ich evidently suppose the reality of timber
and stone, mountains and rivers, and cities, and human bodies. To which I
answer that no sort of writings whatever, sacred or profane, which use
those and the like words in the vulgar acceptation, or so as to have a
meaning in them, are in danger of having their truth called in question
by our doctrine. That all those things do really exist, that there are
bodies, even corporeal substances, when taken in the vulgar sense, has
been shown to be agreeable to our principles; and the difference betwixt
things and ideas, realities and chimeras, has been distinctly explained.
See sect. 29, 30, 33, 36, &c. And I do not think that either what
philosophers call Matter, or the existence of objects without the mind,
is anywhere mentioned in Scripture.

83. NO OBJECTION AS TO LANGUAGE TENABLE.--Again, whether there can
be or be not external things, it is agreed on all hands that the
proper use of words is the marking our conceptions, or things only
as they are known and perceived by us; whence it plainly follows
that in the tenets we have laid down there is nothing inconsistent
with the right use and significancy of language, and that discourse,
of what kind soever, so far as it is intelligible, remains undisturbed.
But all this seems so manifest, from what has been largely set forth
in the premises, that it is needless to insist any farther on it.

84. But, secondly it will be urged that miracles do, at least, lose much
of their stress and import by our principles. What must we think of Moses'
rod? was it not really turned into a serpent; or was there only a change
of ideas in the minds of the spectators? And, can it be supposed that our
Saviour did no more at the marriage-feast in Cana than impose on the
sight, and smell, and taste of the guests, so as to create in them the
appearance or idea only of wine? The same may be said of all other
miracles; which, in consequence of the foregoing principles, must be
looked upon only as so many cheats, or illusions of fancy. To this I
reply, that the rod was changed into a real serpent, and the water into
real wine. That this does not in the least contradict what I have
elsewhere said will be evident from sect. 34 and 35. But this business of
real and imaginary has been already so plainly and fully explained, and
so often referred to, and the difficulties about it are so easily
answered from what has gone before, that it were an affront to the
re