saying that they are in a perpetual flux, _semper fluunt, nunquam sunt_.
But of immaterial substances he judged quite differently, regarding them
alone as real: nor was he in that altogether mistaken. Yet continued
creation applies to all creatures without distinction. Sundry good
philosophers have been opposed to this dogma, and M. Bayle tells that David
de Rodon, a philosopher renowned among those of the French who have adhered
to Geneva, deliberately refuted it. The Arminians also do not approve of
it; they are not much in favour of these metaphysical subtleties. I will
say nothing of the Socinians, who relish them even less.

383. For a proper enquiry as to _whether conservation is a continued
creation,_ it would be necessary to consider the reasons whereon this dogma
is founded. The Cartesians, after the example of their master, employ in
order to prove it a principle which is not conclusive enough. They say that
'the moments of time having no necessary connexion with one another, it
does not follow that because I am at this moment I shall exist at the
moment which shall follow, if the same cause which gives me being for this
moment does not also give it to me for the instant following.' The author
of the _Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism_ has made use of this
argument, and M. Bayle (perhaps the author of this same _Reflexion_) quotes
it (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 141, p. 771).
One may answer that in fact it does not follow _of necessity_ that, because
I am, I shall be; but this follows _naturally_, nevertheless, that is, of
itself, _per se_, if nothing prevents it. It is the distinction that can be
drawn between the essential and the natural. For the same movement endures
naturally unless some new cause prevents it or changes it, because the
reason which makes it cease at this instant, if it is no new reason, [355]
would have already made it cease sooner.

384. The late Herr Erhard Weigel, a celebrated mathematician and
philosopher at Jena, well known for his _Analysis Euclidea_, his
mathematical philosophy, some neat mechanical inventions, and finally the
trouble he took to induce the Protestant princes of the Empire to undertake
the last reform of the Almanac, whose success, notwithstanding, he did not
witness; Herr Weigel, I say, communicated to his friends a certain
demonstration of the existence of God, which indeed amounted to this idea
of continued creation. As he was w