inning to be for
signs and for seasons and for days and years, and are accordingly our
measures of time; but such other portions too of that infinite uniform
duration, which we upon any occasion do suppose equal to certain lengths
of measured time; and so consider them as bounded and determined. For,
if we should suppose the creation, or fall of the angels, was at the
beginning of the Julian period, we should speak properly enough, and
should be understood if we said, it is a longer time since the creation
of angels than the creation of the world, by 7640 years: whereby we
would mark out so much of that undistinguished duration as we suppose
equal to, and would have admitted, 7640 annual revolutions of the sun,
moving at the rate it now does. And thus likewise we sometimes speak of
place, distance, or bulk, in the great INANE, beyond the confines of the
world, when we consider so much of that space as is equal to, or capable
to receive, a body of any assigned dimensions, as a cubic foot; or do
suppose a point in it, at such a certain distance from any part of the
universe.

8. They belong to all finite beings.

WHERE and WHEN are questions belonging to all finite existences, and are
by us always reckoned from some known parts of this sensible world, and
from some certain epochs marked out to us by the motions observable in
it. Without some such fixed parts or periods, the order of things would
be lost, to our finite understandings, in the boundless invariable
oceans of duration and expansion, which comprehend in them all finite
beings, and in their full extent belong only to the Deity. And therefore
we are not to wonder that we comprehend them not, and do so often find
our thoughts at a loss, when we would consider them, either abstractly
in themselves, or as any way attributed to the first incomprehensible
Being. But when applied to any particular finite beings, the extension
of any body is so much of that infinite space as the bulk of the body
takes up. And place is the position of any body, when considered at a
certain distance from some other. As the idea of the particular duration
of anything is, an idea of that portion of infinite duration which
passes during the existence of that thing; so the time when the thing
existed is, the idea of that space of duration which passed between some
known and fixed period of duration, and the being of that thing. One
shows the distance of the extremities of the bulk or exist