from the divine nature, while no choice is left to God, and man’s choice does not exempt him from necessity.  He adds that men, in order to establish what is termed Imperium in Imperio, supposed that their soul was a direct creation of God, something which could not be produced by natural causes, furthermore that it had an absolute power of determination, a state of things contrary to experience.  Spinoza is right in opposing an absolute power of determination, that is, one without any grounds; it does not belong even to God.  But he is wrong in thinking that a soul, that a simple substance, can be produced naturally.  It seems, indeed, that the soul to him was only a transient modification; and when he pretends to make it lasting, and even perpetual, he substitutes for it the idea of the body, which is purely a notion and not a real and actual thing.

373.  The story M. Bayle relates of Johan Bredenburg, a citizen of Rotterdam (Dictionary, art.  ‘Spinoza’, lit.  H, p. 2774) is curious.  He published a book against Spinoza, entitled:  Enervatio Tractatus Theologico-politici, una cum demonstratione geometrico ordine disposita, Naturam non esse Deum, cujus effati contrario praedictus Tractatus unice innititur.  One was surprised to see that a man who did not follow the profession of letters, and who had but slight education (having written his book in Flemish, and had it translated into Latin), had been able to penetrate with such subtlety all the principles of Spinoza, and succeed in overthrowing them, after having reduced them by a candid analysis to a state wherein they could appear in their full force.  I have been told (adds M. Bayle) that this writer after copious reflexion upon his answer, and upon the principle of his opponent, finally found that this principle could be reduced to the form of a demonstration.  He undertook therefore to prove that there is no cause of all things other than a nature which exists necessarily, and which acts according to an immutable, inevitable and irrevocable necessity.  He examined the whole system of the geometricians, and after having constructed his demonstration he scrutinized it from every imaginable angle, he endeavoured to find its weak spot and was never able to discover any means of destroying it, or even of weakening it.  That caused him real distress:  he groaned over it and begged the most talented of his [350] friends to help him in searching out the defects of this demonstration.  For all that, he was not well pleased that copies of the book were made.  Franz Cuper, a Socinian (who had written Arcana Atheismi Revelata against Spinoza, Rotterdam, 1676, in 4to.), having obtained a copy, published it just as it was, that is, in Flemish, with some reflexions, and accused the author of being an atheist.  The accused made his defence in the same tongue.  Orobio, a very able Jewish physician (that one who was refuted by M. Limbourg, and who replied, so I have heard say, in a work posthumously circulated,