And, indeed, it is of such importance that if
you could solve all others, without being able to find a solution
for this, you must never expect to make me a proselyte to your
principles.
. Let me know this mighty difficulty.
. The Scripture account of the creation is what appears
to me utterly irreconcilable with your notions. Moses tells us of
a creation: a creation of what? of ideas? No, certainly, but of
things, of real things, solid corporeal substances. Bring your
principles to agree with this, and I shall perhaps agree with
you.
. Moses mentions the sun, moon, and stars, earth and
sea, plants and animals. That all these do really exist, and were
in the beginning created by God, I make no question. {251} If by
you mean fictions and fancies of the mind, then these are
no ideas. If by you mean immediate objects of the
understanding, or sensible things, which cannot exist
unperceived, or out of a mind, then these things are ideas. But
whether you do or do not call them , matters little.
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