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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
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