13. Whether the eternal Mind may he also material or no.
First, Perhaps it will be said, that, though it be as clear
as demonstration can make it, that there must be an eternal Being, and that Being must also be knowing: yet it
does not follow but that thinking Being may also be material. Let it be so, it equally still follows that there is a
God. For if there be an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent Being, it is certain that there is a God, whether you
imagine that Being to be material or no. But herein, I suppose, lies the danger and deceit of that
supposition:--there being no way to avoid the demonstration, that there is an eternal knowing Being, men,
devoted to matter, would willingly have it granted, that this knowing Being is material; and then, letting slide out
of their minds, or the discourse, the demonstration whereby an eternal knowing Being was proved necessarily to
exist, would argue all to be matter, and so deny a God, that is, an eternal cogitative Being: whereby they are so far
from establishing, that they destroy their own hypothesis. For, if there can be, in their opinion, eternal matter,
without any eternal cogitative Being, they manifestly separate matter and thinking, and suppose no necessary
connexion of the one with the other, and so establish the necessity of an eternal Spirit, but not of matter; since it
has been proved already, that an eternal cogitative Being is unavoidably to be granted. Now, if thinking and
matter may be separated, the eternal existence of matter will not follow from the eternal existence of a cogitative
Being, and they suppose it to no purpose.
