so
long as this negative definition of Matter is adhered to. I answer, you
may, if so it shall seem good, use the word "Matter" in the same sense as
other men use "nothing," and so make those terms convertible in your
style. For, after all, this is what appears to me to be the result of
that definition, the parts whereof when I consider with attention, either
collectively or separate from each other, I do not find that there is any
kind of effect or impression made on my mind different from what is
excited by the term nothing.

81. You will reply, perhaps, that in the fore-said definition is included
what doth sufficiently distinguish it from nothing--the positive abstract
idea of quiddity, entity, or existence. I own, indeed, that those who
pretend to the faculty of framing abstract general ideas do talk as if
they had such an idea, which is, say they, the most abstract and general
notion of all; that is, to me, the most incomprehensible of all others.
That there are a great variety of spirits of different orders and
capacities, whose faculties both in number and extent are far exceeding
those the Author of my being has bestowed on me, I see no reason to deny.
And for me to pretend to determine by my own few, stinted narrow inlets
of perception, what ideas the inexhaustible power of the Supreme Spirit
may imprint upon them were certainly the utmost folly and
presumption--since there may be, for aught that I know, innumerable sorts
of ideas or sensations, as different from one another, and from all that
I have perceived, as colours are from sounds. But, how ready soever I may
be to acknowledge the scantiness of my comprehension with regard to the
endless variety of spirits and ideas that may possibly exist, yet for any
one to pretend to a notion of Entity or Existence, abstracted from spirit
and idea, from perceived and being perceived, is, I suspect, a downright
repugnancy and trifling with words.--It remains that we consider the
objections which may possibly be made on the part of Religion.

82. OBJECTIONS DERIVED FROM THE SCRIPTURES ANSWERED.--Some there are
who think that, though the arguments for the real existence of
bodies which are drawn from Reason be allowed not to amount to
demonstration, yet the Holy Scriptures are so clear in the point as
will sufficiently convince every good Christian that bodies do really
exist, and are something more than mere ideas; there being in Holy Writ
innumerable facts related wh