renounce and lay by all immediate objects of the mind in thinking.

But perhaps your lordship does not here extend this difference of believing revelation on its proper grounds, and not on its proper grounds, to all those who are not, and all those who are for ideas. But your lordship

makes this comparison here, only between your lordship and me, who you think am guilty of forming ideas first, and then judging of revelation by them. Answ. If so, then this lays the blame not on my doctrine of ideas, but on my particular ill use of them. That then which your lordship would insinuate of me here, as a dangerous way to mistaking the sense of the Scripture, is, "that I form ideas first, and then judge of revelation by them;" i. e. in plain English, that I get to myself, the best I can, the signification of the words, wherein the revelation is delivered, and so endeavour to understand the sense of the revelation delivered in them. And pray, my lord, does your lordship do otherwise? Does the believing of revelation upon its proper grounds, and the due measures of reason, teach you to judge of revelation, before you understand the words it is delivered in; i. e. before you have formed the ideas in your mind, as well as you can, which those words stand for? If the due measures of reason teach your lordship this, I beg the favour of your lordship to tell me those due measures of reason, that I may leave those undue measures of reason, which I have hitherto followed in the interpreting the sense of the Scripture; whose sense it seems I should have interpreted first, and understood the signification of the words afterwards.

My lord, I read the revelation of the holy Scripture with a full assurance that all it delivers is true and though this be a submission to the writings of those inspired authors, which I neither have, nor can have, for those of any other men; yet I use (and know not how to help it, till your lordship show me a better method in those due measures of reason, which you mention) the same way to interpret to myself the sense of that book, that I do of any other. First, I endeavour to understand the words and phrases of the language I read it in, i. e. to form ideas they stand for. If your lordship means any thing else by forming ideas first, I confess I understand it not. And if there be any word or expression, which in that author, or in that place of that author, seems to have a peculiar meaning, i. e. to stand for an idea, which is different from that, which the

common use of that language has made it a sign of, that idea also I endeavour to form in my mind, by comparing this author with himself, and observing the design of his discourse, so that, as far as I can, by a sincere endeavour, I may have the same ideas in every place when I read the words, which the author had when he writ them. But here, my lord, I take care not to take those for words of divine revelation, which are not the words of inspired writers; nor think myself concerned with that submission to receive the expressions of fallible men, and to labour to find out their meaning, or, as your lordship phrases it, interpret their sense; as if they were the expressions of the Spirit of God, by the mouths or pens of men inspired and guided by that infallible Spirit. This, my lord, is the method I use in interpreting the sense of the revelation of the Scriptures; if your lordship knows that I do otherwise, I desire you to convince me of it; and if your lordship does otherwise, I desire you to show me wherein your method differs from mine, that I may reform upon so good a pattern: for as for what you accuse me of in the following words, it is that which either has no fault in it, or if it has, your lordship, I humbly conceive, is as guilty as I. Your words are

may pretend what I please, that I hold the assurance of faith, and the certainty by ideas, to go upon very different grounds; but when a proposition is offered to me out of Scripture to be believed, and I doubt about the sense of it, is not recourse to be made to my ideas?" Give me leave, my lord, with all submission, to return your lordship the same words: "Your lordship may pretend what you please, that you hold the assurance of faith, and the certainty of knowledge, to stand upon different grounds," (for I presume your lordship will not say, that believing and knowing stand upon the same grounds, for that would, I think, be to say, that probability and demonstration are the same thing) "but when a proposition is offered you out of Scripture to be believed, and you doubt about the sense of it, is not recourse to be made to your notions ?" What, my lord, is the difference here between your

lordship's and my way in the case? I must have recourse to my ideas, and your lordship must have recourse to your notions. For I think you cannot believe a proposition contrary to your own notions; for then you would have the same, and different notions, at the same time. So that all the difference between your lordship and me is, that we do both the same thing; only your lordship shows a great dislike to my using the term idea.

But the instance your lordship here gives, is beyond my comprehension. You say, "a proposition is offered me out of Scripture to be believed, and I doubt about the sense of it. As in the present case, whether there can be three persons in one nature, or two natures and one person." My lord, my Bible is faulty again; for I do not remember that I ever read in it either of these propositions, in these precise words, "there are three persons in one nature, or, there are two natures and one person." When your lordship shall show me a Bible wherein they are so set down, I shall then think them a good instance of propositions offered me out of Scripture; till then, whoever shall say that they are propositions in the Scripture, when there are no such words, so put together, to be found in holy writ, seems to me to make a new Scripture in words and propositions, that the Holy Ghost dictated not. I do not here question their truth, nor deny that they may be drawn from the Scripture: but I deny that these very propositions are in express words in my Bible. For that is the only thing I deny here; if your lordship can show them me in yours, I beg you to do it.

In the mean time, taking them to be as true as if they were the very words of divine revelation; the question then is, how must we interpret the sense of them? For supposing them to be divine revelation, to ask, as your lordship here does, what resolution I, or any one, can come to about their possibility, seems to me to involve a contradiction in it. For whoever admits a proposition to be of divine revelation, supposes it not only to be possible, but true. Your lordship's question then can mean only this, what sense can I, upon my principles, come to, of either of these propositions, but in the way

of ideas? And I crave leave to ask your lordship, what sense of them can your lordship, upon your principles, come to, but in the way of notions? Which, in plain English, amounts to no more than this, that your lordship must understand them according to the sense you have of those terms they are made up of, and I according to the sense I have of those terms. Nor can it be otherwise, unless your lordship can take a term in any proposition to have one sense, and yet understand it in another and thus we see, that in effect men have differently understood and interpreted the sense of these propositions; whether they used the way of ideas or not, i. e. whether they called what any word stood for, notion, or sense, or meaning, or idea.

I think myself obliged to return your lordship my thanks, for the news you write me here, of one who has found a secret way how the same body may be in distant places at once. It making no part, that I can see, of the reasoning your lordship was then upon, I can take. it only for a piece of news: and the favour was the greater, that your lordship was pleased to stop yourself in the midst of so serious an argument as the articles of the Trinity and incarnation, to tell it me. And methinks it is pity that author had not used some of the words of my book, which might have served to have. tied him and me together. For his secret about a body in two places at once, which he does keep up; and "my secret about certainty, which your lordship thinks had been better kept up too," being all your words; bring me into his company but very untowardly. If your lordship would be pleased to show, that my secret about certainty (as you think fit to call it) is false or erroneous, the world would see a good reason why you should think it better kept up; till then perhaps they may be apt to suspect, that the fault is not so much in my published secret about certainty, as somewhere else. But since your lordship thinks it had been better kept up, I promise that, as soon as you shall do me the favour to make public a better notion of certainty than mine, I will by a public retraction call in mine: which I hope your lordship will do, for I dare say nobody will think

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