Creatour of all things, I can frame an Image of Creation from what I see every day, as a Man Born, or growing from a Punctum to that shape and size he now bears; an other Idea then this no man can have at the word Creatour; But the Possibility of Imagining a Creation is not sufficient to prove that the world was created. And therefore tho it were Demonstrated that some Infinite Independent Almighty Being did exist, yet it will not from thence follow that a Creatour exists; unless one can think this to be a right inference, we believe that there exists something that has created all other things, therefore the world was Created thereby.
Moreover when he says, that the Idea of God, and of our Soul is Innate or born in us, I would fain know, whether the Souls of those that sleep soundly do think unless they dream; If not, then at that time they have no Ideas, and consequently no Idea is Innate, for what is Innate to us is never Absent from us.
ANSWER.
None of Gods Attributes can proceed from outward objects as from a Pattern, because there is nothing found in God like what is found in External, that is, Corporeal things; Now ’tis manifest that whatever we think of in him differing or unlike what we find in them proceeds not from them, but from a cause of that very diversity in our Thought.
And here I desire to know, how this Philosopher deduces Gods Understanding from outward Things, and yet I can easily explain what Idea I have thereof, by saying, that by the Idea of Gods Understanding I conceive whatever is the Form of any Perception; For who is there that does not perceive that he understands something or other, and consequently he must thereby have an Idea of understanding, and by enlarging it Indefinitely he forms the Idea of Gods Understanding. And so of his other Attributes.
And seeing we have made use of that Idea of God which is in us to demonstrate his existence, and seeing there is contain’d in this Idea such an Immense Power, that we conceive it a contradiction for God to Exist, and yet that any thing should Be besides Him, which was not Created by Him, it plainly follows that demonstrating His existence we demonstrate also that the whole world, or all things different from God, were Created by God.
Lastly when we assert, that some Ideas are Innate or natural to us, we do not mean that they are always present with us (for so no Idea would be Innate) but only that we have in our selves a Faculty of producing them.
OBJECT. XI.
[*] The whole stress of which Argument lyes thus; because I know it impossible for me to be of the same nature I am, viz, having the Idea of a God in me, unless really there were a God, A God (I say) that very same God, whose Idea I have in my mind.