aturam non esse Deum,
cujus effati contrario praedictus Tractatus unice innititur_. One was
surprised to see that a man who did not follow the profession of letters,
and who had but slight education (having written his book in Flemish, and
had it translated into Latin), had been able to penetrate with such
subtlety all the principles of Spinoza, and succeed in overthrowing them,
after having reduced them by a candid analysis to a state wherein they
could appear in their full force. I have been told (adds M. Bayle) that
this writer after copious reflexion upon his answer, and upon the principle
of his opponent, finally found that this principle could be reduced to the
form of a demonstration. He undertook therefore to prove that there is no
cause of all things other than a nature which exists necessarily, and which
acts according to an immutable, inevitable and irrevocable necessity. He
examined the whole system of the geometricians, and after having
constructed his demonstration he scrutinized it from every imaginable
angle, he endeavoured to find its weak spot and was never able to discover
any means of destroying it, or even of weakening it. That caused him real
distress: he groaned over it and begged the most talented of his [350]
friends to help him in searching out the defects of this demonstration. For
all that, he was not well pleased that copies of the book were made. Franz
Cuper, a Socinian (who had written _Arcana Atheismi Revelata_ against
Spinoza, Rotterdam, 1676, in 4to.), having obtained a copy, published it
just as it was, that is, in Flemish, with some reflexions, and accused the
author of being an atheist. The accused made his defence in the same
tongue. Orobio, a very able Jewish physician (that one who was refuted by
M. Limbourg, and who replied, so I have heard say, in a work posthumously
circulated, but unpublished), brought out a book opposing Bredenburg's
demonstration, entitled: _Certamen Philosophicum Propugnatae Veritatis
Divinae ac Naturalis, adversus J.B. principia, Amsterdam_, 1684. M. Aubert
de Verse also wrote in opposition to him the same year under the name of
Latinus Serbattus Sartensis. Bredenburg protested that he was convinced of
free will and of religion, and that he wished he might be shown a
possibility of refuting his own demonstration.

374. I would desire to see this alleged demonstration, and to know whether
it tended to prove that primitive Nature, which produces all, acts