Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/56

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1. What Notions are more particularly comprised in the Idea of a Being absolutely Perfect. 2. That the difficulty of framing the conception of a thing ought to be no Argument against the Existence thereof; the nature of corporeall Matter being so perplex' d and intricate, which yet all men acknowledge to exist. 3. That the Idea of a Spirit'' is as easy a Notion as of any other Substance whatsoever. what powers and properties are contained in the Notion of a ''Spirit. 4. That Eternity and Infinity, if God were not, would be cast upon something else; so that Atheism cannot free the Mind from such Intricacies. 5. Goodness, Knowledge and Power, Notions of highest Perfection, and therefore necessarily included in the Idea of a Being absolutely Perfect. 6. As also Necessity, it sounding greater Perfection then Contingency.

Ut now to lay out more particularly the Perfections comprehended in this Notion of a Being absolutely and fully Perfect, I think I may securely nominate these; Self-subsistency, Immateriality, Infinity as well of Duration as Essence, Immensity of Goodnesse, Omnisciency, Omnipotency, and Necessity of Existence. Let this therefore be the Description of a Being absolutely Perfect, That it is a Spirit, Eternall, Infinite in Essence and Goodnesse, Omniscient, Omnipotent, and of it self necessarily existent. All which Attributes being Attributes of the highest Perfection that falls under the apprehension of man, and having no discoverable imperfection interwoven with them, must of necessity be attributed to that which we conceive absolutely and fully Perfect. And if any one will say that this is but to dress up a Notion out of my own fancy, which I would afterwards slily insinuate to be the Notion of a God; I answer, that no man can discourse and reason of any thing without recourse to settled Notions deciphered in his own Mind: and that such an Exception as this implies the most contradictious Absurdities imaginable, to wit, as if a man should reason from something that never entered into his Mind, or that is utterly out of the ken of his own Faculties. But such groundless allegations as these discover nothing but an unwillingness to find themselves able to entertain any conception of God, and a heavy propension to sink down into an utter oblivion of him, and to become as stupid and senseless in Divine things as the very Beasts.

2. But others, it maybe, will not look on this Notion as contemptible for the easy composure thereof out of familiar conceptions which the Mind of man ordinarily figures it self into, but reject it rather out of some unintelligible hard terms in it, such as Spirit, Eternall, and Infinite; for they do profess they can frame no Notion of Spirit, and that any thing should be Eternall or Infinite they do not know how to set their mind in a posture to apprehend, and therefore some would have no such thing as a Spirit in the world.

But if the difficulty of framing a conception of a thing must take away