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leaft confefs yourselves to be as ignorant as I. Neither your imaginations nor mine are able to comprehend in what manner a body is fufceptible of ideas; and do you conceive better in what manner a fubftance, of what kind foever, is fufceptible of them? As you cannot comprehend either matter or fpirit, why will you prefume to affert any thing?

THE fuperftitious man comes afterwards, and declares, that all those must be burnt for the good of their Souls, who so much as fufpect that it is poffible for the body to think without any foreign affiftance. But what would thefe people fay should they themselves be prov'd irreligious? And indeed, what man can prefume to affert, without being guilty at the fame time of the greatest impiety, that it is impoffible for the Creator to form matter with thought and fenfation? Confider only, I beg you, what a Dilemma you bring yourfelves into; you who confine in this manner the power of the Creator. Beafts have the fame organs, the fame sensations, the fame perceptions as we; they have memory, and combine certain ideas. In cafe it was not in the power of God to animate matter, and inform it with fenfation, the confequence would be, either that beafts are mere machines, or that they have a fpiritual Soul.

ME

METHINKS it is clearly evident that beafts cannot be mere machines, which I prove thus. God has given them the very fame organs of fenfation as to us: If therefore they have no fenfation, God has created an ufelefs thing; now, according to your own confeffion, God does nothing in vain; he therefore did not create fo many organs of fenfation, merely for them to be uninform'd with this faculty; confequently beafts are not mere machines. Beafts, according to your affertion, cannot be animated with a fpiritual Soul; you will therefore, in fpite of your felf, be reduced to this only affertion, viz. that God has endued the organs of beasts, who are mere matter, with the faculties of fenfation and perception, which you call inftinct in them. But why may not God, if he pleases, communicate to our more delicate organs that faculty of feeling, perceiving, and thinking, which we call human reafon? To whatever fide you turn, you are forced to acknowledge your own ignorance, and the boundless power of the Creator. Exclaim therefore no more againft the fage, the modeft philofophy of Mr. Locke, which, fo far from interfering with religion, would be of ufe to demonftrate the truth of it, in cafe religion wanted any fuch fupport. For what philofophy can be of a more religious nature than

that,

that, which affirming nothing but what it conceives clearly, and confcious of its own weakness, declares that we must always have recourse to God in our examining of the first principles.

BESIDES, we must not be apprehenfive, that any philofophical opinion will ever prejudice the religion of a country. Tho' our demonstrations clafh directly with our myfteries, that is nothing to the purpofe, for the latter are not lefs revered upon that account by our christian philofophers, who know very well that the objects of reafon and thofe of faith are of a very different nature. Philofophers will never form a religious fect, the reason of which is, their writings are not calculated for the vulgar, and they themselves are free from enthufiafm. If we divide mankind into twenty parts, it will be found that nineteen of these confift of perfons employed in manual labour, who will never know that ftich a man as Mr. Locke existed. In the remaining twentieth part how few are readers? And among fuch as are fo, twenty amufe themselves with romances to one who ftudies philofophy. The thinking part of mankind are confin'd to a very fmall number, and thefe will never difturb the peace and tranquility of the world.

NEITHER Montagne, Locke, Bayle, Spinoza, Hobbes, the Lord Shaftsbury, Collins nor Toland lighted up the firebrand of difcord in their countries; this has generally been the work of divines, who, being at first puffed up with the ambition of becoming chiefs of a fect, foon grew very defirous of being at the head of a party. But what do I fay? All the works of the modern philofophers put together will ne ver make fo much noife as even the dif pute which arofe among the Francifcans, merely about the fashion of their fleeves and of their cowls.

LE T

LETTER XIV.

O N

DES CARTES

AND

Sir ISAAC NEWTON.

A

FRENCHMAN, who arrives in London, will find philofophy, like every thing else, very much changed there. He had left the world a plenum, and he now finds it a vacuum. At Paris the univerfe is feen compofed of vortices of fubtile matter; but nothing like it is feen in London. In France it is the preffure of the moon that caufes the tides; but in England it is the fea that gravitates towards the moon; fo that when you think that the moon fhould make it flood with us, thofe Gentlemen fancy it fhould be ebb, which, very unluckily, cannot be proved. For to be able to do this, it is neceffary the moon and the tides fhould have

been

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