but I did it to set off the objection to advantage, that it might be more fully answered. I heartily wish you as fair treatment from your opponents in print, as I have had from you though, I must own, I cannot see, in those that I have read, that unprejudiced search after truth, which I would have hoped for.

February 3, 1714.

I am, Reverend Sir,

Your most humble Servant.

THE

ANSWER

TO

THE FIFTH LETTER.

SIR,

In a multitude of business, I mislaid your last letter; and could not answer it, till it came again to my hands by chance. We seem to have pushed the matter in question between us as far as it will go; and, upon the whole, I cannot but take notice, I have very seldom met with persons so reasonable and unprejudiced as yourself, in such debates as these.

I think all I need say in answer to the reasoning in your letter is, that your granting the absurdity of the supposition you were endeavoring to make, is consequently granting the necessary truth of my argument. If space and duration necessarily remain, even after they are supposed to be taken away, and be not (as it is plain they are not) themselves substances; then the†

* Ut partium temporis ordo est immutabilis, sic etiam ordo partium spatii. Moveantur hæ de locis suis, et movebuntur (ut ita dicam) de seipsis.-NEWTON. Princip. Mathemat. Schol. ad definit. 8.

† Deus non est æternitas vel infinitas, sed æternus et infinitus; mon est duratio vel spatium, sed durat et adest. Durat semper, et adest ubique; et existendo semper et ubique, durationen et spatium, æternitatem et infinitatem, constituit. Cum unaquæque; spatii particula, sit semper; et unumquodque; durationis indivisible momentum, ubique; certe rerum omnium fabricator ac Dominus, non

substance, on whose existence they depend, will necessarily remain likewise, even after it is supposed to be taken away which shows that supposition to be impossible and contradictory.

As to your observation at the end of your letter, that the argument I have insisted on, if it were obvious to every capacity, should have more frequently been used. as a fundamental argument for a proof of the being of God; the true cause why it has been seldom urged, is, I think, this: that the universal prevalency of Cartes's absurd notions (teaching that matter* is necessarily infinite and necessarily eternal, and ascribing all things to mere mechanic laws of motion, exclusive of final causes, and of all will, and intelligence, and divine Providence from the government of the world) hath incredibly blinded the eyes of common reason, and prevented men from discerning him in whom they live and move, and have their being. The like has happened in some other instances. How universally have men for many ages believed, that eternity is no duration at all, and infinity no amplitude? Something of the like kind has happened in the matter of transubstantiation, and (I think) in the scholastic notion of the Trinity, &c.

April 8, 1714.

I am, Sir,

Your affectionate Friend and Servant,

erit numquam nusquam.

Omni præsens est, non per virtutem solam, sed etiam per substantiam: nam virtus sine substantia subsistere non potest. In ipso continentur et moventur universa, &c.-NEWTON, Princip. Mathemat. Schol. general. sub. finem.

*Pluto implicare contradictionem, ut mundus (meaning the material world) sit finitus. Cartes, Epist. 69. Partis Primæ.

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