either their not understanding each other, or else, that in- stead of ingenuously searching after truth, they have made it their business to find out arguments for the proof of what they have once asserted. However, it is certain there may be other reasons for persons not agreeing in their opinions: and where it is so, I cannot but think with you, that they will find reason to suffer each other to differ friendly; every man having a way of thinking, in some respects, peculiarly his own.
I am sorry I must tell you, your answers to my objections are not satisfactory. The reasons why I think them not so, are as follows:—
You say, "Whatever is absolutely necessary at all, is absolutely necessary in every part of space, and in every point of duration." Were this evident, it would certainly prove what you bring it for; viz., "that whatever may, without a contradiction, be absent from one place at one time, may also be absent from all places at all times." But I do not conceive, that the idea of ubiquity is contained in the idea of self-existence, or directly follows from it; any otherwise than as, whatever exists, must exist somewhere. You add, "Whatever can at any time be conceived possibly to be absent from any one part of space, may for the same reason, [viz., the implying no contradiction in the nature of things,] be conceived possibly to be absent from every other part of space, at the same time." Now I cannot see, that I can make these two suppositions for the same reason, or upon the same account. The reason why I conceive this being may be absent from one place, is because it doth not contradict the former proof, [drawn from the nature of things,] in which I proved only that it must necessarily exist. But the other supposition, viz., that I can conceive it possible to be absent from every part of space at one and the same time, directly contradicts the proof that it must exist somewhere; and so is an express contradiction. Unless it be said, that as, when we have proved the three angles of a triangle equal to two right ones, that relation of the quality of its angles to two right
