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No , 43 . Philip h Limborch to John Locke * Amsterdam , Sept . 1 £ , 1698 . My worthy Friend ,
SINCE my Jast conversation with that eminent person I have had no opportunity of meeting- him , as he has . been lately indisposed with a slight fever , I have conversed with one of his friends , who remarked , that
he could not approve the reasoning of that eminent person , when he contended , that if we grant thought to be elf-existent , and quite distinct from matter or extension , it will follow that neither could have any knowledge of the other . Extension , indeed ,
( he said , ) can have no knowledge of thought , but it cannot from thence be concluded that thought can have no knowledge of extension ; because since thought is self-existent and independent , it is also infinite , and thence must be able to conceive the
existence of extension * by the innate force of its own infinite powers . But when I replied that the eminent person in question disapproved of the reasoning by which all other
attributes are ascribed to a Being selfexistent and independent , before it has been proved that he is only one , he answered , that such a Being must be affirmed to be infinite , not only in his own nature , but to be endowed with
infinite knowledge , and his substance to be of infinite extension , if , indeed , he be self-existent . But from thence it appeared to me to follow , that other attributes also might be proved ; for his infinity being once proved , it
may thence be also proved that other attributes belong to him , without which his infinity cannot be imagined . This he clid not deny ; and thus'he appeared to think with me , that it
w iv * vain to inquire after the Unity of such a Being by such a mode of reasoning ; but that the second proposition ought to be the third * It has occurred to n > e that the eminent person laid down that method of
investigating the truth for himself , and at hen he could not find arguments satisfactory to himself , sought them from others . It seems to me difficult to prove a Being , -existing by the necessity pf his nature to be only one , before you deduce from hi * necessary existence other attributes which ne-
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cessarily accompany it . If the eminent person could produce such arguments , they would be well worthy of being-communicated to the learned world .
Professor Vander Wdeyen published lately a small treatise of Rittangelius , * and prefixed to it a long and virulent preface against M . Le Clerc , in which he endeavoured to refute the
explanation of the . beginning of the Gospel of John , which had been published by M . Le Clerc . t I wish to see that subject treated with candour and judgment . At last he attacked me , though slightly , because in my Christian Theology I had said of
Burma . ny that much of what he had said on the Divine omnipotence , in his Synopsis of Theologyf had been taken from the Metaphysical Thoughts of Spinoza . This he does not deny , but contends , not withstanding , that ZJwrman was not a Spinozist , which indeed I never asserted . Neither of us
chooses to take any notice of such a superficial writer . A few weeks since I gave N . N . a
? Professor of oriental languages in lhe , University of Konigsberg , where he died , 1652 . He is said to have been educated a Catholic , afterwards to have professed Judaism , and then to have become a Z *« - t / ieran . In his Notes on Ezr ^ a he
maintaiiied that the Chaldee Paraphrase furnished arguments against Jews and Antitrinitariansi This remark . engaged him in a controversy with a Polish Socinian , who wrote under the name of Irenopolita . See Nouv . Diet . Hist . 1772 , V . 180 .
- \ - At the commencement of this year ( 1698 ) Le Cierc had published Hammond # > n the New Testament , translated into Latin , with additional Notes * u quibus , " as he speaks of himself in the third person , " aut leniter Hatnmondum confutabat , aut ah eo dicta confirmabat , ant omissa supplebat . " See C Clerici Vita € t Opera
1711 , ' pp . 01 , ' 253 . ' It Tras no doubt , the ^ e additional notes to Hammond ^ which Vander Waeyen attacked . Le Cierc appears to have considered the Word , in the - proem of John , as " the Divine Wisdom , by which all
things were created , * ' and which " dwelt in Jesus . '' See his Harmony , translated froim the Latin , 1701 , 4 to * pp . 44 . Also his Le Nouv . Test ., 1703 , pp . 262—264 / Le Clere is , probably , not very incorrectly described by his French biographer , as Sectateur secret de Socin . See Nouv * Diet . Hi * t . II . p . 22 ft .
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120 - The Correspondence between Locke and Limborch , translated .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1819, page 220, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1771/page/8/
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