of finite created
spirits in being, before man. I say farther, in case we conceive the
creation, as we should at this time, a parcel of plants or vegetables of
all sorts produced, by an invisible Power, in a desert where nobody was
present--that this way of explaining or conceiving it is consistent with
my principles, since they deprive you of nothing, either sensible or
imaginable; that it exactly suits with the common, natural, and
undebauched notions of mankind; that it manifests the dependence of all
things on God; and consequently hath all the good effect or influence,
which it is possible that important article of our faith should have in
making men humble, thankful, and resigned to their great Creator. I
say, moreover, that, in this naked conception of things, divested
of words, there will not be found any notion of what you call the
ACTUALITY OF ABSOLUTE EXISTENCE. You may indeed raise a dust with those
terms, and so lengthen our dispute to no purpose. But I entreat you
calmly to look into your own thoughts, and then tell me if they are not a
useless and unintelligible jargon.

HYL. I own I have no very clear notion annexed to them. But what say
you to this? Do you not make the existence of sensible things consist in
their being in a mind? And were not all things eternally in the mind of
God? Did they not therefore exist from all eternity, according to you?
And how could that which was eternal be created in time? Can anything be
clearer or better connected than this?

PHIL. And are not you too of opinion, that God knew all things from
eternity?

HYL. I am.

PHIL. Consequently they always had a being in the Divine intellect.

HYL. This I acknowledge.

PHIL. By your own confession, therefore, nothing is new, or begins to
be, in respect of the mind of God. So we are agreed in that point.

HYL. What shall we make then of the creation?

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