philosophers,
though they acknowledge all corporeal beings to be perceived by God, yet
they attribute to them an absolute subsistence distinct from their being
perceived by any mind whatever; which I do not. Besides, is there no
difference between saying, THERE IS A GOD, THEREFORE HE PERCEIVES ALL
THINGS; and saying, SENSIBLE THINGS DO REALLY EXIST; AND, IF THEY
REALLY EXIST, THEY ARE NECESSARILY PERCEIVED BY AN INFINITE MIND:
THEREFORE THERE IS AN INFINITE MIND OR GOD? This furnishes you with a
direct and immediate demonstration, from a most evident principle, of the
BEING OF A GOD. Divines and philosophers had proved beyond all
controversy, from the beauty and usefulness of the several parts of the
creation, that it was the workmanship of God. But that--setting aside all
help of astronomy and natural philosophy, all contemplation of the
contrivance, order, and adjustment of things--an infinite Mind should be
necessarily inferred from the bare EXISTENCE OF THE SENSIBLE WORLD, is
an advantage to them only who have made this easy reflexion: that the
sensible world is that which we perceive by our several senses; and that
nothing is perceived by the senses beside ideas; and that no idea
or archetype of an idea can exist otherwise than in a mind. You may now,
without any laborious search into the sciences, without any subtlety of
reason, or tedious length of discourse, oppose and baffle the most
strenuous advocate for Atheism. Those miserable refuges, whether in an
eternal succession of unthinking causes and effects, or in a fortuitous
concourse of atoms; those wild imaginations of Vanini, Hobbes, and
Spinoza: in a word, the whole system of Atheism, is it not entirely
overthrown, by this single reflexion on the repugnancy included in
supposing the whole, or any part, even the most rude and shapeless, of
the visible world, to exist without a mind? Let any one of those abettors
of impiety but look into his own thoughts, and there try if he can
conceive how so much as a rock, a desert, a chaos, or confused jumble of
atoms; how anything at all, either sensible or imaginable, can exist
independent of a Mind, and he need go no farther to be convinced of his
folly. Can anything be fairer than to put a dispute on such an issue, and
leave it to a man himself to see if he can conceive, even in thought,
what he holds to be true in fact, and from a notional to allow it a real
existence?

HYL. It cannot be denied there is something h