18. Matter not co-eternal with an eternal Mind.
Secondly, Others would have Matter to be eternal,
notwithstanding that they allow an eternal, cogitative, immaterial Being. This, though it take not away the being
of a God, yet, since it denies one and the first great piece of his workmanship, the creation, let us consider it a
little. Matter must be allowed eternal: Why? because you cannot conceive how it can be made out of nothing: why
do you not also think yourself eternal? You will answer, perhaps, Because, about twenty or forty years since, you
began to be. But if I ask you, what that you is, which began then to be, you can scarce tell me. The matter whereof
you are made began not then to be: for if it did, then it is not eternal: but it began to be put together in such a
fashion and frame as makes up your body; but yet that frame of particles is not you, it makes not that thinking
thing you are; (for I have now to do with one who allows an eternal, immaterial, thinking Being, but would have
unthinking Matter eternal too;) therefore, when did that thinking thing begin to be? If it did never begin to be, then
have you always been a thinking thing from eternity; the absurdity whereof I need not confute, till I meet with one
who is so void of understanding as to own it. If, therefore, you can allow a thinking thing to be made out of
nothing, (as all things that are not eternal must be,) why also can you not allow it possible for a material being to
be made out of nothing by an equal power, but that you have the experience of the one in view, and not of the
other? Though, when well considered, creation of a spirit will be found to require no less power than the creation
of matter. Nay, possibly, if we would emancipate ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts, as far as
they would reach, to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim at some dim and seeming
conception how matter might at first be made, and begin to exist, by the power of that eternal first Being: but to
give beginning and being to a spirit would be found a more inconceivable effect of omnipotent power. But this
being what would perhaps lead us too far from the notions on which the philosophy now in the world is built, it
would not be pardonable to deviate so far from them; or to inquire, so far as grammar itself would authorize, if the
common settled opinion opposes it: especially in this place, where the received doctrine serves well enough to our
present purpose, and leaves this past doubt, that the creation or beginning of any one SUBSTANCE out of nothing
being once admitted, the creation of all other but the CREATOR himself, may, with the same ease, be supposed.
