230 OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY. 
ciple: which terms, in the mouths of those who use them 
philosophically, seem to be intended to admit and to express 
an efficacy, but to exclude and to deny a personal agent. 
Now that which can contrive, which can design, must be 
a person. These capacities constitute personality, for they 
imply consciousness and thought. They require that which 
can perceive an end or purpose; as well as the power of 
providing means, and of directing them to their end.* 
They require a centre in which perceptions unite, and from 
which volitions flow; which is mind. The acts of a mind 
prove the existence of a mind; and in whatever a mind 
resides, is a person. The seat of intellect is a person 
We have no authority to limit the properties of mind to 
any particular corporeal form, or to any particular circum¬ 
scription of space. These properties subsist in created 
nature under a great variety of sensible forms. Also every 
animated being has its sensomum ; that is, a certain portion 
of space, within which perception and volition are exerted. 
This sphere may be enlarged to an indefinite extent; 
may comprehend the universe; and, being so imagined, 
may serve to furnish us with as good a notion as we are 
capable of forming, of the immensity of the Divine Nature, 
i. e. of a Being, infinite, as well in essence as in power; 
yet nevertheless a person. 
“ No man hath seen God at anytime.” And this, I be 
lieve, makes the great difficulty. Now it is a difficulty 
which chiefly arises from our not duly estimating the state 
of our faculties. The Deity, it is true, is the object of 
none of our senses: but reflect what limited capacities an 
imal senses are. Many animals seem to have but one 
sense, or perhaps two at the most; touch and taste. Ought 
such an animal to conclude against the existence of odors, 
sounds, and colors? To another species is given the 
sense of smelling. This is an advance in the knowledge 
of the powers and properties of nature: but, if this favored 
animal should infer from its superiority over the class 
last described, that it perceived everything which was per¬ 
ceptible in nature, it is known to us, though perhaps not 
Some of the fixed stars appear double, and even multiple when highly 
magnified. The same great astronomer, whom we have just mentioned, 
was induced to believe that these were separate systems, and his son, 
assisted by Mr. South, has established that some of them have undoubt¬ 
edly a revolution round a common centre of gravity analogous to the 
motions of the sun and planets.— Paxton. 
* Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, p. 153, ed. 2. 
