ESSAY I. 337 so many all-wise and almightybeings, as there are inches or mi- nutest parts of space ; for every part of space seems to be as much independenton any other part, as one part of matter is in-. dependent on another part : And if so, then every part of space is an independent, all-wise and almighty being; and insteadof one God we shall have millions. To conclude ; if space be a substance, it must be the one divine substance of infinitely long and broad perfections ; or else all the parts of it must be lesser divine substances united in one. What manifold and strange absurdities, or at least seeming ab- surdities and frightful propositions Will arise from this notion of the Divine Being ? Object. Perhaps it will be said, that " this space is not God himself, but only his immensity ; now his immensity is not pro- perly said to be all-wise and holy and mighty, though God him- self be so." Ans. We have already proved that space cannot be a mode or property ; but that, if it be any thing, it must be a substance. Therefore, if it be any thing divine, it is not merely the divine immensity, or an attribute of God ; but it is his essence or sub- stance ; it is the real irnmensum, it is God himself. This appears further evident, if we consider, that we must necessarily suppose the all-wise and almighty substanceor essence of God to be co-extended with his immensity; otherwise you make infinite extension, which you call a property or a mode, to exist beyond and without the subject of it ; which is absurd enough. And therefore Sir Isaac Newton in his famous Scholi- um, at theend of his Mathematical Principles, where he suppo- ses God to he extended, is constrained to allow, " that God is present every where by his substance ; for, saith he, Power without substance cannot subsist ;" and I am sure then it is sufficiently evident that immensity or space extended beyond the substance, can have no subsistence. Besides, is not this immensity or space the very thingyou conceive of as the subject of the modes of eternity, capacity, comprehension, self-existence, unchangeableness, &c. i. e. as the substance itself ? Is it not this space which you conceive of as a self-subsisting and unannibilable Being ? and what is that but a most substantial idea ? Though some of our modern phi- losophers renounce all knowledge of substances, while they main- tain the necessity of them as a substratum for modes ; yet it seems to me that this is one chief reasonwhich has tempted many of them to suppose both God and all other spirits to be extended, that they may have a sort of substratum or subject for the powers of thinking and willing, or the modes of knowledge and volition to subsist in. Thug it appears, so far as I can see, that if space be any VOL. viii, Y.
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