First, Perhaps it will be said, that, though it be as clear as demonstration can make it, that there must be an eternal Being, and that Being must also be knowing:  yet it does not follow but that thinking Being may also be material.  Let it be so, it equally still follows that there is a God.  For there be an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent Being, it is certain that there is a God, whether you imagine that Being to be material or no.  But herein, I suppose, lies the danger and deceit of that supposition:—­there being no way to avoid the demonstration, that there is an eternal knowing Being, men devoted to matter, would willingly have it granted, that that knowing Being is material; and then, letting slide out of their minds, or the discourse, the demonstration whereby an eternal knowing Being was proved necessarily to exist, would argue all to be matter, and so deny a God, that is, an eternal cogitative Being:  whereby they are so far from establishing, that they destroy their own hypothesis.  For, if there can be, in their opinion, eternal matter, without any eternal cogitative Being, they manifestly separate matter and thinking, and suppose no necessary connexion of the one with the other, and so establish the necessity of an eternal Spirit, but not of matter; since it has been proved already, that an eternal cogitative Being is unavoidably to be granted.  Now, if thinking and matter may be separated, the eternal existence of matter will not follow from the eternal existence of a cogitative Being, and they suppose it to no purpose.

14.  Not material:  First, because each Particle of Matter is not cogitative.

But now let us see how they can satisfy themselves, or others, that this eternal thinking Being is material.

I. I would ask them, whether they imagine that all matter, every particle of matter, thinks?  This, I suppose, they will scarce say; since then there would be as many eternal thinking beings as there are particles of matter, and so an infinity of gods.  And yet, if they will not allow matter as matter, that is, every particle of matter, to be as well cogitative as extended, they will have as hard a task to make out to their own reasons a cogitative being out of incogitative particles, as an extended being out of unextended parts, if I may so speak.

15.  II.  Secondly, Because one Particle alone of Matter cannot be cogitative.

If all matter does not think, I next ask, Whether it be only one atom that does so?  This has as many absurdities as the other; for then this atom of matter must be alone eternal or not.  If this alone be eternal, then this alone, by its powerful thought or will, made all the rest of matter.  And so we have the creation of matter by a powerful thought, which is that the materialists stick at; for if they suppose one single thinking atom to have produced all the rest of matter, they cannot ascribe