me think, that though it may be true, yet it is not obvious to every capacity; otherwise it would have been generally used, as a fundamental argument, to prove the being of God.
I must add one thing more: that your argument for the omnipresence of God seemed always to me very probable. But being very desirous to have it appear demonstratively conclusive, I was sometimes forced to say what was not altogether my opinion. Not that I did this for the sake of disputing (for, besides the particular disagreeableness of this to my own temper, I should surely have chosen another person to have trifled with;) but I did it to set off the objection to advantage, that it might be more fully answered. I heartily wish you as fair treatment from your opponents in print, as I have had from you: though I must own, I cannot see, in those that I have read, that unprejudiced search after truth, which I would have hoped for.
I am, Reverend Sir,
Your most humble Servant.
February 3, 1714.
THE ANSWER TO THE FIFTH LETTER.
Sir,—In a multitude of business, I mislaid your last letter; and could not answer it, till it came again to my hands by chance. We seem to have pushed the matter in question between us as far as it will go; and upon the whole I cannot but take notice I have very seldom met with persons so reasonable and unprejudiced as yourself, in such debates as these.
I think all I need say in answer to the reasoning in your letter is, that your granting the absurdity of the supposition you were endeavouring to make, is consequently granting the necessary truth of my argument. If[1] space and duration necessarily remain, even after they are supposed to be taken away, and be not (as it is plain they are not) them-
- ↑ Ut partiam temporis ordo est immutabilis, sic etiam ordo partium spatii. Moveantur hæc de locis suis, et movebuntur (ut ita dieam) de scipsis—Newton, Princip. Mathemat. Schol. ad definit. 8.
