The next thing the objectors bring against the existence of spirits, is, that it is nonsense for men to say that there are such beings of which it is impossible for a man to have any notion, and they insist upon it that it is impossible for any man to form an idea of a spiritual substance. As to this part, the defendants rejoin, that they think our late most judicious Mr. Locke, in his elaborate and finished Essay on the Human Understanding, has fairly made out, that men have as clear a notion of a spiritual substance as they have of any corporeal substance, matter, or body; and that there is as much reason for admitting the existence of the one, as of the other; for that if they admit the latter, it is but humour in them to deny the former. It is in book the 2nd, chap. 29, where he reasons thus: "If a man will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general he will find he has no other idea of it, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such quality which are capable of producing simple ideas in us, which qualities are commonly called accidents. Thus, if we talk or think of any particular sort of corporeal substance, as horse, stone, &c., though the idea we have of either of them be but the complication or collection of those several simple ideas, or sensible qualities which we use to find united in the thing called horse, or stone; yet because we cannot conceive how they should subsist alone, not one in another, we suppose them to exist in, and be supported by some common subject; which support we denote by the name of substance, though it be certain we have no clear or distinct idea of that thing we suppose a support. The same happens concerning the operations of our mind, viz., thinking, reasoning, and fearing, &c., which we concluding not to subsist of themselves, and not apprehending how they can belong to body, we are apt to think these the actions of some substance which we call spirit; whereby it is evident, that having no other notion of matter, but something wherein those many sensible qualities which affect our senses do subsist, by supposing a substance wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving, &c., do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the nature or substance of spirit, as we have of body: the one being supposed to be, without knowing what is, the substratum to those simple ideas which we have from without; and the other supposed, with a like ignorance of what it is, to be the substratum of these operations which we experiment in ourselves within. It is plain, then, that the idea of corporeal substance in matter, is as remote from our conceptions and apprehensions as that of spiritual substance, and therefore from our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we can no more conclude its not existence, than we can for the same reason deny the existence of body; it being as rational to affirm there is no body,