others againe are names of Names; or of different sorts of Speech:  As Universall, Plurall, Singular, Negation, True, False, Syllogisme, Interrogation, Promise, Covenant, are the names of certain Forms of Speech.  Others serve to shew the Consequence, or Repugnance of one name to another; as when one saith, “A Man is a Body,” hee intendeth that the name of Body is necessarily consequent to the name of Man; as being but severall names of the same thing, Man; which Consequence is signified by coupling them together with the word Is.  And as wee use the Verbe Is; so the Latines use their Verbe Est, and the Greeks their Esti through all its Declinations.  Whether all other Nations of the world have in their severall languages a word that answereth to it, or not, I cannot tell; but I am sure they have not need of it:  For the placing of two names in order may serve to signifie their Consequence, if it were the custome, (for Custome is it, that give words their force,) as well as the words Is, or Bee, or Are, and the like.

And if it were so, that there were a Language without any Verb answerable to Est, or Is, or Bee; yet the men that used it would bee not a jot the lesse capable of Inferring, Concluding, and of all kind of Reasoning, than were the Greeks, and Latines.  But what then would become of these Terms, of Entity, Essence, Essentiall, Essentially, that are derived from it, and of many more that depend on these, applyed as most commonly they are?  They are therefore no Names of Things; but Signes, by which wee make known, that wee conceive the Consequence of one name or Attribute to another:  as when we say, “a Man, is, a living Body,” wee mean not that the Man is one thing, the Living Body another, and the Is, or Beeing a third:  but that the Man, and the Living Body, is the same thing:  because the Consequence, “If hee bee a Man, hee is a living Body,” is a true Consequence, signified by that word Is.  Therefore, “to bee a Body, to Walke, to bee Speaking, to Live, to See, and the like Infinitives; also Corporeity, Walking, Speaking, Life, Sight, and the like, that signifie just the same, are the names of Nothing; as I have elsewhere more amply expressed.

But to what purpose (may some man say) is such subtilty in a work of this nature, where I pretend to nothing but what is necessary to the doctrine of Government and Obedience?  It is to this purpose, that men may no longer suffer themselves to be abused, by them, that by this doctrine of Separated Essences, built on the Vain Philosophy of Aristotle, would fright them from Obeying the Laws of their Countrey, with empty names; as men fright Birds from the Corn with an empty doublet, a hat, and a crooked stick.  For it is upon this ground, that when a Man is dead and buried, they say his Soule (that is his Life) can walk separated from his Body, and is seen by night amongst the graves.  Upon the same ground they say, that the Figure, and Colour, and Tast of a peece of Bread, has a being, there, where they say there