follows:1 It 61 is manifest, at least in so far as we can conceive it, that it is by impulse, and nothing else Õ that Ô bodies operate one upon another It being impossible to conceive, that body should operate on what it does not touch, (which is all one as to imagine it can operate where it is not)Õ.
 I cannot but praise our renowned authorÕs modest piety here, when he acknowledges that God can do what is beyond our understanding and hence that there may be inconceivable mysteries among the articles of faith. But I would not like to be compelled to resort to miracles in the ordinary course of nature, or to admit absolutely inexplicable powers and operations. For, with the aid of Ô what God can do Õ?we may give too much leeway to bad philosophy by admitting these Ôcentripetal powersÕ and 'immediate attractionsÕ at a distance, without being able to make them intelligible; I do not see what is to prevent our Scholastics from saying that everything simply comes about through ÔfacultiesÕ?and from promoting their intentional species, which travel from objects to us and find their way into our souls. If that is acceptable,  Everything will now happen whose possibility I used to denyÕ [Ovid]. So it seems to me that our author, judicious as he is, is here going rather too much from one extreme to the other. He is captious about the operations of souls when it is merely a matter of admitting what is not sensible and here he is granting to bodies what is not even intelligible, granting them powers and activities which in my opinion transcend anything that a created mind could do or understand; for he grants attraction to them, even at great distances and without limitation to any sphere of activity, merely so as to uphold a view which is equally inexplicable, namely the possibility of matter thinking in the natural course of events.
 The issue between him and the eminent bishop who had attacked him is whether matter can think. Since this is an important question, for the present work also, I feel bound to enter into it a little and take cognizance of their debate. I shall present the substance of their disagreement on this topic, and shall take the liberty of saying what I think about it. The late Bishop of Worcester, fearing (in my opinion without much cause) that our authorÕs doctrine of ideas might be open to certain abuses prejudicial to the Christian faith, undertook to examine certain aspects of it in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity. After rightly giving this distinguished writer credit for maintaining that the existence of mind is as