was a notable place for birds nests, and that one can scarce walk in the Island but he will tread on a nest of Eggs. But to this may be answered either that those parties that were consulted were men that looked not after such curiosities as these; or that the rotten pieces of ships or trunks of trees that were washed up thither by the Sea, have been a long time agoe washed away again, and so the examples of this rarity being not freshly renewed, that the memory of it may be lost with many of those Parts: For it is nigh threescore years since Gerard wrote, but while he was living, he offered to make his narration good by sufficient witnesses; and he professes he declares but what his eyes had seen and his hands had touched.
And he also adds a Story of another sort of Tree-geese which he gathered in their shells from an old rotten tree upon the shore of our English Coast betwixt Dover and Rumney: He brought a many of them with him to London, and opening the shells, which were something like Muscles, he found these Birds in several degrees of maturation; in some shapeless lumps only, in others the form of Birds, but bare, in others the same form and shape, and with down also upon them, their shells gaping, and they ready to fall out.
I might adde a third kind described to me by a Gentleman out of Ireland, which he has often observed upon those Coasts; but it is not material to insist upon the description thereof. All that I aim at is this, That this truth of Birds being bred of putrefaction is very certain, of which I am so well assured by this Gentleman's information as well as that narration of Gerard, that I must confess for my own part I cannot doubt of it at all. And it might countenance my credulity, if I could be here justly suspected of that fault, that the Objector himself upon further enquiry is at length fully satisfied concerning the same truth.
6. We have now answered all the Objecttions, as well Philososhical as Historical, made against those particular passages in my Third Book. There remains only one of a more universal nature, and indeed of such importance, that if I do not satisfie it, it does utterly subvert the main design of our whole Third Book against Atheism, wherein we would fetch off men to an easier belief of a God, from the History of Spirits. For admitting all those Stories to be true, yet, say they, it does not at all follow that there are Spirits in that sense that I define Spirits, and in such a notion as is understood in my explication of the Idea of God, viz. That there should he an Immaterial or Incorporeal Substance that can penetrate and actuate the Matter; for they themselves are but a thinner kind of Body, such as Aire or Fire, or some such like subtile Element, and not pure Spirit according to our Definition thereof.
If this were true, I must confess that our last Book against Atheism is of no efficacy at all, and can doe nothing towards the end it was intended for. For if there be a God, of necestity he must be a Spirit properly so called; otherwise he cannot be Infinite. Nor can he be this Universal Matter in the world, though we suppose it boundless; because he could not then be perfect. But he must be an Essence of which this Matter depends, and in which he is, penetrating and possessing all things. Which any one will
