None of these denied that God is the cause of all motion and action, or that God is the cause of all laws; and yet they were never forced to say, that God is the cause of sin. (_o_) “‘They who invented this term of _actus imperatus_, understood not’, he saith, ‘any thing what it signified.’ No? Why not? It seemeth to me, they understood it better than those who except against it. They knew there are _mental terms_, which are only conceived in the mind, as well as _vocal terms_, which are expressed with the tongue, &c.” In this place the Bishop hath discovered the ground of all his errors in philosophy, which is this; that he thinketh, when he repeateth the words of a proposition in his mind, that is, when he fancieth the words without speaking them, that then he conceiveth the things which the words signify: and this is the most general cause of false opinions. For men can never be deceived in the conceptions of things, though they may be, and are most often deceived by giving unto them wrong terms or appellations, different from those which are commonly used and constituted to signify their conceptions. And therefore they that study to attain the certain knowledge of the truth, do use to set down beforehand all the terms they are to express themselves by, and declare in what sense they shall use them constantly. And by this means, the reader having an idea of every thing there named, cannot conceive amiss. But when a man from the hearing of a word hath no idea of the thing signified, but only of the sound and of the letters whereof the word is made, which is that he here calleth _mental terms_, it is impossible he should conceive aright, or bring forth any thing but absurdity; as he doth here, when he says, “that when Tarquin delivered his commands to his son by only striking off the tops of the poppies, he did it by _mental terms_”; as if to strike off the head of a poppy, were a mental term. It is the sound and the letters, that maketh him think _elicitus_ and _imperatus_ somewhat. And it is the same thing that makes him say, for think it he cannot, that to will or choose, is drawn, or allured, or fetched out of the power to will. For drawing cannot be imagined but of bodies; and therefore to will, to speak, to write, to dance, to leap, or any way to be moved, cannot be said intelligibly to be _drawn_, much less to be drawn out of a power, that is to say, out of an ability; for whatsoever is drawn out, is drawn out of one place into another. He that can discourse in this manner in philosophy, cannot probably be thought able to discourse rationally in any thing.