nothing else, but for men to substitute their own fancies, without sufficient ground, as matters of faith, and build doctrines upon them, as though they were contained in scripture. I pass by other improvements, which they make on this fabulous notion, which still appear to be more romantic.[71] There is another attempt to account for the origin of moral evil, without inferring God to be the author of it, which has formerly been advanced by those who deny the imputation of Adam’s sin; and these suppose that the soul is rendered polluted with sin, by reason of its traduction, or propagation, from the soul of the immediate parent; so that, in like manner, as the body is subject to hereditary diseases, the soul is defiled with sin, as both one and the other are the consequence of their formation, according to the course of nature, in the likeness of those, from whom they immediately derive their respective beings; and they suppose that a similitude of passions, and natural dispositions in parents and children, is an argument to evince the truth hereof. But this appears so contrary to the light of nature, and all the principles of philosophy, to suppose, that one spirit can produce another, in a natural way, and so repugnant to the ideas which we have of spirits, as simple beings, or not compounded of parts, as bodies are, that it seems almost to be universally exploded, as being destitute of any tolerable argument to support it, though it was formerly embraced by some of the Fathers.[72] And they, who pretend to account for it, by the similitude of one candle’s lighting another, and yet the flame remaining the same as it was before, have only made use of an unhappy method of illustration, which comes far short of a conclusive argument to their purpose. And as for the likeness of natural dispositions in children to their parents, that does not, in the least prove it; since this arises very much from the temperament of the body, or from the prejudices of education. Therefore this method to account for the origin of moral evil, being not much defended at present, we may pass it over, as a groundless conjecture.