perfectly. All the Men and all the Cities we have not seen, fomewhat differ from any we have feen; the Men have different Features, and Shapes, and Colours perhaps, and the Cities differently-difpos'd Streets and Houses; and yet notwithstanding their many Unlikeneffes to that Idea by which we conceive them, we cannot say they are altogether Unknown

to us.

2dly. IDEAS of Senfation are by this Property diftinguished from all Ideas or Conceptions of things which are purely Figurative and Metaphorical. Of these there are two Sorts; one of which may be distinguished by the Name of Human, and the other of Divine Metaphor: But the latter being chiefly to my purpose, shall take more particular Notice of that only here.

DIVINE Metaphor is the fubftituting our Ideas of Senfation (which are Direct and Immediate) as well as the Words belonging to them, to express the invisible and immaterial Things of Heaven, of which we can have no direct Ideas, nor any Immediate Knowledge or Conception; as when God's Knowledge is exprefs'd by his Eyes being in Every Place; his Goodness in granting our Petitions, by his Ear not being Heavy; his Power by a Strong Hand; and many others of this kind used in Scripture to express his Attributes, and other heavenly things

tual Things of another World, when we wou'd apprehend them with any degree of Real, or True, or Useful Knowledge. For fince there can be no actual Idea or immediate Conception or Confciousness of what is purely fpiritual, by any of our Faculties of Body or Mind, or of both together; confequently there is a neceffity for thus making other Conceptions and Notions which are familiar to us, and direct, and immediate, to Stand for them in the Mind; that by their Mediation we may think and fpeak of what is otherwise inconceivable and unutterable with any Degree of correfpondent Exactness and Proportion. Thus we conceive the Knowledge of purely fpiritual Beings by our Thinking, and apply the various Modes of it to them; nay, we thus conceive God himself and all his Attributes, and fpeak of them by the mediation of the Operations of our own Mind, and of the more commendable Paffions and Affections of an Human Soul.

A

CHAP. VII.

That they are Direct.

FOURTH Property of Ideas of Senfation, which I shall affign, is that they are Direct; by which they are not opposed to fuch as arise from any Reflex Act of the Mind upon itself. The Mind or fpiritual Part of us cannot look upon or into itself, by either a di

rect

rect or reflex Act, any more than it can discern a Soul in its State of Separation from the Body: We have no Knowledge of our own Spirit, or of any of its Faculties, but from a confcious Experience of its feveral Ways of Acting upon the Ideas of Senfation, or the Objects of the visible Creation; which tho' it be neither a direct nor reflex View, yet is a Knowledge of the Operations of our Mind, as Immediate as the View it hath of those Ideas of external Objects upon which it operates. But they are by this Property oppos'd not only to all Indirect Ideas, but to our indirect Conceptions and Notions alfo; which Oppofition may be illuftrated in general by this Similitude. When we look ftrait in a Man's Face, this gives us a Direct Idea of it; but if we had never seen that Face but in a Glafs, it would have given us an Indirect Idea, or bare Refemblance of it: So that an indirect Idea or Conception is when we have never difcerned the thing Itself, but either a mere Shadow; or elfe a more perfect Similitude or Refemblance of it in fomething else.

I. THUS then they are by this Property oppofed First, to thofe Metaphorical Ideas, or mere Shadows only and Allufions, made use of to conceive the Objects of another World. For inftance, the Idea of the Sun or a refplendent material Light is Direct; I do not difcern it by the Intervention of any other Idea: But when

while they are kept within the due Compafs of thofe Similitudes and Representations of them. For then it is that Men run into Solecism and Absurdity, into Error and Confufion concerning God and spiritual Things; when they, not contented with this imperfect degree of Knowledge by Representation only and Analogy, will argue from Things merely Natural, to the Real Intrinfic Nature of thofe Things which now we can know no other way but by that Similitude, or Correspondency, or Proportion they bear to our natural Ideas and Conceptions: And when they proceed upon this falfe Suppofition, that what can be affirmed of these Representations only, must be ftrictly and literaly true with refpect to the Real Nature and Subftance of the Things they reprefent.

UPON this very mistake it is that our modern clandeftine Arians argue Chrift to be a Separate, Inferior Divine Perfon; Subject and Sent, and doing the Will of another, in as ftrict and Literal a Sence as one Man can be faid to be the Meffenger of another, and to perform his Will, and to be feparate from him: Tho' this be as abfurd as to argue that the Reflection and Image of a Man in the Glass, is a true and Real human Body and Perfon, in all refpects like one of our felves. Again, These very Men at another time run into a quite Contrary Extreme and Abfurdity; and, like the Socinians, turn this Analogy into

mere

mere Metaphor and Allufion only. Thus they argue that Son and Begotten when spoke of Christ, are only a Figure for a more tranfcendent Act of Creation; which is as groundless as afferting the Image in the Glafs to be no more than a metaphorical Allufion only, without any correfpondent Resemblance or Analogy at all to the Man reflected from it. And thus the Socinians will have the Blood of Chrift to be no Price, Purchase or Redemption, because there can be no proper and literal Price, Purchase or Redemption in the Cafe.

IN short, most of the Arguments by which the Socinians bring all the Mysteries of Chriftianity to Nothing; as well as thofe of all the Deifts and Freethinkers of this unbelieving Age who owe all their Infidelity to the Socinian Hypothesis, are built upon this fandy Foundation. Accordingly when we come to confider them more particularly, we fhall find that their Reasonings and Inferences are as abfurd, as thofe would be which we fhould make from the Likeness of a Man in the Glafs, to his Real Nature: As if we fhould from thence argue with great acuteness, that a Man himself could have neither a Body nor Solidity, nor Spirit, nor Life, nor Reafon; that he had neither Senfation nor Speech; nay, that he was nothing but a mere Shadow or Appearance, and had no Being but in our Imagination alone.