capacities, whose faculties both in number and extent are far exceeding
those the Author of my being has bestowed on me, I see no reason to deny.
And for me to pretend to determine by my own few, stinted narrow inlets
of perception, what ideas the inexhaustible power of the Supreme Spirit
may imprint upon them were certainly the utmost folly and
presumption--since there may be, for aught that I know, innumerable sorts
of ideas or sensations, as different from one another, and from all that
I have perceived, as colours are from sounds. But, how ready soever I may
be to acknowledge the scantiness of my comprehension with regard to the
endless variety of spirits and ideas that may possibly exist, yet for any
one to pretend to a notion of Entity or Existence, abstracted from spirit
and idea, from perceived and being perceived, is, I suspect, a downright
repugnancy and trifling with words.--It remains that we consider the
objections which may possibly be made on the part of Religion.

82. OBJECTIONS DERIVED FROM THE SCRIPTURES ANSWERED.--Some there are
who think that, though the arguments for the real existence of
bodies which are drawn from Reason be allowed not to amount to
demonstration, yet the Holy Scriptures are so clear in the point as
will sufficiently convince every good Christian that bodies do really
exist, and are something more than mere ideas; there being in Holy Writ
innumerable facts related which evidently suppose the reality of timber
and stone, mountains and rivers, and cities, and human bodies. To which I
answer that no sort of writings whatever, sacred or profane, which use
those and the like words in the vulgar acceptation, or so as to have a
meaning in them, are in danger of having their truth called in question
by our doctrine. That all those things do really exist, that there are
bodies, even corporeal substances, when taken in the vulgar sense, has
been shown to be agreeable to our principles; and the difference betwixt
things and ideas, realities and chimeras, has been distinctly explained.