latter not eternal and uncaused. 327

^as first exerted, to make it a solid resist-5n S substance.

II. This

^ith respect to the impossibility of creating matter, aC f rta in great Author seems very positive. I shall here^ lVe his argument, and endeavour to answer it. He says,

faking to the other Person in the Dialogue.-" In

the first place, give me leave to wonder that, instead°f the many arguments commonly brought for theproof of a Deity, you make use only of one single°he to build on. I expected to have heard from you,

^ 111 customary form, of a firjl Cause , a first Being, anda beginning os motion: how clear the idea was of im-Material substance; and how plainly it appeared, thatk>me time or other matter must have been created.

Yx

j "Ut 35 to all this you are silent.” [Thus our Author,think, endeavours to get quit of this kind of reasoning,^'th a pretended contempt, instead of argument.] “ As^hr what is said of a material unthinking Subfiance be-t ‘°g never able to have produced an immaterial think -ln g one ■, I readily grant it: but on the condition thatu siiis great maxim of nothing being ever made from no-( ^ n g, may hold as well on my side as my Adversary’s ;an d then, I suppose, that whilst the world endures, heVjl ^ be ata loss how to assign a beginning to matter, or„ to suggest the possibility of annihilating it. The<< ^ritual men may, as long as they please, represent tott V)S ’ in the most eloquent manner, that matter consi-u ? ered >n a thousand different shapes, joined and dis-J ai ned, varied and modified to eternity, can never ofy 4 “itself,