Phil.  May we not understand it to have been entirely in respect of finite spirits; so that things, with regard to us, may properly be said to begin their existence, or be created, when God decreed they should become perceptible to intelligent creatures, in that order and manner which He then established, and we now call the laws of nature?  You may call this a relative, or hypothetical existence if you please.  But, so long as it supplies us with the most natural, obvious, and literal sense of the Mosaic history of the creation; so long as it answers all the religious ends of that great article; in a word, so long as you can assign no other sense or meaning in its stead; why should we reject this?  Is it to comply with a ridiculous sceptical humour of making everything nonsense and unintelligible?  I am sure you cannot say it is for the glory of God.  For, allowing it to be a thing possible and conceivable that the corporeal world should have an absolute existence extrinsical to the mind of God, as well as to the minds of all created spirits; yet how could this set forth either the immensity or omniscience of the Deity, or the necessary and immediate dependence of all things on Him?  Nay, would it not rather seem to derogate from those attributes?

HYL.  Well, but as to this decree of God’s, for making things perceptible, what say you, Philonous?  Is it not plain, God did either execute that decree from all eternity, or at some certain time began to will what He had not actually willed before, but only designed to will?  If the former, then there could be no creation, or beginning of existence, in finite things.  If the latter, then we must acknowledge something new to befall the Deity; which implies a sort of change:  and all change argues imperfection.

Phil.  Pray consider what you are doing.  Is it not evident this objection concludes equally against a creation in any sense; nay, against every other act of the Deity, discoverable by the light of nature?  None of which can we conceive, otherwise than as performed in time, and having a beginning.  God is a Being of transcerident and unlimited perfections:  His nature, therefore, is incomprehensible to finite spirits.  It is not, therefore, to be expected, that any man, whether Materialist or Immaterialist, should have exactly just notions of the Deity, His attributes, and ways of operation.  If then you would infer anything against me, your difficulty must not be drawn from the inadequateness of our conceptions of the Divine nature, which is unavoidable on any scheme; but from the denial of Matter, of which there is not one word, directly or indirectly, in what you have now objected.

HYL.  I must acknowledge the difficulties you are concerned to clear are such only as arise from the non-existence of Matter, and are peculiar to that notion.  So far you are in the right.  But I cannot by any means bring myself to think there is no such peculiar repugnancy between the creation and your opinion; though indeed where to fix it, I do not distinctly know.