f, one God to govern it, and one law to guide it. For, run through
the whole system of rational beings, and you will find reason and truth but
single and the same. And thus beings of the same kind, and endued with the
same reason, are made happy by the same exercises of it."--Book vii, Sec.
9. Again: "Let your soul receive the Deity as your blood does the air; for
the influences of the one are no less vital, than those of the other. This
correspondence is very practicable: for there is an ambient omnipresent
Spirit, which lies as open and pervious to your mind, as the air you
breathe does to your lungs: but then you must remember to be disposed to
draw it."--Book viii, Sec. 54; _Collier's Translation_.

12. Agreeably to these views, except that he makes a distinction between a
natural and a supernatural idea of God, we find Barclay, the early defender
of the Quakers, in an argument with a certain Dutch nobleman,
philosophizing thus: "If the Scripture then be true, there is in men a
supernatural idea of God, which altogether differs from this natural
idea--I say, in all men; because all men are capable of salvation, and
consequently of enjoying this divine vision. Now this capacity consisteth
herein, that they have such a supernatural idea in themselves.[39] For if
there were no such idea in them, it were impossible they should so know
God; for whatsoever is clearly and distinctly known, is known by its proper
idea; neither can it otherwise be clearly and distinctly known. _For the
ideas of all things are divinely planted in our souls_; for, as the better
philosophy teacheth, they are not begotten in us by outward objects or
outward causes, but only are by these outward things excited or stirred up.
And this is true, not only in supernatural ideas of God and things divine,
and in natural ideas of the natural principles of human understanding, and
conclusions thence deduced by the strength of human reason; but even in the
ideas of outward objects, which are perceived by the outward senses: as
that noble Christian philosopher Boethius hath well observed; to which also
the Cartesian philosophy agreeth." I quote only to show the concurrence of
others, with Harris's position. Barclay carries on his argument with much
more of a similar import. See _Sewell's History_, folio, p. 620.

13. But the doctrine of ideas existing primarily in God, and being divinely
planted in our souls, did not originate with Boethius: it may be traced