_T. H._ He here concludes his first chapter with bitter reproaches, to leave in his reader, as he thought, a sting; supposing perhaps that he will read nothing but the beginning and end of his book, as is the custom of many men. But to make him lose that petty piece of cunning, I must desire of the reader one of these two things. Either that he would read with it the places of my _Leviathan_ which he cites, and see not only how he answers my arguments, but also what the arguments are which he produceth against them; or else, that he would forbear to condemn me, so much as in his thought: for otherwise he is unjust. The name of Bishop is of great authority; but these words are not the words of a bishop, but of a passionate Schoolman, too fierce and unseemly in any man whatsoever. Besides, they are untrue. Who that knows me, will say that I have the confidence of a juggler, or that I use to brag of anything, much less that I play the mountebank? What my works are, he was no fit judge. But now he has provoked me, I will say thus much of them, that neither he, (if he had lived), nor I, if I would, could extinguish the light which is set up in the world by the greatest part of them: and for these doctrines which he impugneth, I have few opposers, but such whose profit, or whose fame in learning is concerned in them. He accuses me first of destroying the existence of God; that is to say, he would make the world believe I were an atheist. But upon what ground? Because I say, that God is a spirit, but _corporeal_. But to say that, is allowed me by St. Paul, that says (1 Cor. xv. 44): _There is a spiritual body, and there is an animal body_. He that holds there is a God, and that God is really somewhat, (for _body_ is doubtlessly a _real substance_), is as far from being an atheist, as it is possible to be. But he that says God is an _incorporeal substance_, no man can be sure whether he be an atheist or not. For no man living can tell whether there be any _substance_ at all, that is not also _corporeal_. For neither the word _incorporeal_, nor _immaterial_, nor any word equivalent to it, is to be found in Scripture, or in reason. But on the contrary, that _the Godhead dwelleth bodily in Christ_, is found in Colos. ii. 9; and Tertullian maintains that God is either a _corporeal substance_ or _nothing_. Nor was he ever condemned for it by the church. For why? Not only Tertullian, but all the learned, call _body_, not only that which one can see, but also whatsoever has magnitude, or that is somewhere; for they had greater reverence for the divine substance, than that they durst think it had no _magnitude_, or was _nowhere_. But they that hold God to be a phantasm, as did the exorcists in the Church of Rome, that is, such a thing as were at that time thought to be the sprights, that were said to walk in churchyards and to be the souls of men buried, do absolutely make God to be nothing at all. But how? Were they atheists? No. For