if 35t OE SUBSTANCE, BODY AND SPIRIT. But though Mr. Locke would seem to exclude and abandon anygeneral notion of substance, as another real physical distinct being, provided to support all its real or supposed accidents or qualities, and seems to banter it by the " Indians unknown some- thing, which supports the tortoise; which supports the elephant, which supports the world ;" yet, as I intimated, he too often re- presents this notion of substance as some real unknown thing or being, which holds the properties in union, and which is different from all those things which he calls qualities or properties, and which supports them all in existence ; though he owns, we know it not, and have no idea of it : and thus he seems to build again and maintain the very notion which he before destroyed. Truly if there were any such real being in nature as sub- stance ingeneral, or a common substance which supports all the properties of things, and this being were utterly unknown to us, then I think it might be granted, that all beings are, or at least might be, the same in substance, and are or may be diversified onlyby their properties or accidents : for if we know nothing of this being called substance, we can deny nothing of it : And then perhaps it might be said, that God and the creature, that body and mind, are the same in substance, even the same individual, substance, and that they differ only is certain properties : But this is a most palpable falsehood, which I shall take some further notice of byand by : for God and the creature differ from each other in their very essence, in their substantial nature or phy- sical being, though the logical or generic idea of substance may be applied to them both, as self-subsisting beings. So matter and mind, or body and spirit, have a real, essential and unchange- abledifference in the very substance of them, i. e. in what they are in nature, though the name substance be attributed to both, and that even in the same sense, because they both, agree so far that they both subsist by themselves. SECT. II.-The plain Idea or Notion of Substance applied to Mindand Body. LET us try nowwhether we cannot trace out and represent with clearness and evidence some better and more satisfactory idea of this matter, than to suppose the substance of all things to be so much unknown, or that there is any such real being as sub- stance distinct from all that we usually call properties. Substance in the proper notion of it is a certain idea or cha- racter which our minds affix to beings, from a consideration that they dependupon nocreated being for their subsistance; and there - fore are said to subsist by themselves ; and from this further con- sideration also, that they appear to be the subjects of various modes or qualities. Not that there is or can beany such thing in nature as substance, pure substance, existing abstracted from All li
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