For, if we should
suppose the creation, or fall of the angels, was at the beginning of
the Julian period, we should speak properly enough, and should be
understood if we said, it is a longer time since the creation of
angels than the creation of the world, by 7640 years: whereby we would
mark out so much of that undistinguished duration as we suppose
equal to, and would have admitted, 7640 annual revolutions of the sun,
moving at the rate it now does. And thus likewise we sometimes speak
of place, distance, or bulk, in the great inane, beyond the confines
of the world, when we consider so much of that space as is equal to,
or capable to receive, a body of any assigned dimensions, as a cubic
foot; or do suppose a point in it, at such a certain distance from any
part of the universe.
8. They belong to all finite beings. Where and when are questions
belonging to all finite existences, and are by us always reckoned from
some known parts of this sensible world, and from some certain
epochs marked out to us by the motions observable in it. Without
some such fixed parts or periods, the order of things would be lost,
to our finite understandings, in the boundless invariable oceans of
duration and expansion, which comprehend in them all finite beings,
and in their full extent belong only to the Deity.
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