Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/67

Rh ) it is as incongruous to deny there is a God, because God is not an Object fitted to the Senses, as it were to deny there is Matter or a Body, because Body or Matter, in the imaginative Notion thereof, lies so unevenly and troublesomly in our Phasy and Reason.

In the contemplation whereof our Understanding discovereth such contradictious incoherencies, that were it not that the Notion is sustain'd by the confident dictates of Sense, Reason appealing to those more crass Representations of Phansy, would by her shrewd Dilemmas be able to argue it quite out of the world. But our reason being well aware that corporeall Matter is the proper Object of the Sensitive Faculty, she gives full belief to the information of Sense in her own sphear, slighting the puzling objections of perplexed Phansy, and freely admits the Existence of Matter, notwithstanding the intanglements of Imagination; as she does also the Existence of God, from the contemplation of his Idea in our Soul, notwithstanding the silence of the Senses therein.

14. For indeed it were an unexcusable piece of folly and madnesse in a man, whenas he has Cognoscitive Faculties reaching to the knowledge of God, and has a certain and unalterable Idea of God in his Soul, which he can by no device wipe out, as well as he has the knowledge of Sense that reaches to the discovery of the Matter; to give necessary Self-existence to the Matter, no Faculty at all informing him so; and to take necessary Existence from God, though the natural Notion of God in the Soul inform him to the contrary; and onely upon this pretence, because God does not immediately fall under the Knowledge of the Senses: thus partially siding with one kinde of Faculty onely of the Soul, and proscribing all the rest. Which is as humoursomely and foolishly done, as if a man should make a faction amongst the Senses themselves, and resolve to believe nothing to be but what he could see with his Eyes, and so confidently pronounce that there is no such thing as the Element of Aire, nor Winds, nor Musick, nor Thunder. And the reason, forsooth, must be, because he can see none of these things with his Eyes, and that's the sole Sense that he intends to believe.

Rh