Query XVI. p. 234.
But God's thoughts are not our thoughts.
That is, as I would interpret the text;—the ideas in and by which God reveals himself to man are not the same with, and are not to be judged by, the conceptions which the human understanding generalizes from the notices of the senses, common to man and to irrational animals, dogs, elephants, beavers, and the like, endowed with the same senses. Therefore I regard this paragraph, p. 223-4, as a specimen of admirable special pleading
ad hominem
in the Court of eristic Logic; but I condemn it as a wilful resignation or temporary self-deposition of the reason. I will not suppose what my reason declares to be no position at all, and therefore an impossible sub-position.
Ib. p. 235.
Let us keep to the terms we began with; lest by the changing of words we make a change of ideas, and alter the very state of the question.
This misuse, or rather this