22. The power of annihilation proves a vacuum.
Farther, those who assert the impossibility of space existing
without matter, must not only make body infinite, but must also deny a power in God to annihilate any part of
matter. No one, I suppose, will deny that God can put an end to all motion that is in matter, and fix all the bodies
of the universe in a perfect quiet and rest, and continue them so long as he pleases. Whoever then will allow that
God can, during such a general rest, annihilate either this book or the body of him that reads it, must necessarily
admit the possibility of a vacuum. For, it is evident that the space that was filled by the parts of the annihilated
body will still remain, and be a space without body. For the circumambient bodies being in perfect rest, are a wall
of adamant, and in that state make it a perfect impossibility for any other body to get into that space. And indeed
the necessary motion of one particle of matter into the place from whence another particle of matter is removed, is
but a consequence from the supposition of plenitude; which will therefore need some better proof than a supposed
matter of fact, which experiment can never make out;--our own clear and distinct ideas plainly satisfying us, that
there is no necessary connexion between space and solidity, since we can conceive the one without the other. And
those who dispute for or against a vacuum, do thereby confess they have distinct ideas of vacuum and plenum,
i.e., that they have an idea of extension void of solidity, though they deny its existence; or else they dispute about
nothing at all. For they who so much alter the signification of words, as to call extension body, and consequently
make the whole essence of body to be nothing but pure extension without solidity, must talk absurdly whenever
they speak of vacuum; since it is impossible for extension to be without extension. For vacuum, whether we
affirm or deny its existence, signifies space without body; whose very existence no one can deny to be possible,
who will not make matter infinite, and take from God a power to annihilate any particle of it.
