he idea of God as infinite substance, and understands its
development under two modes; viz. extension and thought: the former the
objective act of Deity, the latter the subjective.(338) The universe
therefore is nothing but the manifestation of God: God is the sum total of
it; the unity in its variety; the infinite comprehending its finity. Cause
and effect are identical; the _natura naturans_, and _natura naturata_.
Causation is change; but it is nothing but substance assuming attributes,
and attributes assuming modes. Phenomena are only the bubbles which arise
on the bosom of the ocean and disappear, absorbed in its vastness. The
universe is bound in one vast chain of fatalism, one grand and perfect
whole. Man's perfection is to know by contemplation the universe in which
he has his being.

Such a system has been called atheistic, because it is silent about the
presence of a personal first Cause. It might be more truly denominated
Pantheistic, not in the vague sense in which that term is applied to
denote the belief in a Deity as an _anima mundi_, like that explained in
reference to the Averroists,(339) but to imply that the sum total of all
things, the universe, is Deity. Its influence on the question of revealed
religion will be obvious. It admits that the phenomena which we attribute
to miracle in the process of revelation are facts, but it denies their
miraculous character.(340) They are the mere manifestation of some
previously unknown law, turning up accidentally at the particular moment,
some previously unknown mode in which the all-embracing substance
manifests itself. In this view all religions become various expressions of
the great moral and spiritual truths which they embody, and true piety
consists in rising beyond them to the vision of the higher truths which
they typify, and the practice of the principles which they enjoin as
rules. "Dico," wrote Spinoza, "ad salutem non esse omnino necesse,
Christum secundum carnem noscere; sed de aeterno illo filio Dei, hoc est,
Dei aeterna sapientia quae sese in omnibus rebus, et maxime in mente humana
et omnium maxime in Christo Jesu manifestavit, longe aliter
sentiendum."(341)

Spinoza, though a Jew, had examined the claims of Christianity. Indeed the
discussions, half political, half religious, of the Dutch theology, would
have compelled the investigation of it, independently of his own largeness
of sympathy with the philosophical history of human religion.(342) H