ends of that great article; in a word, so long as you can
assign no other sense or meaning in its stead; why should we reject this?
Is it to comply with a ridiculous sceptical humour of making everything
nonsense and unintelligible? I am sure you cannot say it is for the glory
of God. For, allowing it to be a thing possible and conceivable that the
corporeal world should have an absolute existence extrinsical to the mind
of God, as well as to the minds of all created spirits; yet how could
this set forth either the immensity or omniscience of the Deity, or the
necessary and immediate dependence of all things on Him? Nay, would
it not rather seem to derogate from those attributes?

HYL. Well, but as to this decree of God's, for making things
perceptible, what say you, Philonous? Is it not plain, God did either
execute that decree from all eternity, or at some certain time began to
will what He had not actually willed before, but only designed to will?
If the former, then there could be no creation, or beginning of
existence, in finite things. If the latter, then we must acknowledge
something new to befall the Deity; which implies a sort of change: and
all change argues imperfection.

PHIL. Pray consider what you are doing. Is it not evident this
objection concludes equally against a creation in any sense; nay, against
every other act of the Deity, discoverable by the light of nature? None
of which can WE conceive, otherwise than as performed in time, and
having a beginning. God is a Being of transcendent and unlimited
perfections: His nature, therefore, is incomprehensible to finite
spirits. It is not, therefore, to be expected, that any man, whether
Materialist or Immaterialist, should have exactly just notions of the
Deity, His attributes, and ways of operation. If then you would infer
anything against me, your difficulty must not be drawn from the
inadequateness of our conceptions of the Divine nature, which is
unavoidable on any scheme; but from the denial of Matter, of which there
is not one word, directly or indirectly, in what you have now objected.

HYL. I must acknowledge the difficulties you are concerned to clear are
such only as arise from the non-existence of Matter, and are peculiar to
that notion. So far you are in the right. But I cannot by any means bring
myself to think there is no such peculiar repugnancy between the creation
and your opinion; though indeed where to fix it, I do not distinctly
kn