19. Objection: Creation out of nothing.

But you will say, Is it not impossible to admit of the making anything
out of nothing, SINCE WE CANNOT POSSIBLY CONCEIVE IT? I answer, No.
Because it is not reasonable to deny the power of an infinite being,
because we cannot comprehend its operations. We do not deny other
effects upon this ground, because we cannot possibly conceive the manner
of their production. We cannot conceive how anything but impulse of body
can move body; and yet that is not a reason sufficient to make us deny
it possible, against the constant experience we have of it in ourselves,
in all our voluntary motions; which are produced in us only by the free
action or thought of our own minds, and are not, nor can be, the effects
of the impulse or determination of the motion of blind matter in or upon
our own bodies; for then it could not be in our power or choice to alter
it. For example: my right hand writes, whilst my left hand is still:
What causes rest in one, and motion in the other? Nothing but my
will,--a thought of my mind; my thought only changing, the right hand
rests, and the left hand moves. This is matter of fact, which cannot be
denied: explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step
will be to understand creation. [For the giving a new determination to
the motion of the animal spirits (which some make use of to explain
voluntary motion) clears not the difficulty one jot. To alter the
determination of motion, being in this case no easier nor less, than
to give motion itself: since the new determination given to the animal
spirits must be either immediately by thought, or by some other body put
in their way by thought which was not in their way before, and so must
owe ITS motion to thought: either of which leaves VOLUNTARY motion as
unintelligible as it was before.] In the meantime, it is an over-valuing
ourselves to reduce all to the narrow measure of our capacities; and to