Note 95 — Quest. XII., XIII. (continued 4)

A late learned author has given us this definition of a single person, “That it is an intelligent agent, having the distinctive characters of I, thou, and he, and not divided or distinguished into more intelligent agents, capable of the same characters.” [Waterland’s second Defence,] and thereupon he thus argues in another place, “Our ideas of person are plainly taken from our conceptions of human persons, and from them transferred to other subjects, though they do not strictly answer in every circumstance. Properly speaking, he and him, are no more applicable to a divine person, than she or her;” but we have no third way of denoting a person, and so, of the two, we choose the best, and custom familiarizes it.—His Sermons at Lady Moyer’s Lectures.