An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches

Your concluding line I pardon, and it needs no more. All that is said in this Paper on this point is materially fully answered in my Book; and I even now asked a Friend what I should say to all that object against a Book which containeth sufficient matter of answer to their Objections: And he answered, Not write for every man a new one, but wish them to read the former better.

Pardon my oft repeating to you my sense of Futurity, with which I conclude. To man, Time in various instants, and the narrowness of our understandings, that must have various Conceptions and Organical Notions, make it needful to us to use names, even for things that are not (or nothings). When God (or any certain Cause) tells what will be hereafter, we frame an image of that thing that is not by the help of Words and the similitude of Things that are or have been. Then we put a name on that imagined thing, as if it were: Then we make use in our discourses of that name, and turning a Verb into a Noun, as [it will be] into [Future], and then an Adjective or Participle into a Substantive, [Future] into [Futurity] our poor Fancies run on with it, as if we had by the name made or mentioned some Substance or real Being. When all is nothing ⟨p. 68⟩but a Relative notion or Ens rationis. The knowledge that a thing will be may be a real knowledge: And instead of denominating the Act we denominate the Object, (which is internally an Image; externally Nothing real) and call it Future, and thence name Futurition: As Futurition signifieth improperly the relation of the mental act to the thing fore-known, it is a real mental act's relation: As the Subject is the thing future, so it is nothing real but a feigned organical Notion, by which we discourse instead of Verbs. The Relatio Conceptus vel nominis, is the relation of a real act. But the relation of the thing future as future is secundum dici, but feigned instead of a Verb. And of God's knowledge, I shall here say no more.

Pardon my oft repeating to you my sence of Futurity, with which I conclude. To man, Time in various instants, and the narrowness of our understandings, that must have various Conceptions and Organical Notions, make it needful to us to use names, even for things that are not (or nothings). When God (or any certain Cause) tells what will be hereafter, we frame an image of that thing that is not by the help of Words and the similitude of Things that are or have been. Then we put a name on that imagined thing, as if it were: Then we make use in our discourses of that name, and turning a Verb into a Noun, as [it will be] into [Future], and then an Adjective or Participle into a Substantive, [Future] into [Futurity] our poor Fancies run on with it, as if we had by the name made or mentioned some Substance or real Being. When all is nothing