HYL.  And now I warrant you think you have made the point very clear, little suspecting that what you advance leads directly to a contradiction.  Is it not an absurdity to imagine any imperfection in God?

Phil.  Without a doubt.

HYL.  To suffer pain is an imperfection?

Phil.  It is.

HYL.  Are we not sometimes affected with pain and uneasiness by some other Being?

Phil.  We are.

HYL.  And have you not said that Being is a Spirit, and is not that
Spirit God?

Phil.  I grant it.

HYL.  But you have asserted that whatever ideas we perceive from without are in the mind which affects us.  The ideas, therefore, of pain and uneasiness are in God; or, in other words, God suffers pain:  that is to say, there is an imperfection in the Divine nature:  which, you acknowledged, was absurd.  So you are caught in a plain contradiction.

Phil.  That God knows or understands all things, and that He knows, among other things, what pain is, even every sort of painful sensation, and what it is for His creatures to suffer pain, I make no question.  But, that God, though He knows and sometimes causes painful sensations in us, can Himself suffer pain, I positively deny.  We, who are limited and dependent spirits, are liable to impressions of sense, the effects of an external Agent, which, being produced against our wills, are sometimes painful and uneasy.  But God, whom no external being can affect, who perceives nothing by sense as we do; whose will is absolute and independent, causing all things, and liable to be thwarted or resisted by nothing:  it is evident, such a Being as this can suffer nothing, nor be affected with any painful sensation, or indeed any sensation at all.  We are chained to a body:  that is to say, our perceptions are connected with corporeal motions.  By the law of our nature, we are affected upon every alteration in the nervous parts of our sensible body; which sensible body, rightly considered, is nothing but a complexion of such qualities or ideas as have no existence distinct from being perceived by a mind.  So that this connexion of sensations with corporeal motions means no more than a correspondence in the order of nature, between two sets of ideas, or things immediately perceivable.  But God is a Pure Spirit, disengaged from all such sympathy, or natural ties.  No corporeal motions are attended with the sensations of pain or pleasure in His mind.  To know everything knowable, is certainly a perfection; but to endure, or suffer, or feel anything by sense, is an imperfection.  The former, I say, agrees to God, but not the latter.  God knows, or hath ideas; but His ideas are not conveyed to Him by sense, as ours are.  Your not distinguishing, where there is so manifest a difference, makes you fancy you see an absurdity where there is none.

HYL.  But, all this while you have not considered that the quantity of Matter has been demonstrated to be proportioned to the gravity of bodies.  And what can withstand demonstration?