Chap. VII. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 309 



all our perceptions, were produced, as Epicurus fuppofed, by the 

 appulfe of corporeal images upon our Minds, the comparifon would 

 hold ; but, as it is believed no philofopher now a days, not even the 

 Materialift, maintains that our thoughts are fo produced, it proves 

 no more, than that a Subtile Body, fuch as Light, may, from a 

 great diftance, come into contad with our organs of Senfe. But this 

 never will account for our thoughts when we have no ufe of our 

 organs of Senfe, as in Sleep, nor for our Perceptions, when we are 

 awake, of objects of Senfe, diftant both in Time and Place. 



Holding it, therefore, as certain, that our Mind can tranfport it- 

 felf to diftant Places and Times, and there operate as it does upon 

 objedts prefent, we may obferve the difference that there is betwixt 

 our Mind and the Divinity ; for, as I have taken occafion more than 

 once to obferve, we can have no conception of the Divine Mind but 

 from the ftudy of our own*. The Human Mind, as we have feen, is 

 not confined to the prefent, with refpedt eithertoTime or Place ; and fo 

 far it participates of the Divine Nature ; But it is not omniprefent, 

 nor of all' Times and Places, as we conceive the Divinity to be. There 

 is therefore this remarkable diflFerence betwixt the Deity and us, that 

 we are in different Places only at different Times, whereas the Uni- 

 verfal Mind is in all Times, and in all places, at the fame Timef. 



Ln this way, the Ubiquity of God is made as plain, as, I think, it 

 can be, to our Capacities, from whatpaffes in our own Minds ; and 

 it appears that God is not only prefent every where, and at all 

 Times, by thofe inferior Minds, which keep every thing in motion- 

 in this Univerfe, and carry on the Syftem of Nature, but he is him- 



felf, 



•■ See Vol. i. p. 224 226' 



f This difference betwixt the Divine Mind ant.1 ours hss not efcaped the notice 

 of the philofopheis of the Alexandrian School ; and our manner of operating in 

 fuccdlion, and thinking of one thing after another, they have very properly cxprcfled 

 by the term rmo-if inrxfixriKti, 



