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 Balaam's ass a power to speak to his master as he did; for the want of rational discourse being natural to that species, it 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 bounds to God's omnipotency: for he may, if he pleases, 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 a 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 these 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 itself; which if it do, then wherever there is substance, there must be cogitation or a power of thinking. Here then, upon your lordship's own principles, is an immaterial substance 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 endued 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 itself possible: which, as I humbly conceive, is visibly to set bounds to God's omnipotency; though you say here," you do not set bounds 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 morality and religion." For it 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 pleases, 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 inquire what measure of zeal, nor for what, guides your lordship's 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 authorised without proof to insinuate whatever may serve to prejudice men's 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 to do so, may have been the cause that the world, in all ages, has received so much harm, and so little advantage, from controversies in religion.

These are the arguments which your lordship has brought to confute one saying in my book, by other passages in it; which therefore being all but "argumenta ad hominem," if they did prove what they do not, are of no other use, than to gain a victory over me; a thing, methinks, so much beneath your lordship, that it does not deserve one of your pages. The question is, whether God can, if he pleases, bestow on any parcel of matter, ordered as he thinks fit, a faculty of perception and thinking. You say, "you look upon a mistake herein to be of dangerous consequence, as to the great ends of religion and morality." If this be so, my lord, I think one may well wonder why your lordship has brought no arguments to establish the truth itself, which you look on to be of such dangerous consequence to be mistaken in; but have spent so many pages only in a personal matter, in endeavouring to show, that I had inconsistencies in my book: which, if any such thing had been showed, the question would be still as far from being decided, and the danger of mistaking about it as little prevented, as if nothing of all this had been said. If therefore your lordship's care of the great ends of religion and morality have made you think it necessary to clear this question, the world has reason to conclude there is little to be said against that proposi

tion, which is to be found in my book concerning the possibility, that some parcels of matter might be so ordered by Omnipotence, as to be endued with a faculty of thinking, if God so pleased; since your lordship's concern for the promoting the great ends of religion and morality has not enabled you to produce one argument against a proposition, that you think of so dangerous consequence to them.

And here I crave leave to observe, that though in your title-page you promise to prove, that my notion of ideas is inconsistent with itself (which if it were, it could hardly be proved to be inconsistent with any thing else) and with the articles of the Christian faith; yet your attempts all along have been to prove me in some passages of my book inconsistent with myself, without having shown any proposition in my book inconsistent with any article of the Christian faith.

I think your lordship has indeed made use of one argument of your own: but it is such an one, that I confess I do not see how it is apt much to promote religion, especially the Christian religion, founded on revelation. I shall set down your lordship's words, that they may be considered. You say, "that you are of opinion, that the great ends of religion and morality are best secured by the proofs of the immortality of the soul from its nature and properties; and which, you think, proves it immaterial. Your lordship does 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 depend wholly upon God's giving that, which of its own nature it is not capable of," &c. So likewise you say, "if a man cannot be certain, but that matter may think (as I affirm) then what becomes of the soul's immateriality (and consequently immortality) from its operations?" But for all this, say I, his assurance of faith remains on its own basis. Now you appeal to any man of sense, "whether the finding the uncertainty of his own principles which he went upon in point of reason, doth not weaken the credibility of these fundamental articles, when they are considered 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. And if the evidence of faith falls so much short of that of reason, it must needs have less effect upon men's minds, when the subserviency of reason is taken away; as it must be when the grounds of certainty by reason are vanished. Is it at all probable, that he who finds his reason deceive him in such fundamental points, should have his faith stand firm and unmoveable on the account of revelation? For in matters of revelation, there must be some antecedent principle supposed, before we can believe any thing on the account of it."

More to the same purpose we have some pages farther, where from some of my words your lordship says, "You cannot but observe, that we have no certainty upon my grounds, that self-consciousness depends upon an individual immaterial substance, and consequently that a material substance may, according to my principles, have self-consciousness in it; at least, that I am not certain of the contrary. Whereupon your lordship bids me consider, whether this doth not a little affect the whole article of the resurrection?" What does all this tend to? but to make the world believe, that I have lessened the credibility of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection, by saying, that though it be most highly probable, that the soul is immaterial, yet upon my principles it cannot be demonstrated; because it is not impossible to God's omnipotency, if he pleases, to bestow upon some parcels of matter, disposed as he sees fit, a faculty of thinking.

This your accusation of my lessening the credibility of these articles of faith is founded on this, that the article of the immortality of the soul abates of its credibility, if it be allowed, that its immateriality (which is the supposed proof from reason and philosophy of its immortality) cannot be demonstrated from natural reason. Which argument of your lordship's bottoms, as I humbly conceive, on this, that divine revelation abates of its credibility in all those articles it proposes, propor