10.  It is certain, that, in the admirable economy of the creation, natures subordinate are made, in a wonderful manner, subservient to the operations of the higher; and that, accordingly, our first ideas are such as are conceived of things external and sensible.  Hence all men whose intellect appeals only to external sense, are prone to a philosophy which reverses the order of things pertaining to the mind, and tends to materialism, if not to atheism.  “But”—­to refer again to Harris—­“the intellectual scheme which never forgets Deity, postpones every thing corporeal to the primary mental Cause.  It is here it looks for the origin of intelligible ideas, even of those which exist in human capacities.  For though sensible objects may be the destined medium to awaken the dormant energies of man’s understanding, yet are those energies themselves no more contained, in sense, than the explosion of a cannon, in the spark which gave it fire.  In short, all minds that are, are similar and congenial; and so too are their ideas, or intelligible forms.  Were it otherwise, there could be no intercourse between man and man, or (what is more important) between man and God.”—­Hermes, p. 393.

11.  A doctrine somewhat like this, is found in the Meditations of the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, though apparently repugnant to the polytheism commonly admitted by the Stoics, to whom he belonged:  “The world, take it all together, is but one; there is but one sort of matter to make it of, one God to govern it, and one law to guide it.  For, run through the whole system of rational beings, and you will find reason and truth but single and the same.  And thus beings of the same kind, and endued with the same reason, are made happy by the same exercises of it.”—­Book vii, Sec. 9.  Again:  “Let your soul receive the Deity as your blood does the air; for the influences of the one are no less vital, than those of the other.  This correspondence is very practicable:  for there is an ambient omnipresent Spirit, which lies as open and pervious to your mind, as the air you breathe does to your lungs:  but then you must remember to be disposed to draw it.”—­Book viii, Sec. 54; Collier’s Translation.

12.  Agreeably to these views, except that he makes a distinction between a natural and a supernatural idea of God, we find Barclay, the early defender of the Quakers, in an argument with a certain Dutch nobleman, philosophizing thus:  “If the Scripture then be true, there is in men a supernatural idea of God, which altogether differs from this natural idea—­I say, in all men; because all men are capable of salvation, and consequently of enjoying this divine vision.  Now this capacity consisteth herein, that they have such a supernatural idea in themselves.[39] For if there were no such idea in them, it were impossible they should so know God; for whatsoever is clearly and distinctly known, is known by its proper idea; neither can it otherwise be clearly and distinctly