And therefore we
are not to wonder that we comprehend them not, and do so often find
our thoughts at a loss, when we would consider them, either abstractly
in themselves, or as any way attributed to the first
incomprehensible Being. But when applied to any particular finite
beings, the extension of any body is so much of that infinite space as
the bulk of the body takes up. And place is the position of any
body, when considered at a certain distance from some other. As the
idea of the particular duration of anything is, an idea of that
portion of infinite duration which passes during the existence of that
thing; so the time when the thing existed is, the idea of that space
of duration which passed between some known and fixed period of
duration, and the being of that thing. One shows the distance of the
extremities of the bulk or existence of the same thing, as that it
is a foot square, or lasted two years; the other shows the distance of
it in place, or existence from other fixed points of space or
duration, as that it was in the middle of Lincoln's Inn Fields, or the
first degree of Taurus, and in the year of our Lord 1671, or the
1000th year of the Julian period. All which distances we measure by
preconceived ideas of certain lengths of space and duration,- as
inches, feet, miles, and degrees, and in the other, minutes, days, and
years, &c.
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