HYL.  You are not aware, Philonous, that in making God the immediate Author of all the motions in nature, you make Him the Author of murder, sacrilege, adultery, and the like heinous sins.

Phil.  In answer to that, I observe, first, that the imputation of guilt is the same, whether a person commits an action with or without an instrument.  In case therefore you suppose God to act by the mediation of an instrument or occasion, called matter, you as truly make Him the author of sin as I, who think Him the immediate agent in all those operations vulgarly ascribed to Nature.  I farther observe that sin or moral turpitude doth not consist in the outward physical action or motion, but in the internal deviation of the will from the laws of reason and religion.  This is plain, in that the killing an enemy in a battle, or putting a criminal legally to death, is not thought sinful; though the outward act be the very same with that in the case of murder.  Since, therefore, sin doth not consist in the physical action, the making God an immediate cause of all such actions is not making Him the Author of sin.  Lastly, I have nowhere said that God is the only agent who produces all the motions in bodies.  It is true I have denied there are any other agents besides spirits; but this is very consistent with allowing to thinking rational beings, in the production of motions, the use of limited powers, ultimately indeed derived from God, but immediately under the direction of their own wills, which is sufficient to entitle them to all the guilt of their actions.

HYL.  But the denying Matter, Philonous, or corporeal Substance; there is the point.  You can never persuade me that this is not repugnant to the universal sense of mankind.  Were our dispute to be determined by most voices, I am confident you would give up the point, without gathering the votes.

Phil.  I wish both our opinions were fairly stated and submitted to the judgment of men who had plain common sense, without the prejudices of a learned education.  Let me be represented as one who trusts his senses, who thinks he knows the things he sees and feels, and entertains no doubts of their existence; and you fairly set forth with all your doubts, your paradoxes, and your scepticism about you, and I shall willingly acquiesce in the determination of any indifferent person.  That there is no substance wherein ideas can exist beside spirit is to me evident.  And that the objects immediately perceived are ideas, is on all hands agreed.  And that sensible qualities are objects immediately perceived no one can deny.  It is therefore evident there can be no substratum of those qualities but spirit; in which they exist, not by way of mode or property, but as a thing perceived in that which perceives it.  I deny therefore that there is any unthinking-substratum of the objects of sense, and in that acceptation